Flowers in the dustbin

I never much liked Malcolm McLaren but I appreciated what he did in bringing The Sex Pistols to the global stage.

Malcolm McLaren, standing between the bobby and Sid Vicious, was always about the dramaMcLaren died Thursday from cancer. McLaren was best known as the manager of the Pistols, a cartoonish cast of characters he tossed together and molded into a pop culture tour de force.

While stunned by McLaren's death, I guess I shouldn't be surprised these days as more and more major influences on my musical life die off. Alex Chilton, Doug Fieger, Willie Mitchell and Jay Reatard all worked their way into heavy rotation on my playlists, and their recent deaths leave rich legacies.

So it goes with McLaren, a king of promotion who knew nothing but "over the top."

I was a teenager was late 1977 when I first heard of The Sex Pistols, through news stories and magazine articles decrying the downfall of youth. Much of that disturbance was directly tied to McLaren selling the band as bad seeds and worse. More poetically, they were "flowers in the dustbin," to quote from Pistol's anthem "God Save the Queen:"

We're the flowers in the dustbin
We're the poison in the human machine
We're the future
Your future

The Pistols promotional poster that has inspired me over the yearsThose were lyrics featured on a bright and edgy poster EMI used to promote
"Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" in American record stores. I was able to snag a copy of the poster (the Wherehouse Records in Fresno was NOT going to hang such crap on its walls), and after deciphering what "dustbin" meant, proudly hung it on various walls for the next 15 years or so.

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