I learned later in life what exactly he contributed to contemporary music because the Sex Pistols had their heyday when I was 9 or 10. Music, let alone the short-lived Punk fad, wasn’t exactly on a kid’s RADAR with the popularity of Star Wars.
However, contributed is a generous term for him. Stole is the word more often associated with him. The lawsuit between him and the Sex Pistols dragged on for years. Back when I met Matthew Ashman in 1988 during his stint with Chiefs of Relief, he told me that his entire income as guitarist of Bow Wow Wow was 14,000 pounds courtesy of McLaren’s so-called management. Not a very good sum for a band which had a moderately successful run in the early Eighties.
It is a shame he died and of cancer nonetheless but in the bigger picture of Popular Music, McLaren was one of the villains, a role I feel he relished.