theartsdesk Radio Show 30 - podcast on Malcolm McLaren with Paul Gorman, his biographer

It’s very simple. It’s just a laugh. You’re on the shelf. Do you want to come off the shelf and come on an adventure trail?

McLaren was rather cornered by his description of himself as an evil Svengali, which he thought no-one would take seriously. When Culshaw once asked him about whether he tried to manipulate people he said, “It’s very simple. It’s just a laugh. You’re on the shelf. Do you want to come off the shelf and come on an adventure trail? Maybe it will last five minutes or five years.”

He was in fact, rather than the scheming Machiavelli of legend, rather innocent and child-like in many respects, retaining a naïve wonder about the world. He was full of faults: as he memorably said, “Better be a glorious failure than a benign success”, and several of his projects were ill-advised, to put it mildly. (Chicken, a planned magazine of sexual liberation for teenagers, was mercifully never printed.) But the argument for him was that he was a life-affirming, very funny, subversive and brilliant character and a great cultural catalyst. As Julie Burchill once said, "We are all children of Thatcher and McLaren."

• Listen to the podcast

The list below is of the tracks Paul Gorman brought into the studio and played (except one – whoever notices first which one was not played wins a copy of the book) which represent McLaren's influences, side-projects and curios.

1. Do You Really Love Me Too (Fool’s Errand) by Billy Fury – MM’s lifelong musical hero. On the Let It Rock jukebox he persuaded an early line-up of the Sex Pistols to rehearse it (1964).

2. Merengue From Dances of the World’s Peoples, the Folkways albums which inspired the making of Duck Rock. This track appeared on the soundtrack he made for the 1982 Nostalgia of Mud catwalk show.

3. Tabours “ingoma” From Burundi Musique Traditionelles, the 1967 field recording McLaren found in the Beaubourg library while chatting up the librarian there who played it at the wrong speed, thus making a light-bulb pop.

4. Buffalo Gals From All About Square Dances by Piute Pete and his Country Cousins. Piute Pete was actually Morris Kaufman, a Jewish clerk from the Lower East Side (1966).

5. Duck for the Oyster – MM with The Hilltoppers (1983).

6. Madam Butterfly Single on fan-shaped vinyl (1984).

7. Deep in Vogue The single, a year ahead of Madonna’s Vogue, when McLaren brought the NY ballroom scene to the mainstream (1989).

8. Magic’s Back With Alison Limerick (Rave edit) from The Ghosts Of Oxford Street (1991).

9. Deux From The Largest Movie House in Paris, the Paris remix album (1994).

10. Manhattan, Malibu & Mexico From Tranquilize, MM’s album distributed via Habitat (2007).