Creative Destruction

The media coverage of the death of Malcolm McLaren has made me consider that as a creative, entrepreneurial catalytical spirit, he was in fact a curator. The talk is of a trickster, imp, provocateur, self publicist and a genius of mismanagement. He had the character of a creative destructive –  in producing the New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Bow Wow Wow, and that cowboy girl, until he decided to make his own records. Like Brian Eno, a non-musician who made really good music, employing nothing as academic as oblique strategies but really just chancing it. As he said, “it is better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success”. And even in death he is still provoking a welcome noise up on the Today programme this morning in amongst the banality of current British life.