It is said that people forever retain an element of who they were when first encountered. For me, Malcolm McLaren, who sadly passed away on Thursday, remained throughout his life the ‘orrible oik from ’77, a brazen Londoner loudly proclaiming the virtues of punk and the Pistols. His desire to get under the skin of the establishment caught the zeitgeist, and to the young of the time he proved a striking standard-bearer for disaffection and change. That he had become old and weakened had passed me by, and so his death from cancer at the age of 64 came as something of a shock.

His influence on history will no doubt be rated extremely; either God-like founder of punk or blot on the landscape of music depending on your point of view. That there will be such variation is partly, I suspect, down to his part in the story of punk – that of manager of the band.

It’s hard to take manager of the band too seriously; the job title alone has a Tap-like quality to it. What do these balding men in leather jackets do exactly? Bash heads when the bills aren’t paid? Manager’s have a funny way of bringing out the Woodstock style anti-capitalist in fans.

As a musician I always hated dealing with other people’s management – it was always they who would knock down your fees, yet it was always they who had be treated with civility if you wanted more work. As a result I got my own (self-breeding fraternity) to make sure I wasn’t getting ripped-off. Managers have a funny way of bringing out the capitalist in musicians.

Perhaps the greatest incarnation of manager-as-debt collector was Peter Grant, keeper of the purse for Led Zeppelin. There is a scene in the band’s film The Song Remains The Same of Grant tearing apart a concert promoter who has allowed unofficial posters to be sold at the venue. It is frightening to witness the 6’5” and bearded manager verbally toasting the apparently miniature Baltimore promoter. Yet somehow Grant managed to bash heads and remain loved, a rare feat in any form of management but especially so in the music industry. Perhaps it was his dedication to the band, their deal together never more than a gentleman’s agreement which added to his “heavy” image. More likely the secret was that he knew where his remit stopped and the band’s began, so while he did his job of collecting and arranging he let the group do theirs of creating and performing.

In contrasting style we have the colonel. The colonel, of course, was Elvis Presley’s manager Tom Parker. To give an example of his appetite for revenue, and the extent to which he would involve himself in the king’s creative direction to get it, Parker signed Presley to a deal of 29 movies in seven years during the 1960s. That’s a whole movie every three months for seven years straight. For a singer! By the time contract ran through Elvis had gone from being the biggest name in the history of popular music to an un-loved parody considered out of sync with a generation who now favored bands, counterculture and LSD. This was not the world for a passé solo entertainer returned from pasture on the Hollywood lots.

The remaining tale of the king and the colonel is as Aesopian as is possible to find in real life. Parker may as well have cut open the Presley tummy to see if all inside really was gold. In a remodel of the movie-deals, an exhaustive seven year schedule was signed committing the king to singing in Las Vegas throughout the ’70s. Initially it reaped some reward but, in the end, it left Elvis overweight, drug addicted, paranoid, divorced and just six months from his death.

In some ways a manager is a window to their artist’s personality. Led Zeppelin, full of testosterone; Elvis, insecure and unworldly. In Brian Epstein The Beatles had a guide through young manhood; a nanny and shrink at times, a bigger brother and trusted ally. Without him, it is possible that the teenage stars would have taken their phenomenon with less surety.

Where McLaren falls in all this is hard to tell, in part because of his unique take on the role of manager. If Grant is the epitome of security and selflessness, and Parker the model of paranoia and protectionism, McLaren is something altogether more confusing. In part he was a meddler, putting the band together and putting his face out there. McLaren wanted you to know who managed the Pistols, and just what his role was in creating the monster. Yet, by the same token, he also let the band run their own course, let them make their recordings and give the interviews they wished to give. He was certainly not a molly-coddler. A man, perhaps, with a vision that he couldn’t create on his own. In some ways he is the embodiment of what a manager is, or needs to be by necessity.

As a breed, managers are seemingly destined to be unloved creatures. Perhaps one day, when the technological revolution of person-to-person networking has made us all bedroom entrepreneurs, there will be no need for the strange world of middlemen that they inhabit. Until then, it is a shame the Grants of this world are necessary but artistic expression always needs protection. As for the Parkers, well it is sad that anyone should feel so weak as to tolerate such interference but surely they will. At least with McLaren there was something of razzmatazz and distraction. His punks may not have changed the world, nor ruined it, but they did at least make it more a more interesting place to be.

Picture courtesy of Bolshakov