The story of what may be the most groundbreaking and prescient album of its era begins with a mystery: what on earth did a major record label think they were doing giving Malcolm McLaren £100,000 to make a solo album in the early 80s? Having opened the Sex boutique with Vivienne Westwood in the mid-70s and managed the Sex Pistols and New York Dolls, he had both a reputation as a nonpareil troublemaker and no actual experience of making music himself, unless you counted the version of the old Max Bygraves song You Need Hands that he sang in The Great Rock’n’ Roll Swindle, his preposterous cinematic rewriting of the Pistols’ story; and the handful of lyrics he’d written for Bow Wow Wow, the band he was currently supposed to be managing, but in whom he’d completely lost interest.
