Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren died due to asbestos in his former shop, his partner has claimed.
Malcolm McLaren always knew the power of a good suit. The controversial manager helped to kick start the punk revolution, with his SEX shop on London’s Kings Road supplying an inventive new style of clothing.
Sadly, Malcolm McLaren died last week. Suffering from cancer, the music industry figure was mourned by many with members of The Sex Pistols and The Clash amongst those who saluted the manager.
Now McLaren’s partner Young Kim has blamed asbestos exposure in the SEX shop for his death. The former Sex Pistols manager suffered from mesothelioma, with Young Kim arguing that he encountered asbestos during renovations on the Kings Road shop.
“When Malcolm created SEX he broke open the ceiling to make it look like a bomb had hit it,” she told The Independent. “I always suspected that shop because it was the only place Malcolm ever really spent any serious length of time in, and there was a lot of construction and changing things.”
Continuing, Young Kim claimed that McLaren’s son with Vivienne Westwood had mentioned asbestos being sighted in the building. “Ben Westwood said his mother had mentioned that she’d seen asbestos there. It was board asbestos and it was in the early ’70s so there was a lot of it left, and I don’t think anyone really did anything about it.”
McLaren’s partner went on to claim that his illness was not diagnosed when the symptoms were first noticed. “Malcolm was freaked out,” she said.
“He called me up from the doctor’s office and said, ‘Young, I have lung cancer, I have lung cancer’, but the doctor said, ‘Oh no, he’s perfectly fine, he just has these spots, they’re completely benign, you don’t have to worry about it’. Then, just a few months later, his left lung had filled with fluid and he was diagnosed with mesothelioma.”
