- guardian.co.uk, Monday 10 August 2009 22.05 BST
King of the Road ... Malcolm McLaren. Photograph: Bernardo Rodriguez/EPA
What got you started?
I left school at 16 and my mother got me a job as a trainee wine taster. But one day I followed some girls into St Martin's art school and saw a voluptuous woman sitting on a stool being sketched. I decided to get myself fired.
What was your big breakthrough?
I saw a picture of Elvis in blue lamé, and thought that if I could recreate that suit and walk down the King's Road in it, someone might pick me up and take me off on a crazy adventure. So I did, and when I reached the more grotty end, this guy asked what I was doing. I said: "I've got stuff, man, things to sell." He pointed me towards his shop, which became my shop, SEX.
What's your favourite film?
Lawrence of Arabia. I knew those dreadful military people from my wine tasting days. Why were they so successful? They practised the culture of deception, and that film marked it for me.
Which living artist do you most admire?
When I was 18, I studied for three months under the automatist painter André Masson in France. Every day I would buy him tomatoes, a baguette and a bottle of côtes du rhône, but he never spoke. On my last day he bought me a drink and wished me well. He's dead now, but I remain haunted by him.
What song would feature on the soundtrack to your life?
Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Gene Vincent's version.
What's the greatest threat to music today?
Talent shows. They may appear democratic, but at what cost to the romantic, messy process of creativity? People like Simon Cowell are ridiculous.
What's the best advice anyone ever gave you?
A goatee-bearded art lecturer said: "It is better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign sucess." For me, those words define punk rock.
What advice would you give a young musician?
Don't ever sign to a record company.
What's the worst thing anyone's ever said about you?
That I don't know how to love. But I do, just not in quite the way people intended me to. It was very difficult for me with Vivienne Westwood, for instance. I think she's happy now, but I was unquestionably her best love.
What work of art would you most like to own?
Views are the best thing. I live on top of the Folies Bergère in Paris, in an atelier that was once the home of Gustave Courbet, and the view is remarkable. Other than that, a drawing by Elsworth Kelly wouldn't be bad.
In short
Born: London, 1946.
Career: Sold fetish clothing with Vivienne Westwood from a shop called SEX during the 1970s. Managed the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls. Malcolm McLaren Live! History Is for Pissing On is at the Pleasance Theatre (0131-556 6550) on 23 August.
High point: "I never intended for the Sex Pistols to be immeasurably successful."
Low point: "None."
