News4More

His impact on music, fashion, culture and the press was undeniable, however. Columnist Julie Burchill once wrote, "we are all children of Thatcher and McLaren".

He preferred to describe himself as an artist who used the media as his canvas, but McLaren's most notable successes came in the pop charts.

BBC News takes a look at five of his most important records - and what they reveal about the man behind the music.

Punk had its roots in the US garage rock of the 1960s.

Bands like The Stooges and MC5 pioneered the seething malice and slashing guitars that were to define the UK's "Summer of Hate" in 1976.

McLaren had actually managed one of those groups - The New York Dolls - in the early 1970s, trying to shock audiences by dressing them in Maoist costumes and making them play in front of a hammer and sickle flag.

But it was with the Sex Pistols that he honed the punk image and, most importantly, made it marketable.

He dressed the group in the kinky clothes he sold with Vivienne Westwood in their shop, Sex, on London's King's Road. The band's new name (they had been called The Strand) was a crafty piece of cross-marketing.

The music was a mere afterthought. McLaren didn't even expect the Sex Pistols to be any good, he told The Times last year.

"I never thought that could be remotely possible. It never occurred to me. What occurred to me was that it didn't matter if they were bad."

SEX PISTOLS - GOD SAVE THE QUEEN (1977)

At art school in the 1960s, McLaren had written a manifesto: "Be childish. Be irresponsible. Be disrespectful. Be everything this society hates."

The svengali encouraged his punk proteges to personify that proclamation - and God Save The Queen was the pinnacle of their achievement.

Released with a characteristic sense of mischief on the week of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, it proclaimed: "God save the Queen / She ain't no human being / And there's no future / In England's dreaming".

The BBC banned the track and, if that wasn't publicity enough, McLaren arranged for the group to play the song outside Parliament (the "fascist regime" of the lyrics).

Their subsequent arrest only reinforced people's perceptions of the Pistols - both positive and negative - and the song ended up at number two.

It was beaten to the top by Rod Stewart's I Don't Want To Talk About It, although conspiracy theorists still maintain the chart was manipulated to avoid embarrassment to the Queen.

Six months later, the Sex Pistols fell apart - allegedly because of McLaren's plan to fly them to Brazil to hook up with Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, one publicity stunt too many for Johnny Rotten.

The manager accused his protege of betraying the band's credo - saying he had behaved "like a constructive sissy rather than a destructive lunatic".

The chaotic dissolution of the band had, however, left McLaren with the spoils of two record deals, a sum of around £100,000.

His other manifesto, he later admitted, had been "cash from chaos".