In this vein, would Nietzsche count? Despite that fact that he detested fascism and was not an anti-semite, his bitch sister took advantage of his catatonia and widely disseminated hacked versions of his works to Nazis to use as propaganda, thus linking Nietzsche’s philosophy with fascism and anti-semitism in the minds of many.
Well, those do have quite a lot to do with the artist, considering he produced them all.
One very obvious example: Richard Bachman’s novel Rage, about a high school studen with a gun holding students hostage. It was deleted from publishing after Columbine.
Can you can hear “One Night in Bangkok” from the musical Chess without thinking about David Carridine’s death?
Not now! Thanks Annie.:o
In the 1980’s or early 90’s, there was a controversy over whether backwards messages in Judas Priest songs caused a couple of people to commit suicide. The families even went to court to sue Judas Priest, but lost if I recall correctly.
IIRC Ozzie Osbourne (or maybe it was Black Sabbath) got one of those asinine lawsuits as well.
So did Slayer.
AFAIK, the novelty song “Kinko the Kid-Loving Clown” came out before & had nothing to do with John Wayne Gacy’s crimes, but when Gacy hit the news, I never heard Dr. Demento play the song again.
And the album in question, Stained Class, was eight years old by then. And Night Prowler by AC/DC was six years old by the time Richard Ramirez started murdering people.
Johnny ran away one day, he never said goodbye. (Aaaaigh!)
Kinko went to look for him to help the FBI.
As he got into the car his eyes were full of tears -
He said “I’ll be back to see you kids sometime in twenty years!”
Why do the horrible ones always stick with you?!
“Everybody run! The homecoming queen has got a gun!”
For some reason you don’t hear that one on the radio much anymore.
Not among the gamers I know. 1999 was pretty much the high point for the “All old video games are crap!” movement. The only thing remarkable about Harris, Klebold and Doom was that they were still playing Doom six years after it came out.
Whenever I hear mention of the The Conquerer, starring John Wayne, all I think about is the fact that everybody in the cast (well, not everybody!) later died of cancer.
Cecil wrote about the scandal here: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/374/did-john-wayne-die-of-cancer-caused-by-a-radioactive-movie-set
I was thinking that “artist” meant the singer/musician performing; I didn’t consider the producer as being an ‘artist.’ After all, you don’t think of “Be My Baby” as a Phil Specter song, it’s a Ronettes song.
Not a scandal, exactly, but this book was quite prescient about the RMS Titanic disaster: The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility - Wikipedia
Yeah, but pretty much none of the people signing the songs wrote them. (Except I think maybe the Righteous Brothers?) Even though the Ronettes sang the song, Phil Spector (well, along with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich) wrote the song, and Spector arranged and conceived of the whole sound. In his case, the vocals were often very incidental–he could and often did replace vocalists. I think most people do think of the songs he produced as Phil Spector songs instead of songs by the Ronettes or the Crystal or whoever.
A lesser known story, but Francisco Macias used to be the crazy guy who ran Equatorial Guinea (Teodoro Obiang currently holds that office). In 1975, Macias had about 150 political opponents arrested and held in a local sports stadium. On Christmas day he had them all executed. While this was being done, the song “Those Were the Days” by Mary Hopkins was played loudly over the PA system to cover up the gunfire.
Shooting at the golden arches, bang bang…
Like we needed another reason to hate that song.
In a similiar vein, Duran Duran’s “Hungry like the Wolf” was playing on cassette when Diane Downs shot her three children, much to the annoyance of my Duranie sister. This fact actually played a part in her eventual conviction. The cassette playing, that is, not my sister’s annoyance.
Yes, although it may not have been the last song played by the ship’s orchestra. One passenger said the last song was actually “Autumn.” Here is what Snopes has to say about it.
Another candidate is Amazing Grace. This hymn is associated with death since it is played so often at funerals (especially police funerals when played on the highland bagpipes). I can’t prove it, but I suspect this practice started with the publication of Joseph Wambaugh’s book The Onion Field, a true account of the murder of Los Angeles police officer Ian James Campbell and the murder’s aftermath. Campbell played the bagpipes, and a lone piper played Amazing Grace at his funeral. I had never heard of this practice before the publication of the book, yet it seemed to become common not too long afterwards.
Threepenny Opera. It’s an article of faith among actors (though not historians) that Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr dueled because they were both involved with the actress playing Polly Peachum.
Black Sunday. A segment of the book (omitted from the movie) is one that lots of terrorists find to be, um, instructional. A copy of the book used to be frequently found among the possessions of terrorist suspects.