Dial it back. It’s possible to discuss this without going too far.
No warning issued.
What is considered the age of consent has varied drastically over time, and today even between countries. My great-grandmother married my great-grandfather when she was 15 and he was 26. Today he’d be regarded as a sex offender. In Mexico, the federal age of consent (and that in many states) is 12.
The attitude towards underage sex in the sixties (and before) was far more casual than it is today. The Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones had songs that mentioned sex with fourteen and fifteen years old girls and no one much remarked on it.
It’s clearly illegal and wrong. OTOH, it’s a rare American family that doesn’t have a teen mom, an Appalachian child bride or underaged Mormon prairie sisterwife somewhere in its family tree. I think a lot of today’s “helicopter moms” have a wild past they’re trying a little too hard to make sure their own daughters don’t try to replicate. Teenaged rock groupies–and my older sister claims to have been one–choose and doggedly pursue the path they take. When Daddy’s Little Princess decides to be some kind of Rock n Roll rebel, I’m not convinced jail time for the rock star involved is the warranted conclusion.
If David Bowie had been a sober gentleman and not deflowered young Lori Maddox, I don’t think it would have deterred her from moving right on to Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger and God knows who all else. I remember a case involving one of the Rolling Stones (Bill Wyman?) getting arrested in London for something involving an underaged fan, but the prosecutors ultimately gave up and said they couldn’t find a specific law they could prosecute him for.
And they don’t all get a free pass: Peter Yarrow (Peter, Paul and Mary), for instance:
If you’re the police, and you see that lawyered-up rock stars who get caught red-handed get a slap on the wrist from the sentencing judges, you might put your crime-busting efforts elsewhere.
Attitudes have changed a great deal concerning sex between adult men and underage girls over the past four decades. Hell, when I was growing up, even child molesting was the subject of jokes and even popular songs (remember Jethro Tull’s “Cross-Eyed Mary” ?), rather than disgust and outrage.
The rules, unofficially and sometimes officially, have been tightened up quite a bit over that time. On the whole, IMHO, that’s been a good thing, though there’s also been some real stupidity. But it seems a bit much to judge what people were doing back then by the rules of today: if the rockers back then were staying more or less within the lines as they existed at the time, and none of the then-underage girls feel particularly victimized by their experiences, then what’s there to get upset about?
Barney Hoskyns’ Waiting for the Sun covers that scene in Los Angeles. Yes, some of it was as skeevy as it sounds. Yes, most of the girls actively pursued that life. If you’ve read this or other accounts (must reading: Pamela Des Barres four memoirs) you soon see that the rock stars weren’t raping innocent girls but waiting until they were ready to go all the way. Odd, but almost all the stories are like that.
So where does that leave us morally? I mention Hoskyns over Des Barres because he puts that scene into a larger context. One common point in all the chapters of the book, which covers the 1940s jazz scene through the 1990s explosion of subgenres, is that the times were always awful. Racism, drugs, alcohol, fraud, theft, brutality, degradation of women, gays, Mexicans, and anybody else who was different. How do we make that into a scale of despicabilitude? What do we do with history when the entire world seems to have been complicit in actions and attitudes we find distasteful to actively horrifying today?
I’m not making light of any of it. People were hurt. Other people were not hurt, however, and still profess to enjoy what happened. I can’t judge for them. As a general rule of thumb, letting the “victims” set the magnitude of outrage seems like a good idea. The outrage here is low to nonexistent.
You’re free to disagree. I can’t judge your outrage about history any more than theirs.
I used to hang out backstage at a young age - 14. This would have been late 1980’s early 1990’s?
My one friend, Suzi, was about 17, but her older sister and her friends were a lot older, some were strippers. I felt like a mascot most of the time, the “little kid” of the backstage group. I looked older than 14, but no way an adult. Being incredibly naive, I was always shocked when a rockstar chose to hit on me. I was clearly the youngest (by a wide margin) and considerably less developed than the others.
Backstage is kind of crazy.
It’s not even that different to a lot of things, it’s just some people choose to pick this thing out - drinking and driving, mow down a line of people … lets not talk about that, lets ponder the exploited teen who somehow managed to end up backstage with a series of men.
What damage did racism do in the US in the 70s, the absence of help for vets returning from Vietnam, how many lives were ruined by that, etc, etc.
Society moves on.
It’s instructive to imagine yourself as the authority in a hypothetical society in which there are no statutory rape laws, and try to figure out how you would go about identifying and punishing abusers. But that idea probably deserves its own thread.
Who was that British celeb who was recently revealed to be a huge pedophile after he died? Plenty of people in the media knew about it but didn’t say anything. Similar thing with Bill Cosby. Apparently, his date rape activities were not a big secret to the Hollywood media, but most of the American public did not hear about it until recently.
So, yes, it’s not unreasonable to say that celebrities do seem to get a pass on this stuff. And in some cases, it can go all the way up to murder (OJ Simpson, Robert Blake, Oscar Pistorious).
Jimmy Savile, host of Top of the Pops and cultural icon.
Even if we choose to see rock stars as pedophiles, he went above and beyond by doing such things as molesting children in hospitals. That is above and beyond awful.
Those are pretty awful examples of “getting a pass”.
“The Dirt” was one of the saddest books I have ever read, and not just because of the chapter about the death of Vince Neil’s daughter. Among other things, it’s really, really obvious to me that he and Nikki Sixx were horribly abused as children.
As for the Go-Go’s, hoo boy was their squeaky-clean image totally wrong! I’m surprised they’re all still alive.
Gary Glitter, too.
Please cite where the Grateful Dead did a song specifically about having sex with a 14 or 15 year old girl?
The closest I can think is their cover of Marty Robins song “El Paso” and all that mentions is falling in love with a mexican girl…girls can be older that 14/15 you know.
again, cite please
“So instead I’ve got a bottle and a girl who’s just fourteen
And a damn good case of the Mexicali Blues”
I guess he’s just drinking with her, if you want to be generous.
I guess we now know who the father of Billy Jean’s kid was. Man, that girl was always making trouble.
Haha. Yeah I forgot about that part of the song even though my memory of it was that there was inappropriate behaviour.
Say what? Pistorious was only convicted of a charge equivalent to manslaughter (despite people testifying that they’d heard a loud argument before the shooting) and both Simpson and Blake were acquitted of murdering their wives, even tho all evidence pointed to them.
I hadn’t heard about Peter Yarrow’s misadventures with a 14-year-old girl. That definitely tarnishes my image of him. But 3 months for statutory rape is a pretty light sentence. (Assuming the incident occured in 1969 or 1970, he would have been in his 30’s, old enough to know better). He does get credit in that he expressed regret. It seems like most celebs never even take that step.
As for Gary Glitter… damn. He’s like the exception that proves the rule, bouncing from one incident to the next. You could probably make a black comedy about him.
Cause being attracted to a woman, wait a girl, who is 17.999999999 (non-repeating) makes you a pervert but 1 mili second later it’s perfectly fine. The problem is trying to force biology into black and white law.