70s rock stars and underage groupies

[ShesMadeATwatOfMePam]

Off the back of the David bowie thread, should modern values count for anything when thinking about the actions of rock stars towards underage (ie 13/14yo girls) who got dressed up to hang around stage doors and threw themselves at rock stars, (insinuation being that they knew what they were doing) or should we accept it's a different time and modern approaches to child protection/young girls being exploited shouldn't stop these people being revered because it was 20+ years ago?

I think that we should absolutely judge these men by modern values because any man in his right mind shouldn't be attracted to 12/13 year old girls no matter what they wear and if it was Dave who helped at guides instead of David bowie then people wouldn't be so quick to excuse him because he was a "musical genius".

Yabu: it was a different time
Yanbu: wasnt acceptable then, isn't acceptable now

It wasn't acceptable then and it isn't acceptable now. Standards around supervising children may have been different but 13 was still a child and regardless of them throwing themselves at rock stars, the star was an adult and therefore had the responsibility of saying no.

I'm in the fence tbh.

It was a different time. I'd also say it was accepted (and in my mind that's slightly different to acceptable).

There are many things people did "back then" that while we should appreciate that it is wrong I also think we shouldn't judge others for those things.

There will be things that we will be judged for that we currently consider normal. Do you think that is fair?

Adult men sexualising underage girls was a big problem in the 60s/70s and should always be judged by today’s standards. It was something that seemed to be ignored and, to a certain extent, tolerated. In fact, the underage girls would be the ones who were blamed rather than the men. Thank goodness attitudes have now changed.

There's a book called "I'm With The Band" by Pamela Des Barres who was a very famous - and underage - groupie at the time. Fascinating (in the worst possible way) read.

Absolutely unacceptable. It was only 20 years ago. I would have been 10 and can't imagine anyone in my family accepting at the age of 13 me going out and sleeping with me n twice my age of more. It was illegal then too.

I think context is important. Back then (and now too I believe) in parts of the US people could marry at 12/13 with parental consent. In the UK it was less acceptable but I do know in some parts of society (where common law marriages until you can afford the registration fee is common) it was fairly usual to see 13-14 year old girls engaged to be married and then marrying while heavily pregnant as soon as they turned 16!

I think it's a lot more complicated than your YABU/YANBU answers so I'm not voting.

i just made quite a long post on the Bowie thread (wish I'd seen this first) which i may c/p here because the whole thing is, bottom line, the exploitation of teenage girls. But times really were different then - not least because (what has changed?) nobody listened to girls then and nobody really advocated for them.

If it had just been, say, Glitter and Bowie and none of the others were at it, I think it would have seemed a lot more askance. But since it was just about anyone involved in rock and pop (and all the Radio 1 DJs etc etc) and footballers, it must have seemed quite the regular thing to everyone. Including the girls, but possibly with the exception of their parents (if they knew).

Not seen the Bowie thread but was thinking about this subject recently having researched Almost Famous. When I first saw it 20-ish years ago I thought it was quite a sweet nostalgic coming of age story. Now I find myself completely repulsed by the fact that Kate Hudson's character is meant to be 15 & had already been having an affair with 30-something rock star the previous year, and various other groupies round the same age, and couldn't imagine similar film being made now without some judgement. So I think attitudes have changed massively not just since 70s but in last decade or two.

I was around at the time and I thought it was shit then.

I think back then too the prevailing attitude was "well what did you expect would happen if you chase after these men?" and that it was very much the girls' fault for throwing themselves at them because men couldn't possibly be expected to resist when its offered up on a plate. So while it wasn't right, it was excused by those by those who knew what was happening by using that flimsy justification.

Attitudes to sexual exploitation, rape, and assault aren't much better now but the tolerance for rock stars bedding underage girls has at least changed.

I will never...NEVER find it acceptable to abuse a young girl or young boy.

There is NO "different time" enough to justify it.

Still not acceptable as they were clearly taking advantage. If he actually knew the ages.

1970 is 50 years ago now, not 20!

The concept of safeguarding hadn't occurred yet, 14 year olds being expected to stay at school was hugely fought against as 'everyone knew' 14yos were basically adults and should be able to get jobs not be trapped at school, and generally teenagers were seen as adults rather than children.

13 was probably borderline even then, but 14yos having adult part-time jobs (the rules eliminating under-16s from many jobs didn't come in until the 90s) and drinking in pubs and going clubbing just like adults was seen as normal - and the expectation that a red-blooded man should take advantage of it was strong too - the fear of being seen as gay was so much greater.

Even when laws changed to require education to 16 etc, many adults' views didn't change - certainly my aunt who married at 14 wouldn't agree she wasn't an adult at the time (still happily married 60 years later, luckily). Even in the 90s my school friends had boyfriends in their 30s or 40s and some even got engaged with no concern from their parents other than it might not last.

As someone said upthread, it shouldn't have been acceptable but it was widely accepted, along with post-pub brawls, casual racism, the idea that domestic violence wasn't a police matter, etc. The position that 'old enough to bleed, old enough to breed' is a disgusting wrong statement would be seen as pretty liberal and prissy, then.

I'm not sure where the focus on underage girls is coming from in this. Most of the bands /artists mentioned above didn't have a particularly young fan base - so most of the girls they slept with would have been late teens at least - so young, but not much younger than band members in their 20's. The very young American groupies like Pamela Des Barres and Lori Maddox were an exception and were part of a very different scene

I wish it was 20 years ago , haha , to whomever said it
It was actually 50 years (1970)

@Iminaglasscaseofemotion 20 years ago was the year 2000 not the 70s

tbh barring the really famous ones, i think that most of the girls were 15/16 and the men involved were often very sure that they were 16 because "otherwise it would be illegal" but the age gap aspect of it was very much ignored. John Peel was famously into young girls (wasn't his eventual wife 15 when they started seeing each other?)

In Craig Brown's new book on the Beatles there is mention of young ish women being brought up to the hotels and having sex with all sorts of people, and although the band themselves don't particularly ever come out and say they were doing that or it interested them, there were plenty of people taking advantage of the girls with the promise of getting to meat one or more Beatles (it is not explicitly about having sex with them, just an autograph mostly).

The fact is that a lot of men will say they like young women for sex because their skin is nicer, they are more supple and so on. Plus younger women are probably less demanding in bed (in terms of getting pleasure for themselves rather than it being all about the man).

But look at footballers now? all the talk of spit roasting etc etc. Nothing has really changed except that among the general public there is a lot more awareness that it goes on and a lot more revulsion about it. But that's not universal. Yet.

Not exactly a groupie but remember Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith .

Never here that mentioned anymore.

But he was apparently in a relationship with her when she was13/14. He was in his 40s! They married when she was 18. Seems gross and weird now but it was common knowledge then.

sleeping pup I am the same age as Mandy Smith and I remember it all being very odd that she wanted to go out and marry this wrinkly old man. Then her mother went out with his DS.

It was grooming and under age sexual abuse, encouraged by the DM.
There was a lot of it about in the early 80s - the so called wild child girls Emma Ridley and Amanda de Cadanet were actually being painfully neglected by their parents.

Press reported it as spirited young ladies out having fun, rather than underage exploited children.

think back then too the prevailing attitude was "well what did you expect would happen if you chase after these men?" and that it was very much the girls' fault for throwing themselves at them because men couldn't possibly be expected to resist when its offered up on a plate. So while it wasn't right, it was excused by those by those who knew what was happening by using that flimsy justification.

There's a post saying exactly this on the bowie thread.

This was still going on with some of these men in the 90s hence why i said 20+ years.

The Bill Wyman/Mandy Smith thing was gross and weird back then. I was a yound teen at the time and the adults around me were horrified by it and didn't understand why he wasnt arrested for child abuse.

It wasn't considered OK in the 80's. Only difference is the police wouldn't do anything about it. The men were considered pervs though

her mum went with her though too. (didn't realise she was seeing Wyman's son though.)

I remember reading an interview with Mandy Smith where she said something like "I'm the only 14 year old who can name their favourite restaurant in 6 capital cities" and my eyes rolled so far back in my head it took them quite a while to come out again. I think I'm around the same age as her, but she always looked a lot older and very groomed (as in shiny hair, nice skin, great clothes) than we did at that age. And Bill Wyman - meh. We always thought he was a wrinkly ol' perv. He may be lovely for all we know though

PP mentioned that the most of the bands who often get mentioned in connection with this didn't have a young female fan base - but Zeppelin always had a lot of very young groupies hanging around, as did Queen which must have been a bit of a shock to the girls going for Mercury. It was as much about getting away from their humdrum existance of home-school-youth club to the glamorous exciting world of being a Rock thank anything else, i think.

A lot of us found it gross and weird at the time , too @sleepingpup .

A young girl of that age . Mandy Smith, however young, was known on the clubbing scene and most of us wondered where the hell her mother was .!
I still find it disgusting .

I do think it was different times. I was a young child in the 70's but everything was different back then. If you apply modern values to one thing, I kind of think you have to apply it to everything. For example, my parents would often leave us kids in the car, to drink in the pub, and just sporadically bring us a coke and crisps! That would be seen as neglect nowadays but plenty of parents did the same back then. Or in terms of a sexual example, guys would pinch my bum when I was a teenager out for a drink. That's an offence now but it wasn't then. So no I don't think you can go back 50 years and judge it by 2020 standards.