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

I was a teenager in the early 90's. A 15 year old friend was dating a 28 year old from the shop she worked at on a Saturday. Some of our friends thought she was so cool but I remember thinking how wrong it was and considered telling a teacher. Her parents didn't know, I think an older sibling might have.

The 90's were a very different time to the 70's especially in terms of what most adults deemed acceptable even if us children/teenagers perhaps didn't agree. Girls of 14 were seen to be adults in the 70's and even 20 years later, if you had been around in the 70's you probably would still see 15/16 year olds as adults.

Consent is the key. We have now agreed that under 16's can't consent to sex but back then I would imagine many of these girls of 15/16 consenting - I know if Mark Owen and come on to me I would have been happy to go along with it - or thought I would. In reality I wasn't mature enough so it would never have got that far but I can imagine my more sexually mature friends would have and did look and act like an adult. Not that I'm accusing Mark Owen of having sex with underage girls! Just as a 14/16 year old I certainly fantasied about having sex with him!

Obviously there were other cases like saville and glitter that were clear abuse and there was no consent given or even asked for.

It was definitely socially acceptable in 1970s. I remember DJ's on the radio boasting about conquests and laughing about them being 'illegal'. And girls at school as young as fourteen were seen to be cool if they managed to seduce a teacher (sadly rife at our school) or pull an older man in a nightclub.

The culture started to change around the time of Mandy Smith because it was impossible not to see her splashed all over the papers, touted as a wild child gold digger without seeing a starved, miserable and very frightened little face. Men didn't see it but every woman I know did. We started to talk about it.

So...I don't know. Of course I think it's wrong. No teenager has the emotional ability to cope with being groomed by dodgy, rich, powerful, charismatic older men, or to understand they are not loved but being used for sex. But men were encouraged in those days. And teenage girls are still the beauty basis for what we are supposed to want to look like. I was walking in a London park yesterday. There were very young teen girls (12/13) playing on scooters in tiny cropped shorts with long, tanned, slim, unblemished legs. They looked like Vogue models. I looked around for their parents and carers. their mothers and nannies were normal sized woman - heavier around the hips and thighs with a few bumps and lumps from child-rearing. Never touted as sexually desirable by advertising or fashion.

So I don't criticise men at that time for having been groomed to think of that look as the height of desirability. They weren't encouraged to stop and think in those days. They are now. Just as with drink driving. The climate has now reversed, and these days anyone acting that way knows the perverted, manipulative behaviour they are enacting is abuse. I genuinely don't think they did then, not with post-pubescent girls. Pre-pubescent is a different issue.

Actually, I take back what I said a bit. I used to go to all night parties from the age of about 14, with much older men - bikers. And they refused to go near me, except to take me home on their bikes! I remember one telling me it was wrong that my friends and I came to these parties (he was right) because we were very beautiful and it was hard for them to say no, but we were too young and they didn't want to get into trouble. So these working men completely understood right from wrong. If they could, why couldn't the teachers, DJs and rockstars?

It's horrible to look back on some of these stories of Bowie, Jagger, Page, etc. And as posters point out, it was also a lot of people in that larger circle too, promoters, press, etc.

I don't know if it is different now? I hope so...but...

I recently posted on another thread about my experiences with a GP many years ago in Cork Ireland. At the time I (or friends) did not think anything very strange about his behavior, it didn't feel creepy, but looking back now I am not happy.

Here is that thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/craicnet/3982581-elderly-alzheimer-patient-raped-in-care-home

Dylaninthemovies1 Thank you. It's taken most of a lifetime to know that it wasn't entirely my own fault.

The 70's where very different times, but these times are built upon them and we're still failing children kidding ourselves about lots of things instead of looking at what needs to be done to genuinely protect another generation both from others and themselves.

KorkMum - YANBU my 13 year old just ordered a cute teddy online. Very much still a child.

and in another household a 13 year old is posing naked with her cute teddy, making money on Only Fans etc

...and other school age girls rightly complain at the way they get leared at on the street by adult men,
but others are sending intimate pics on demand to any lad they fancy,
and others to the highest paying bidder regardless of age.

A lot of confusing messages and behaviors which I think was half the problem of the 70's.

@Upherefordancing

I think the very young groupie scene was more of an LA thing, from what I've read. It seems to have started with obsessive young groupies who followed Led Zepellin around on tour and it even spawned a short-lived magazine called Star, which had very young girls on the cover!

It was London too, in the 70s you could get into the bbc car park and wait for bands leaving shows, mid 70s my mum used to do that with friends as teenagers and get in bands cars etc

Sarah Pascoe has told of how her Mum chased after her pop star Dad in the early 80s.

Good read here:

www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/elle-voices/longform/a34180/sara-pascoe-on-the-woman-who-helped-her-survive-in-more-ways-than-one/

The culture started to change around the time of Mandy Smith because it was impossible not to see her splashed all over the papers, touted as a wild child gold digger without seeing a starved, miserable and very frightened little face.

She looked nothing like that at all. Not ever. She has always looked as though she was in her 20s to me. If you search her name you'll come up with a DM article saying she slept with Wyman when she was 14. I completely get why men were confused about the ages of these kids when they looked like that. But as soon as they knew how old they are they should have been out of there like greased weasel shit off a teflon shovel.

@The80sweregreat

I read Mandy Smiths book in the 90s and she was groomed by Bill Wyman. Her mum was aware of what was going on , but didn't stop any of it , sadly. The marriage didn't last long. He was just a creep and she was very naive. I wasn't aware of Bowie until I opened the thread about him. I like some of his songs and albums but it feels wrong : same with hearing anything by Michael Jackson and I used to like his music too. I'm sure that many stories may come out about things that went on with many big stars in the 80s and 90s. Even seeing ' the Glitter band ' being mentioned makes me feel sick. Vile horrible nasty men. It may well have been ' different times' but adults should have kept an eye on these girls and boys abused by these people. They were badly let down. My mum used to warn me many times to be so careful : she was abused by her uncle in the 1930s and it scarred her for life , sadly.

How anyone could abuse a child or a young teen? It beggars belief what goes on and it's usually the rich or famous that seem to get away with it too , it seems. Praying on the vulnerable because they can and were helped to cover it up as well. People knew about Savill , but kept quiet for years.
All very sad.

I thought it was just Gary Glitter himself who was a paedophile - it wasn't all of them was it?

I have been feeling a bit sorry for them for the lack of royalties.

@Brefugee

The culture started to change around the time of Mandy Smith because it was impossible not to see her splashed all over the papers, touted as a wild child gold digger without seeing a starved, miserable and very frightened little face.

She looked nothing like that at all. Not ever. She has always looked as though she was in her 20s to me. If you search her name you'll come up with a DM article saying she slept with Wyman when she was 14. I completely get why men were confused about the ages of these kids when they looked like that. But as soon as they knew how old they are they should have been out of there like greased weasel shit off a teflon shovel.

Very true. Mandy Smith looked glamorous and assured at a very young age. If there are images of her looking “starved, miserable, and very frightened”, they passed me by.

I was a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s and I recall many of my peers at school dating 20 plus year old blokes. It was almost seen as a bit of a status symbol having an older boyfriend who could take you out to restaurants and afford other nice things. Looking back it is quite pathetic that a 24 year old bloke would see it as okay to date a girl doing her GCSEs.

@DillonPanthersTexas

I was a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s and I recall many of my peers at school dating 20 plus year old blokes. It was almost seen as a bit of a status symbol having an older boyfriend who could take you out to restaurants and afford other nice things. Looking back it is quite pathetic that a 24 year old bloke would see it as okay to date a girl doing her GCSEs.

Yeah, when I was 17 I was going out with a 26 year old (in a band, obviously). He was a loser though and I doubt a 26 year old woman would have wanted much to do with him.

I did tend to go out with older men BUT I left home at 16 and was working and renting my own flat. It would probably have been different if I was still at school and living at home.

It was definitely socially acceptable in 1970s. I remember DJ's on the radio boasting about conquests and laughing about them being 'illegal'. And girls at school as young as fourteen were seen to be cool if they managed to seduce a teacher (sadly rife at our school) or pull an older man in a nightclub.

I recall listening to a girl who had been seduced by JOhn Peel when she was 15 and she had absolutely no regrets about it, it was a great feather in her cap among her peers.
In the 80s/90s girls of 15/16 would make plans to 'get off' with a footballer, they seemed to know all the nightclubs to go to. We tried talking to them about their ideas but with little success, they were happy to be deceiving their parents as well as the young men, some of whom were only in their late teens. There seems top be a lot of naivity on this site about girls and the willingness to cheat and lie, that isn't defending men who knowingly target very young girls.

I think there seems to be a weird dichotomy whereby the bar of childhood has been both raised and lowered. No wonder both parents and children are floundering.

Sadly I had a 21 year old boyfriend when I was 14..This was in 1992. My parents didn't think there was anything wrong with it as they had a similar age gap themselves when they met in the 70s.

I find it really weird how people now are almost still considered adolescents until they’re about 25. I’m still in my thirties (just), so not that old, and I was backpacking around the country by myself (sometimes with friends, but not with any actual adults - and of course not with a mobile phone or any easy way to be contacted) when I was 16. That was under 25 years ago. Yet now you get parents ringing up university tutors on behalf of 22-year-olds who apparently can’t do it themselves.

I think even as recently as my own teen years, there was much more of a sense that we already had our own lives that our parents weren’t particularly involved in. Like, they were mildly interested, and definitely proud of us, but basically we did our own thing.

I agree with you @ifigoup. Some people seem to want to keep their children as 'children' for far too long, and it doesn't do the young person any favours. They need to learn how to stand on their own two feet.

My uncle was a backing musician who played with some huge stars.
There were many who gently dissuaded younger girls and there were some who chose not to.
It wasn’t wholly ok then and it certainly isn’t now.

Some people seem to want to keep their children as 'children' for far too long, and it doesn't do the young person any favours.

to be fair we have more understanding about how the brain works now and adolescent brains can be as old as 24/25.

Not just the 70s. I recently reread Anthony kiedis' autobiography and he proudly boasts about sleeping with girls as young as 14 when he was in his 20s. Most of his girlfriends around that time seem to be 15/16 years old when they started dating. The 14 year old he wasn't aware of her age at first but still had sex with her again after he found out, and has no problem openly admitting to it like its no big deal in a book that came out in the early 2000s. I thought attitudes had changed by then but clearly not if he felt safe to admit to these things and not feel that it was wrong.

Bowie's 'incident' was two 15year old 'lead groupies'(their expression) who'd been following him everywhere for a while & bothwent on to be lead groupies for other US bands for years after. One of them wrote a book about her groupie life & it was always consensual & she regards it withno regret. Priscilla was 14 when she lived with Elvis at Graceland before their marriage when she turned 16.Jimmy Page was known to like 13year olds which was considered wrong. But,15 was generally accepted as ok then,right or wrong. Also in 27 US states,you can still marry at 13 with parental consent,as has been law there for many ,many years.Jerry Lee Lewis who grew up in the rural US married his 13yr old Cousin which is why he cancelled his UK tour back in the late 50's: horrified journalists found out .

A difference between parenting teens now, and parenting them in the 70s- we are now very alert to grooming, to men actively targeting children and girls being damaged by it.
In the seventies I think we assumed that well brought up girls didn't, and that if she did she must be 'over mature' over sexed. I don't think the insidious grooming of children was understood. That girls would be gradually coerced into more and more damaging behaviour. That girls would find it hard to get out of situations where they are unhappy. How do you go back to school when you spent last night high with a rock star?

How do you go back to school when you spent last night high with a rock star?

In the late 60s/70s you went back and boasted about it while revelling in the envy and adulation of your peers. There was no grooming going on, those girls knew exactly what they were doing. I was one of them although I was 16 - just.

I think there is a difference between a 20 somthing pop star sleeping with a fully developed 14 year old who is throwing herself at him (in the 70s), and the 40 somthing dj who is using his status and position to entice the girls that the popstar down.

Those young girls weren't there for the managers, or roadies or djs. Those men were preying on star struck girls.
I think the actual popstars were just acting more through ignorance. You could leave school at 14 and get a job. So the belief would be if she's enthusiastic and concenting why not.

We now know that 14 is still very immature - but often in a very grown up body. And we realise that even if a 14 year old seemingly wants to have sex, you still shouldn't do it - because it's taking advantage. Much like drunk women used to be fair game, but we know now it's wrong.

You can't really condem people who were products of their time, but you also can't say it's OK for Harry Styles to sleep with 14 year olds just because Bowie did it. Because we now know better.