Horrible abusers in the music industry - R Kelly verdict [title edit by MNHQ]

[RickJames]

Well, R Kelly is off to jail. Thank goodness. He was evil! But he made some great music. Like Chris Brown, Michael Jackson and to a certain extent James Brown. Ike Turner, Phil Spector, Gary Glitter.. even David Bowie was after it in the 60's. Jon Bonham they were all at it. Either or both abuse of women and children. Even that chap from Kasabian beat his wife up. It seems to be a thing. Loads more examples possible.

AIBU to expect that despite the enjoyable music they created/ sang on they shouldn't be played on commercial/ public radio anymore. Maybe if we protested then (im not innocent, I know it would be purely for the money) record companies would insist on non-criminal behaviour. In much the same way that say, for example, Siemens or Haringey Council would as employers.

Part of me feels like the music should stand for its musical value. A larger part of me feels like 'this is why we can't have nice things' and we shouldn't tolerate any part of their legacies.

AIBU?

If they banned film/music etc from those that had abused there'd be hardly anything to watch or listen to to be honest
There's probably loads more in the industries who haven't been brought to justice

@Bounce55

Bill Wyman makes my skin crawl He was dating Mandy Smith when she was 14

Apparently he “fell in love with her” when she was 13 and he was 50 odd. 🤮

Dirty old fucker.....her Mother encouraged it if I remember correctly

I felt sorry for the Glitter band after the Gary Glitter stuff. They were a good band in their own right but forever tarnished.

@Bounce55

Bill Wyman makes my skin crawl He was dating Mandy Smith when she was 14

Yes and she was considered "lucky" at the time.

Notwithstanding Wyman, the Stones make my skin crawl

@Bounce55

I remember reading that as a 10 year old in my Gran's NOTW, bored on a Sunday afternoon. I remember thinking that Mandy was very glamourous but couldn't really understand what she was doing with a fat, old man. It seemed very boring to me and didn't she want to be with her friends or horseriding or something? (innocent)

@CounsellorTroi

Should Rolling Stones music be banned because of Bill Wyman?

Well yes.

@NorthernLion

Didn't Lori Maddix claim that she'd dated David Bowie before she hooked up with Jimmy Page, aged 14?

Yes she did claim (though the latest version puts her at 15). It's never been investigated and probably would never have stood up in court. And nobody knows what Bowie's defence would have been, because nobody ever asked him. But obviously that doesn't matter on mumsnet - guilty due to having a penis. There's another metoo scandal in the music industry, which is young men being sexually exploited by men, but no one on mumsnet will give a single solitary fuck about that.

In what way are/were Chris Brown and James Brown 'horrible perverts'?

I'm struggling to find anything online about that?

Definitely violent abusive scum, in Chris Brown's case, and some bizarre violent behaviour in James Brown's life, but struggling to find what's behind the pervert bit.

Has that been erased too?

One of the things I've found most shocking about all the revelations of the past few years is the amount of men who take advantage just because they can.

I feel like we normally think of paedophilia/sex offences as a niche thing which someone has to be a freak to commit, but it seems that actually given the opportunity to abuse and not be found out, so many do it.

@CounsellorTroi they kept going, and are still today, albeit in a much smaller way as they're in their 70s and 80s now.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/sep/26/the-last-mountain-review-a-haunting-tribute-to-mother-and-son

I only caught half of the documentary on TV by accident. I remember that when Alison Hargreaves died I too was judgemental about her leaving her children motherless. If I'm honest more so than if she was a man.

But I watched the documentary without judgement. It was just incredibly sad and raw. To see the little children below the mountain missing their Mum and the Dad telling them she was in the cloud watching over them. To hear the raw grief of Tom Ballard's girlfriend blaming Danieli when actually it was clear they were two grown men bonded by an impossible dream when others knew it was no longer safe to pursue it. To hear that in his last few days Tom seemed depressed and his girlfriend ended their relationship just before he died. To see the sister left behind wishing she could be on the mountain with her Mum and brother. And to hear her saying she now was under pressure to live a meaningful life.

All so sad. It was very emotional to watch. There is so much mystique about these extreme mountaineering challenges, bodies strewn on the worlds highest peaks seeking some impossible high the rest of us cannot understand. There is estimated to be as many as 200 bodies on Everest left in their icy graves which now serve us guideposts to the next string of climbers trying for the summit.

Is it madness, bravery, obsession? There will always be people like this.

There's another metoo scandal in the music industry, which is young men being sexually exploited by men, but no one on mumsnet will give a single solitary fuck about that.

There were some very young male singers in the 70s, e.g Ricky Wilde, Darren Burn, who had hits at 13 or 14 and I do worry about what may hav3 happened to them. And I remember Jonathan King of course.

@EvenMoreFuriousVexation

I'm still more upset about discovering Philip Larkin was a paedophile.

"they fuck you up, your mum and dad" YES MATE

I'm upset about this. What's the detail on it as I couldn't find it in a quick search

Well Watkins public confession in A Town Called Hypocrisy is still widely available to stream and has 3.8k likes on ytube, and he still gets hundreds of pages of letters from women, visits and e-mails, so I would say plenty of people separate the music from the crimes of the person.
At least the oblique reference to underage oral sex at the end of the song has been removed from the ytube stream, but you can easily find it elsewhere.
And if you are prepared to produce that video or participate in it as a band member then you have to take a serious look at yourself. The original video had Watkins sit down at the end and say time for children to learn an important lesson about spitting or swallowing, then a significant pause, then qualified by saying after brushing your teeth. And this was made and broadcasted, WTAF. And that's not a retrospective perspective. The little speach had no context to the song but he was indulged. The video is sexualized underage girls dancing around. You didn't need to know what Watkins was doing to know this was wrong. At the time I thought WTF is this shit.
Abuse seems to follow money and power in any industry and people go along with it if it means they get money and or power.
I don't believe nobody knows. Knobody wants to rock the boat when they are doing ok from the situation. Shame on them.

@speakout Freddie Mercury was into huge hefty guys. It's homophobic as fuck to assume that just because someone was gay, they were on par with the known child abusers of the time.

Freddie was also raped as a child and as an adult, and victimised in multiple abusive relationships. It makes me sick to see him brought up on this thread. He was a victim of the music industry as much as many of the female victims were.

I think the "stars" are the tip of the iceberg - this abuse has been rife in the music industry for decades with execs being the worst offenders. Lily Allen spoke up about it but wouldn't name who it was. A friend of mine worked in A&R for a while and said it was disgusting.

@Ringsender2, I vaguely recall a story about the content of letters exchanged between Larkin and Kingsley Amis. Haven't read the content.

I've asked MN to change the word perverts to abusers because, as a PP pointed out, its mixing up DV perpetrators with SA perpetrators and that could lead to misunderstanding.

@LittleMysSister

One of the things I've found most shocking about all the revelations of the past few years is the amount of men who take advantage just because they can.

I feel like we normally think of paedophilia/sex offences as a niche thing which someone has to be a freak to commit, but it seems that actually given the opportunity to abuse and not be found out, so many do it.

This is true but shouldn't be a huge surprise. Polinski always said about his statutory rape that most of the bad press was just jealousy because everybody would do if they could. I'm presuming his 'everyone', was every man. But he continues to get awards and recognition, especially in France where the abuse of minors seems to be classified as 'art' or something and you can write about your angst of having sex with children and receive literary awards.

I remember years ago reading he married a 15 year old, always gave me an uneasy feeling about him.
Its amazing how they can be so blatant about it in the public eye and it doesnt matter just because of who they are.
Jimmy savile, r-kelly, chris brown, Marilyn Manson. The list goes on and on. Its frightening.

@Thewiseoneincognito

Truth be told the Entertainment industry always seems worse because it’s people we are aware of. This abuse by perverts happens across all industries, the difference being you don’t typically hear of all those people in the media unless they’re uniquely heinous crimes.

Sadly this is very true. What are the stats, 1 in 6 children are abused in some way, that’s 4 children in every average primary school class.

I highly recommend listening to the Real Crime Profile Podcast. It’s been running for a few years but they have covered numerous cases of abusers in the entertainment industry such as Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby and also did a single episode on R Kelly in 2017 citing all the evidence against him.

They’ve also covered other high profile cases like Jeffrey Epstein as well as the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman (O J Simpson), Reeva Steenkamp (Oscar Pistorius), Meredith Kercher.

This is the link to the R Kelly episode, but they’re all worth listening to: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497?i=1000390327602