i read that today. and it brings up a question that i have struggled with for a while. can you admire an artist for their art if you kind of find them to also be a somewhat disgusting POS? this can be a real ugly can of worms to open so i’m not even sure i want to do that.
I struggle with this too.
i mean an incredible number of rock stars from the 70s or so were pedophiles. lots of underage girls around. and sometimes i struggle with it (ahem ted nugent) and sometimes i give people more of a chance (bowie). based mostly on how much i like them artistically, which makes zero sense even to me.
It’s a long list of artists. Best to avoid their personal lives as much as possible
i’m not saying your wrong. a lot of times i agree. but should we? admire people that… we don’t really admire? i dunno. seems to fly in the face of my punk rock upbringing 
but anyways sorry, it usually takes a lot longer to derail a thread than this. the guy has lived a hell of a life. and so did charlie (watts), the documentary film on him is a really good watch.
I think there’s a place where you draw a line. I think the struggle is where that is. I think it can definitely tarnish a legacy. Like Gary Glitter.
I don’t think there’s a lot of Stones fans around here so no worries. I actually don’t think Bill and Charlie are the problems.
I think part of this particular one (around late teen groupies) is also that cultural perception has changed. Like, go back and watch Rock and Roll High School now, and the Ramones scenes with PJ. No way would that movie be greenlit today.
Or Fast Times for that matter.
Not defending anything here, just pointing out that a lot of what was accepted in the past is very, very squicky today.
(it was squicky back then too of course, its just that it was more culturally accepted for some reason, especially by popular media)
Word. Johnny Rotten got banned from the Beeb for calling it out and he was 100% right. And Courtney Love tried to warn people about Weinstein and it hurt her career.
She was just Seventeen, you know what I mean…
Some things don’t age well
Ringo wins the squick award for that one. Don’t make me link the music video.
We were going to sing I Saw Her Standing There at a party for the parents and kids (I work in Child Protection) but then had a look at the lyrics and thought, er, maybe not.
and Ringo went downhill from there…
BTW, is Bill Wyman a bit dodgy?
Don’t know much about him outside his playing and the article doesn’t say anything (I don’t read autobiographies as a rule)
A bit. Only incident I know of is a teenage bride
The British tabloid press trawled through the Wyman thing when he got married to Mandy Smith. She was 18 at the time, he met her when she was 13 and they had been having a relationship for a few years before getting married
The there’s Marilyn Manson, who anybody with half a brain should have known about but it wasn’t until Evan Rachel Wood until anyone really started to scratch their chins. Damn shame too, because their first few albums (and that Gary Numan cover) were alright… but that’s where I draw the line. I won’t continue to give his songs streaming revenue.
For me I think the best example of the dichotomy on this issue would be the comedian (sorry no bass) Richard Pryor. His work was groundbreaking, his legacy is ongoing. Yet personally he was not what we describe as a nice individual. However, when you also take into account his upbringing, you can understand how his personality has thus developed. His fault? His families fault? Societies fault? Think that’s now getting too political so ………
For me he was a great and yet I can never justify his his darker side.
Guess that’s what it means to be an emotionally driven, sentient being. Damn those amoebas get it easy