Does that excuse Bowies behaviour? Not at all.
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I do understand where you’re coming from, and I agree it’s uncomfortable to look back at some of this stuff now. From what I’ve read there’s an allegation from one person, but it was never independently verified and never led to any police investigation or legal action. That doesn’t mean the claim should be dismissed, but it does mean there isn’t a clear evidential record beyond the allegation itself.
You see similar stories around people like Jimmy Page and Iggy Pop tied to the same 1970s groupie scene. A lot of those accounts surfaced years later, and the uncomfortable truth is that the police and wider culture often didn’t take these things seriously at the time anyway. What it really highlights is how different the culture was. The 70s had this strange collision of massive rock stardom, media hype and idol worship from very young fans. Looking back now, behaviour that would rightly be condemned today was often treated as just part of the rock-and-roll world. When you think about it now, it’s pretty bonkers.
I was actually talking to my wife about Samantha Fox the other day. There’s a bloke near where I live who literally has a life-size cut-out of her on his garage door (which sounds mental but it’s true). It reminded me how The Sun built her up before she turned 16 and then put her on Page 3 almost immediately after. They were basically preparing the runway while she was still 15, and it was happening completely out in the open. And that was the mid-80s, not the 60s or the 40s or centuries ago. If you go further back in history there are cultures, religions and historical figures where relationships that would be completely unacceptable today were treated as normal.
So the question becomes: where do we draw the line between recognising the past as history and judging it by today’s standards? A lot of art, music and culture came out of eras where the social norms were clearly very different. If we judge everything from the past only through modern standards, we end up in a place where we can’t really engage with any of it. But that doesn’t mean pretending the uncomfortable parts didn’t exist either.
For me it’s about acknowledging that these things happened, recognising that some of it was clearly wrong, and still being able to appreciate the music or the art without ignoring the context it came from.
Or maybe we should stop listening to Rolf Harris, is that what you're saying?
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(Another good musical subject btw)
Completely indifferent to him when I was 20... love him to bits as a musician and a person now.
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It's not that I don't get them really, I quite like a lot of their stuff - it's just that I think they are massively overrated, unfairly so.
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Just watching an 80s Top of the Pops repeat, great nostalgia, but I realised without ever thinking about it that I never liked New Order, at all. Not even one of their singles, even a little bit. Formulaic pseudo-techno shite.
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