Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Pop and Rock Stars... and underage girls

Fwiw I knew a lot of Bowie fans who'd spend a lot of time following him about, waiting at backstage doors and around his hotels, hoping for sighting or more. I did this from mid-late 80s from the age of 16 for ~10 years. I wasn't the youngest and there were many who were older than me who'd been doing it since the early 70s.

There were precisely no stories of him fucking young 'groupies'. Several of him 'getting off with' people's mothers or their mother's friends. It was really disappointing.
 
Thora said:
This whole might not have known she was 14/do you ask sexual partners for ID and given that teenagers can look older - if you guessed you'd picked up a 16, 17, 18 year old girl in a club, wouldn't you double check that she wasn't underage?
Click to expand...
Bingenheimer was a nasty little man, who made sure a 'certain type of girl' attended his club. He certainly knew how old they were, even if he didn't tell his famous chums.
 
Thora said:
This whole might not have known she was 14/do you ask sexual partners for ID and given that teenagers can look older - if you guessed you'd picked up a 16, 17, 18 year old girl in a club, wouldn't you double check that she wasn't underage?
Click to expand...
How? The only way would be to steer clear altogether. (Which wouldn't be a bad approach.)
 
belboid said:
Bingenhemier was a nasty little man, who made sure a 'certain type of girl' attended his club. He certainly knew how old they were, even if he didn't tell his famous chums.
Click to expand...
In his memoirs Mick Farren says that the only reason the towels were clean in Bingenheimer's place was that he couldn't get a mob connection for linen.
 
Thora said:
That woman's probably lying then.
Click to expand...
No, not at all. I'm sure she was telling the truth. But in the UK at that time there weren't any stories of it, so I don't think it was his MO. Doesn't make it better, its just information.
 
Has anyone mentioned the cover to the Blind Faith album yet? That normally gets an airing on these threads.
 
8den said:
And if the adult isn't aware the other party is a child?

Did you get proof of age from every one of your sexual partners before you shagged?
Click to expand...

If you need proof that someone is above the age of consent then you should not be even thinking about sex with them.
Some of the stuff on here is disturbing tbh.
We are not talking about a 16 or 17 yr old having sex with a 15 year old. Bowie was 30 in 1977...there is no way a 13 yr old, 14 year old or 15 yr old comes across as being an adult.
you only have to talk to them to realise that they are not an adult.
The fact that these things happened in the 1970s is no excuse...people knew then that it was wrong.

I know nothing about Bowie other than the Rock against Racism stuff regarding him and Clapton...he attempted to make amends for his support/flirtation of fascism so think on that score you can argue he deserves the benefit of the doubt as he changed.
I get how people can therefore defend him on this issue.

But those minimising sex with under aged children are fucking outrageous...
it doesn't matter if he claimed to not know their ages... he fucking should have,
it doesn't matter if it was a long time ago
it doesn't matter if they were throwing themselves at him
it doesn't matter if you do not consider it to be in the category as a serial rapist
It doesn't matter if you don't think sex with under age children is the same as paedophilia


What matters is that NO ONE SHOULD HAVE SEX WITH UNDER AGED CHILDREN..End of story.
 
Thora said:
This whole might not have known she was 14/do you ask sexual partners for ID and given that teenagers can look older - if you guessed you'd picked up a 16, 17, 18 year old girl in a club, wouldn't you double check that she wasn't underage?
Click to expand...

Count the tree rings while your down there like?

Short of Mations "Steer Clear" you can't particularly check, especially not pre-internet days.
 
It's weird how 70s rock stars seem to get a free pass on sexually exploiting children/teenagers, yet TV stars and DJs of the 70s are (rightly) pursued and exposed by the likes of Operation Yewtree and the media.
Why is that?
I liked Bowie's music and will be listening to some of it tonight but think this whitewashing/hagiography of Bowie on the other thread is rather disturbing. Celebrate his life by all means, but accept him warts and all, like we did with Lemmy very recently.
 
Thora said:
This whole might not have known she was 14/do you ask sexual partners for ID and given that teenagers can look older - if you guessed you'd picked up a 16, 17, 18 year old girl in a club, wouldn't you double check that she wasn't underage?
Click to expand...
Not that the matter would be likely to be an issue, given that I think if I were picking up women in clubs today, my target age group would start at about twice that age, but...I think if I were dubious enough to be wondering about ID, I'd probably pass anyway.

I suppose it's a bit of an argument for not leaping into bed too quickly - if you're going from meeting to sex too fast to form a reasonable idea of how old she is, then maybe you're going too fast...

I probably wouldn't have said that when I was 21, though :oops:
 
Orang Utan said:
It's weird how 70s rock stars seem to get a free pass on sexually exploiting children/teenagers, yet TV stars and DJs of the 70s are (rightly) pursued and exposed by the likes of Operation Yewtree and the media.
Why is that?
I liked Bowie's music and will be listening to some of it tonight but think this whitewashing/hagiography of Bowie on the other thread is rather disturbing. Celebrate his life by all means, but accept him warts and all, like we did with Lemmy very recently.
Click to expand...
There surely is a difference between raping and assaulting teens and having consensual underage sex? Bowie, John Peel, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Page etc - an abuse of power and pretty grim but not the same as rape.
 
Thora said:
There surely is a difference between raping and assaulting teens and having consensual underage sex? Bowie, John Peel, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Page etc - an abuse of power and pretty grim but not the same as rape.
Click to expand...
Sure, though that does sound alarmingly like Whoopy Goldberg's 'that's not rape rape' comments about Roman Polanski's exploits.
 
Orang Utan said:
Sure, though that does sound alarmingly like Whoopy Goldberg's 'that's not rape rape' comments about Roman Polanski's exploits.
Click to expand...
What Bowie is said to have done bears no comparison to what Polanski has admitted to. And I think the subsequent reactions of the girls involved - one treating it as a fond memory, the other seriously scarred by it - show that.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
What Bowie is said to have done bears no comparison to what Polanski has admitted to. And I think the subsequent reactions of the girls involved - one treating it as a fond memory, the other seriously scarred by it - show that.
Click to expand...
bowie never considered how it would turn out, i bet.
 
Thora said:
Unless you think teenage girls are not capable of consenting to sex I'm not sure how it is rape.
Click to expand...
These girls and boys ('groupies') were passed around like currency. They were often intoxicated. I'm not sure if an intoxicated teen under the age of consent could be regarded as being capable of consent, no.
Yes, the rock stars were also often intoxicated too, but they were over the age of consent.
 
discokermit said:
bowie never considered how it would turn out, i bet.
Click to expand...
No, and I suppose he is fortunate (although it's a moot point now) if his encounter has resulted in fond memories, though perhaps he went about it in such a way as to make that more likely.

Which doesn't excuse underage sex, but at least mitigates some of the consequences.

I think reducing the whole issue of underage sex to a simplistic binary moral viewpoint misses a lot of the issues. Legally, it is a binary viewpoint, but I think we all know that the law is a blunt instrument that does not usually reflect the subtleties and nuances of real-life situations. It's like that for a reason, and if the question was one of legal guilt, those criteria are fine. But, in a discussion about the moral implications of such encounters, merely invoking the law is not terribly helpful.
 
Orang Utan said:
It's weird how 70s rock stars seem to get a free pass on sexually exploiting children/teenagers, yet TV stars and DJs of the 70s are (rightly) pursued and exposed by the likes of Operation Yewtree and the media.
Why is that?
I liked Bowie's music and will be listening to some of it tonight but think this whitewashing/hagiography of Bowie on the other thread is rather disturbing. Celebrate his life by all means, but accept him warts and all, like we did with Lemmy very recently.
Click to expand...

This, more or less sums-up how I see things as well.

I'm wondering if the difference between rock stars of the period and the likes of Saville/"personalities" etc is more like the latter to a very great deal used their celebrety and "talent" very specifically to facilitate their abuse of children, whilst for many rock stars, whilst they may have done reprehensible things, it was more secondary to their talent/art/skill?
 
pogofish said:
This, more or less sums-up how I see things as well.

I'm wondering if the difference between rock stars of the period and the likes of Saville/"personalities" etc is more like the latter to a very great deal used their celebrety and "talent" very specifically to facilitate their abuse of children, whilst for many rock stars, whilst they may have done reprehensible things, it was more secondary to their talent/art/skill?
Click to expand...
Insofar as it's any kind of mitigation, the latter were probably opportunists, while the likes of Savile went to considerable lengths to procure and abuse their victims.
 
As to how you should judge popstars who have underage sex - even important popstars (which Bowie undoubtedly was) - well, you judge them like any other person who has underage sex. Full stop. For if you don't judge them the same, what are you doing? What sort of mental/emotional calculus are you engaged in?

I'm not going to somehow pretend his music wasn't important - it was, it was vastly important (ditto Peel and Page). But knowing about their abusive behaviour means I'm not able to join in the tributes, I just can't do that - that's where I draw my line. In terms of Polanski, I'd go further, a lot further, I'll never watch one of his films. Whether people feel able to join in unambiguous RIP threads is up to them - really - but for me it always clouds their work.
 
existentialist said:
Insofar as it's any kind of mitigation, the latter were probably opportunists, while the likes of Savile went to considerable lengths to procure and abuse their victims.
Click to expand...

Its also at the back of my mind that many rock stars of the 70s had risen through the music biz of the 1960s, which in itself could be quite abusive/exploitative to its artists - and some were not exactly "whole people" to begin with. Abuse does tend to beget more abuse. :(

Although I don't know how true this might have been in Bowie's case? He does strike me as someone who was always in greater control of his life/career than many of his contemporaries - there are probaly those who know his story better who could shed some light?
 
SpackleFrog said:
For me the main question is power. I can accept that a 38 year old and a 15 year old could possibly have a sexual encounter with no uneven power dynamic involved - although I think it would be very unusual. Rock stars and fawning young fans though - that's very, very different. I'm guessing yours didn't take you to a hotel fancier than anything you've ever seen and give you the purest coke you'd ever had in your life.

Having said all that - I'm deeply uncomfortable about any 38 year old that wants to sleep with anyone that young, if I'm being really honest.
Click to expand...

I had sex with an at the time up and coming rock star who went on to become a bit of a superstar 2 weeks after my 16th birthday. Was there ever any question of me being underage? Nope. I was obviously young but how young was clearly never considered by him. Would the same thing have happened if the gig had been a month earlier? If I had anything to do with it damn right it would have. Was I coerced? Hell no. Was I swayed by the fact he fronted a band? Hell yes, of course. Were drugs and alcohol involved? Errr... yes.
I dunno where I'm going with this really. I suppose I was taken advantage of but I don't think I was in anyway damaged by it. I suppose he should have known better but I wasn't behind the door in coming forward myself. I guess there is a very, very blurry line somewhere...
 
bi0boy said:
Surely that's exactly why there's a very clear line laid down by the law. :confused:
Click to expand...
What are we talking about here, though? Whether people have broken the law or not, or the extent to which what they did might have been wrong?

The first is a simple yes/no binary. The second isn't.

Bowie broke British law at the time every time he fucked a man under 21 or when he was himself under 21, btw. 'It's against the law' isn't always ample justification for condemning an action.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

ElizabethofYork
Men’s violence against women and girls is a national emergency
34 35 36 37 38
Replies
1K
Views
44K
The39thStep
The39thStep
_Russ_
Rock against Racism
Replies
1
Views
228
19force8
19force8
hash tag
Starmergeddon time
2
Replies
42
Views
2K
hash tag
hash tag
N
Why do right-wing populists succeed?
2
Replies
45
Views
2K
nightowl
N
brogdale
Prime Minister Starmer dressed as...
Replies
29
Views
1K
Karl Masks
K
Back
Top Bottom