Albums you own or used to own from artists that turned out to be awful people.

With all the sex scandals going on in 2017: what artists do you regret supporting after finding out they were creeps, racists, assholes, trump supporters, criminals, pedophiles, drug dealers, killed a dog, etc...

Do you like them so much that you separate the art from the artists and enjoy their music despite their fuckups? Or is everything they ever did ruined?

Top of my mind: the ignition remix of r kelly was a classic for me until I found out all the fucked up shit he was in and I cant really listen to that song anymore.

Not in the same league of awful but I hate how much of an asshole Kanye West is and it affects my enjoyment of his music.

Another one I can think of right now is Ariel Pink who I always considered interesting in style until reports of sexual abuse and overall hate towards women came out.

Miles Davis is a case of someone whose music I love despite him being an insufferable prick and his very racist and terrible comments (like saying he would spend his last hypothetical living hour choking a white man)

an hour seems like a long time to spend choking someone, in practice I think he would have got bored after a few minutes

I was going to make the effort of getting more Roy Harper beyond "Bullinamingvase" but all the scandal happened and it put me off. He eventually was found to be not guilty but by then the moment passed. It might come back, who knows..

I was going to say none but, now I come to think of it, I'd just started listening to some Kim Fowley albums (or trying to) when the stories about his abuse of members of the Runaways began to break - I haven't listened to them since, though I suspect if they'd been any good I might have. I'd always known the guy was a talentless dick though and found the hero worship of him by a lot of people on the indie scene fairly nauseating.

Done with Genesis P Orridge after hearing that in Cosey's book she writes about him abusing animals, stopped me reading her book too.

I read that book, don't remember that bit, I remember him abusing Cosey though.

It was in a review somewhere, I've been wanting to read the book.

I think there is something about him being horrible to Cosey's cat or dog or something.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/14/i-smeared-gen-in-flour-paste-and-whipped-him-hard-an-extract-from-cosey-fanni-tuttis-book

Art Sex Music you mean? Still on my stack of books to read, too.

xp jesus that excerpt

uhhhh

quite a few of the country blues guys I like from the 20s and 30s killed people and got up to other stuff which is pretty awful by most measures. I don't think that's part of the appeal, but there are definitely some songs that have a certain sort of poison in which is pretty intense.

I'm not sure if there are people who have become better/reflected on things when they couldn't make a living off their art, or if the attention an artist has gotten has fed into their destructive behaviour, but I don't see stopping listening to something as much of a corrective. I think these things are mostly about the effect on the listener. Also I think making art can be a good thing for Awful People to do

I've got a couple of (good) Gaslamp Killer albums. I guess he hasn't been convicted yet.

xp

Skip James comes to mind.

I'm not sure if there are people who have become better/reflected on things when they couldn't make a living off their art, or if the attention an artist has gotten has fed into their destructive behaviour, but I don't see stopping listening to something as much of a corrective. I think these things are mostly about the effect on the listener. Also I think making art can be a good thing for Awful People to do

Seems OTM to me

I can't see myself listening to that Ducktails l.p. I really liked again.

I will listen to TG again. What's that about?

Gen's whole thing is often nasty. He never hid it.

Another one which I used to love is the debut from Crystal Castles. Always suspected Ethan was awful but not to that degree. I’m still conflicted about it because some of their songs are really good.

several rock n roll artists liked underage girls a bit too much: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis...

You might remember Chuck did prison time for having sex with a 14 year old and then for videotaping women in bathrooms in his restaurant. Seems people forget how much of a creep he was...
there’s an interesting NPR article about it:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/07/15/422964981/the-cruel-truth-about-rock-and-roll

I hate that I can reconcile drawing the line for some artists and not others. I guess it really depends on how much I liked them before I learned their stories, and that's a bullshit excuse.

I've never given a damn about R. Kelly. When people flip over Ignition (Remix), I roll my damn eyes.

But Bowie or Marvin Gaye or John Lennon or Jimmy Page? I fucking hate myself that I still freely listen to them all.

re: Jerry Lee Lewis

This story about the death of his wife got waaaaay buried over the years, because I only learned about it a few months ago. He probably got away with an actual murder.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-strange-and-mysterious-death-of-mrs-jerry-lee-lewis-19840301

What did Bowie do?

https://jezebel.com/what-should-we-say-about-david-bowie-and-lori-maddox-1754533894

What the fuck? how is that story not more famous?

I’ve never liked John Lennon myself, even as a kid most of the Lennon songs felt icky to me, his whole hippie schtick ‘all you need is love’ mantra never fooled me.

Jimmy Page also conflicts me because what he was doing was terrible, pretty much raping and abusing an underage girl. But I like LZ music too much.

Wait what did Bowie and Gaye do? I’m not sure I want to know... this thread was a bad idea

http://nypost.com/2015/05/03/marvin-gayes-wife-revealed-how-he-tortured-her/

I’ve never liked John Lennon myself, even as a kid most of the Lennon songs felt icky to me, his whole hippie schtick ‘all you need is love’ mantra never fooled me.

That his better songs are generally his more abrasive is no coincidence.

Phil Spector, definitely. He's universally hailed as one of the greatest producers of all time, but he actually killed someone! Plus he has a large history of being an abusive prick who pulls out a gun when women refuse his advances

But I still really like everything on Back to Mono? Idk, maybe it's mitigated by the fact that he was just the guy twiddling knobs in the background and never the star of the show like Ronnie Spector

Actually not everything on it - forgot about "he hit me," that ones inexcusable

lol

thread idea is kind of silly but lets run with it

whats more interesting is how many ppl refuse to believe that the artists they listen to did do contentiously awful/bad things

eg michael jackson and like probably over 50% of artists/musicians (if were counting sleeping with groupies and doing drugs)

Yeah was going to mention Spector. There are songs like John Lennon’s Imagine which would have been huge with or without him and in the case of Let It Be he actually worsened the songs imho.

Not sure if the Ronettes would have been as huge without his touch though, he also wrote ‘be my baby’ iirc and that one’s their biggest hit.

i remember reading in an interview (possibly playboy?) that bowie gave mccartney or lennon head or something at like age 12 which would make either of the other two older than 16

also laurel canyon scene in the 60s/70s was filled with dirty rumours

(X-post)

What? Sounds crazy.

Sounds like bullshit to me.

of course it is ffs

Anyhow, I'm sure the correct answer to the thread title is "pretty much the majority of them"

i remember reading in an interview (possibly playboy?) that bowie gave mccartney or lennon head or something at like age 12 which would make either of the other two older than 16

I understand ILM is not the New York Times, but maybe we need a bit more substantiation before making highly inflammable accusations that name names, based on an interview you "remember reading."

okay prince of wales

Any reason for 12 year old Brixton schoolboy, David Jones, to be hanging about in Liverpool in the late 50s?

He maybe waiting for his man.

Waiting for his nan, more like.

My cousn’s good friend’s sister’s aunt said she read somewhere that all the Bowie stuff happened in Hamburg. So it’s settled.

I have two triple vinyl albums by Swans which set me back a fair whack and which I used to enjoy a lot and even still put on on occasion. but each time I do, i just can't separate the music from the man following the assault accusations against Michael Gira. As people have said upthread, there's a hypocrisy at work here, since I'll happily listen to music by a whole swathe of terrible people

i love his records dearly but i have no doubt at all that john martyn was a deeply horrible man

led zeppelin

I'm still listening to Gary Glitter, to be honest, though the Glitter Band albums were much better.

^^^Spot on. I think prior to H17, Gregory (and Ware) worked with Glitter on a track for B.E.F. They described him to me as "a lunatic"... just generally speaking, no hint of the utter wrongness.

huh I hadn't made the connection to DM, HL and other NewRos, but you sure can hear his stuff in the Chinn/Chapman productions, the Runaways/Joan Jett, tons of poppier punk/metal stuff going into the 80s

And beyond on other English bands like Earl Brutus and The Fall.

Adam & the Ants.

Yeah, BEF put Gary in the studio with the Glitter Band, they had never recorded together.

G&M's Russell Smith picking up the counterpoint:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/good-art-by-bad-people-why-it-shouldnt-be-thrown-away/article37006883/

Yeah, Adam and the Ants too. Basically, if you got rid of all the music those early singles influenced, it'd leave a huge black hole in pop music.

lol, what did Adam and the Ants do? I have no knowledge of them.

ruined a picnic

Ruined Eve.

Explains the lack of pants

I couldn't disown The Smiths as they made some of the best pop music ever (cliched but true!) and Johnny Marr's contributions are generally my favourite aspect of the group's songs anyway. Different story with Morrissey's career but I don't think I'd even like it much if he hadn't made the racist comments he has.

R Kelly is a difficult one for me. Knowing just some of the details regarding his repugnant behaviour doesn't stop me enjoying some of the songs, albeit a little less predisposed towards them than beforehand. I suppose I definitely find it easier to disown bad behaviour if I haven't known the artist's songs for years before finding out about it.

Adam and the Ants being another new wave act influenced by Gary Glitter, obviously.

*have known the artist's songs

they held up a carriage at gunpoint iirc

don't drink don't smoke, what did they do?

subtle innuendo follows

must be something inside

not sure how awful but a buddy of mine witnessed steven tyler go over to a girl at a restaurant and sit down next to her, pretending to be upset that she'd snapped a pic of him, then he was getting in her personal space and squeezing her and kissing her on the cheeks and she eventually got up and left, visibly uncomfortable, without eating any of her food. i saw some photos he took of it, she was "laughing it off" in the way that many women have described their reactions to unwanted advances but he was really, really in her space in a bad way. and at first my friend thought he was a crazy random sexual offender and not a rock star, he recognized him after a couple minutes.

the idea of it taking a couple of minutes to discern Steven Tyler is befuddling! but that sounds like a Steven Tyler move from what ive heard

"cardiacs, ugh

― mookieproof"

why? hasn't main guy from cardiacs been basically totally disabled for years and years?

for almost the same length of time as 'bait lj' has been around tbh

it's always with <3 from mookie though (i think)

Three counter examples :

Josh homme kicking olivieri out the band for physically abusing nick's girlfriend.

― Week of Wonders (Ross), Monday, November 13, 2017 1:27 PM (three weeks ago)

cf. Josh Homme kicking a photographer in the face :(

Jeezus that vid. Just an unprovoked blow to the head while she's photographing.

The kick, cutting himself, flipping off the crowd, yelling "fuck Muse"...scary behavior

eh, comparatively speaking, the other stuff is typical dumbass rockstar posturing. is he usually above that sort of behavior?

No but all of it put together...

yeah this harshed my mellow for sure, was OFTM

His between-song patter at Wembley a few weeks back was pretty damned weird. I know he fucked his leg and his arm before the tour, he was limping offstage at the end of the gig, I wonder if he's on lots of pain meds? Not excusing his shitty, shitty behaviour at the KROQ thing, of course.

Ryan Adams to the list.

Reading that Ellen Sander article about Led Zeppelin fucked me up.

I'm not a critic so I can afford to engage with music at the expense of the cultural discourse that surrounds it (and which I tend to find exhausting). Musicians' lives don't matter all that much to me, barring an exception or two.

I own all 21 of Bill Cosby's stand-up albums.

I can’t see all of this positive Porno for Pyros press without bringing to mind what a predatory, manipulative c*nt Perry Farrell is/was, by many accounts. I’ve ditched the Jane’s albums I liked.

This thread title erases those of us who actually seek out albums by artists after we learn that they are awful people.

is there a guide somewhere that says which black metal musicians are fascist/white nationalists

there's no public database because people don't want to make an official nsbm directory

I have seen various lists come and go in the past they're hard to find now and would be outdated and incomplete. encyclopaedia metallum will say if a band has obvious nazi lyrical themes but you have to look the bands up

(I mostly find it too hard work to bother and I don't trust most metal fans not to downplay or deny the extent of this shit esp when bands aren't card carrying national socialists but have links with those who are or like to play around with the themes and imagery in plausible deniable ways)

a considerate answer, thank you!

Checked with a friend who knows about these things, he says

Usually checking Metal Archives will give you some good clues, if not explicitly saying. Common Red flags are nationalism, paganism, history - especially when they’re together. Also check the members other bands and the record labels for more clues.

Or Google ‘x-band nsbm’!

Multiple threads on the topic here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rabm/

I was bummed out that nobody made a list of nazi black metal shitheads for Discogs so I’m giving it a whirl. Prepared for flammage.

I just recently got caught up on the Michael Milosh (Rhye) allegations, ugh

I just recently got caught up on the Michael Milosh (Rhye) allegations, ugh

― jaymc

Yeah, that was one where I got rid of his albums immediately after reading the whole thing.

By no means complete, but this list has some useful info at least:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/HelloInquisitor/black-metal-bands-and-their-politics/

that looks like a good resource

shame that so many of the less sketchy artists have some level of past sketchiness but repudating it later on is better than the alternative

on a less serious note how about artists i love who aren't necessarily "terrible people" but who are now revealing themselves to be soft on royalism?

don't worry i'm sure i'll get over it eventually

Tossed my Rhye record in the garbage after reading about him. Fuck that guy.

on a less serious note how about artists i love who aren't necessarily "terrible people" but who are now revealing themselves to be soft on royalism?

don't worry i'm sure i'll get over it eventually