As Iman wrote about it, this past week, 72-year-old folk singer-songwriter Roy Harper was charged with sexual offenses against a 13-year-old girl during the 70s. This is a strange story, as I never understood why someone would report something so serious more than 40 years after it has happened! But it is hardly what I want to talk about… this news cannot be good for Harper’s career, but honestly, why are we so ready to forgive certain artists and not others and why are we still focusing on this kind of story when they almost all did it?
It is very strange and it re-lays on one thing only: whether the alleged assaulted girl is ready to point the finger or not. This happens the same week when R Kelly shows up on SNL to have simulated sex with Lady Gaga, the same R Kelly who very probably had sex with (and urinating on) an underage girl… In 2002 a video showing Kelly having sex with the girl surfaced but he was never charged since the girl who testified said she wasn’t the girl on the tape, despite the fact that more than 50 people who knew the girl, said it was her on the tape. Obviously she was shameful and in denial, and R Kelly got away with it, in spite of the fact that other similar stories circulate around the R&B star. From a MTV article: ‘There are at least three other women whose testimony could bolster the prosecution’s contention that Kelly preys upon young girls, particularly those with show-business aspirations. These women filed civil suits against the singer — each alleging criminal sexual conduct, and each claiming that they met him and had sex with him when they were underage. One even claimed that he coerced her into having an abortion.’ One of them was probably Aaliyah, whom Kelly married to cover up a sex scandal according to this website. With such outrageous behavior, you would think that Kelly’s career had been over a long time ago, but he has never been so much in demand, he sang with the queen of pop on National TV and was invited on stage by Phoenix at this year’s Coachella. So sex scandals are all relative.
Michael Jackson’s repeated sex scandals with minors was largely ignored by his herds of devoted fans, and now that he is dead, he is the richest man in show biz. But sex scandals with underage kids is nothing new, Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old second cousin, Elvis Presley met Priscilla when she was 14, and had apparently an appetite for under age girls according to this scandalous biography published in 2010. Whether all these other stories are true or not, his relationship with underage Priscilla was sexual from the start and he never got any problems with that?
It’s simple, there is a similar story around many many rock stars! May be all of them? Mick Jagger had allegedly a quick night with very young Mackenzie Phillips – but that may have been the least of her worries as she claims to have engaged in an incestuous relationship with her own father a bit later! In 1969, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary assaulted a 14 year-old girl who went to his hotel room to ask him an autograph… should I continue? In the mid 70s, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler had a 3-year affair with a teenager, who eventually had an abortion after an unplanned pregnancy, and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page kidnapped a 14-year-old girl he had spotted in a club, and kept her behind closed doors for 3 years? How is this possible?
You can blame the drugs, the lifestyle, the power that all these men have, but sex scandals with minors abound in the rock scene and pedophilia is rampant. Consensual or not, all these relationships were illegal, and the guys only get in trouble if the girls are pointing the fingers to them, even many years later, otherwise it’s just part of rock’ n’ roll history!