Michael Jackson covers- Yes or No?

[Stub Mandrel]

Jerry Lee Lewis's career took a hit when it came out that he married his 13 year old cousin.

My assumption is that this was legal at the time and place where it happened, but it got judged elsewhere by different standards.

[upside downer]

So interesting to read the various posts on this topic. With Gary Glitter, Ian Watkins and the like it's been found in a court of law that they were guilty of the crimes. With others (MJ, and it would appear, a smorgasbord of 60s and 70s rock favourites) either dead or uncharged it's down to a moral call which will be swayed by your own judgement on that person's character, music, haircut or some other triviality. Certainly a moral minefield.

[lemmywinks]

28 minutes ago, stingrayPete1977 said:

Ermm Gary Glitter moved to Thailand and seen regularly with young boys? 

 

He had a stint in Cambodia and Vietnam too and has been found guilty of raping underage girls as young as 11. I had no idea people were still covering his songs, that's genuinely odd.

[Cato]

What about Jackson 5 songs from when MJ was a kid himself and presumably hadn't started down his later path?

[Sibob]

As has been mentioned, the difficulty lies with a lack of any distinct ruling on what happened. That said, we're talking about covers bands, which are usually about providing a service for someones happy event, whilst a lot of people at that event might argue that the music and the man are separate, all it takes is for one or more people to have had a similar experience, for that film or the wider conversation to resonate with them very personally, and suddenly the band looks very insensitive, might even affect potential bookings.

Ultimately, it's about timing, would I play an MJ song now? Probably not, it's incredibly fresh in peoples minds. Would I play one in a few months time when it had died down? Possibly.

It's nuanced and should be considered on a gig by gig basis I think.

Si

Edited March 14, 2019 by Sibob

[dmccombe7]

2 hours ago, JellyKnees said:

Why else would a grown man have children that weren't his sleeping in his bed? I mean, seriously?

Agreed 100%

For me Jackson tried to come across as the timid little boy that just needed friends but the reality was he was an intelligent man that had a good business head and knew how to manipulate people to get the best out of situations. You can't play the dumb little kid when you are that famous thru writing and singing. The two characters just don't go hand in hand in my opinion.

 

[dmccombe7]

1 hour ago, lemmywinks said:

 

He had a stint in Cambodia and Vietnam too and has been found guilty of raping underage girls as young as 11. I had no idea people were still covering his songs, that's genuinely odd.

I'd be surprised if anyone was still covering GG songs. Unless i've missed one of the earlier posts. I mentioned that we as a 70's Glam Rock band cover the Glitter Band songs but had to have a long debate on even that and that was because the drummer played with them in 90's. 

Dave

[PaulWarning]

17 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

I'd be surprised if anyone was still covering GG songs. Unless i've missed one of the earlier posts. I mentioned that we as a 70's Glam Rock band cover the Glitter Band songs but had to have a long debate on even that and that was because the drummer played with them in 90's. 

Dave

I've seen the Glitter Band twice in the last 10 years (different versions) both of them did the Gary Glitter hits as well as there own stuff, both gigs went down a storm, I think if people know what to expect the ones that go are fine with it, I suppose if, out of the blue a band played some Glitter stuff it might cause problems, but if you're a Glam rock band they'd sort of expect it

[dmccombe7]

29 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

I've seen the Glitter Band twice in the last 10 years (different versions) both of them did the Gary Glitter hits as well as there own stuff, both gigs went down a storm, I think if people know what to expect the ones that go are fine with it, I suppose if, out of the blue a band played some Glitter stuff it might cause problems, but if you're a Glam rock band they'd sort of expect it

Oddly enough i didn't even think about that Paul. The Glitter band doing GG songs. I know they started their set with R&R Pt 1 & 2 right enough but i guess you would expect the Glitter Band to cover some of his songs. Kinda makes sense for them tho.

Can't say i've heard any other band doing a GG song but then again i've not really been looking for it.

Dave

[M@23]

I play lots of holiday parks for one of the big chains, we've been asked not to play any MJ for the time being. 

[Woodinblack]

We do one, in general I hadn't thought about it, I didn't really associate the song with MJ, probably because we have been doing it so long. I generally don't associate music with the artist that did it. Obviously if you go down that road there would be a lot of music you couldn't play, the people mentioned in there are just the tip of the iceberg, and as my wife and her friends used to live in Hollywood in their early 20s,  I have heard stories of some very horrible people some of whoms behaviour was morally questionable, even at the time, and some of it downright criminal. 

[Lozz196]

6 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Has anyone mentioned Elvis and Priscilla altho its never been viewed as indecent but she was only 14 when they met. 

Is that viewed differently because they ended up getting married and he was obviously besotted by her.

Dave

I’ve heard of someone saying that was all ok because paedophillia hadn’t been invented back then.

[PaulWarning]

22 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

I’ve heard of someone saying that was all ok because paedophillia hadn’t been invented back then.

well maybe it hadn't, strictly speaking he was a Ephebophiliac, someone who's interested in at the mid to later puberty stage (along with half the 70's rock stars, or so it seems sometimes) there's even Hebephilia, someone who likes boys or/and girls in the beginning of puberty (Gary Glitter), paedophilia has become the all encompassing word for anyone who has sexual relations with someone who is under the age of consent, when in fact it's someone who likes prepubescent children

Now, I find them all disturbing but paedophiles are surely the worst of a bad lot 

[martthebass]

4 hours ago, PaulWarning said:

I've seen the Glitter Band twice in the last 10 years (different versions) both of them did the Gary Glitter hits as well as there own stuff, both gigs went down a storm, I think if people know what to expect the ones that go are fine with it, I suppose if, out of the blue a band played some Glitter stuff it might cause problems, but if you're a Glam rock band they'd sort of expect it

We supported one of the GB variants a couple of years back and the band did play some GG stuff. Some people mentioned the taste of the selection but in the main it went down well. As I said in earlier post we decided from the outset not to cover GG whether it was accepted or not as, understandably many won’t separate the music from the crime.

[PatrickJ]

This is a very interesting thread.

There were a few MJ bass lines on my to learn list.  Now the bassist and  producers are who performed and recorded those parts are not guilty of anything other than being associated to the man.  I dont beliebe MJ did much of the composition work, however I still find myself thinking its probably in poor taste to learn them now, let alone think about performing them.

[KingPrawn]

Personally I wouldn’t play any of his music. Purely because I dont want to collude or imply there’s any blurring of values when it comes to child abuse. He was clearly a troubled individual, for lots of reasons.

[silverfoxnik]

16 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Agreed 100%

For me Jackson tried to come across as the timid little boy that just needed friends but the reality was he was an intelligent man that had a good business head and knew how to manipulate people to get the best out of situations. You can't play the dumb little kid when you are that famous thru writing and singing. The two characters just don't go hand in hand in my opinion.

 

Very insightful... 

Reminds me of the story about Paul McCartney when he worked with MJ back in the 80s.. 

Apparently so the story goes, they were working on a song together and Macca was telling MJ about the financial value of music publishing. 

Next thing Macca knew was that MJ had bought ATV Music Publishing, the publishing company that owned Northern Songs, which itself owned all the rights to the Beatles songs! I don't think Macca was best pleased.. 

Innate musical talent aside, MJ was a very intelligent person IMO who knew how to operate and make things happen for his benefit in the very grown up and fiercely competitive world of the music business.

He had other talents in abundance too, especially in terms of projecting and manipulating a public image and persona that always seemed to allow him to come out smelling of roses 

That he wouldn't have intuitively or knowingly transferred all of those talents, skills and personal attributes into his achieving what he wanted in his personal life would beggar belief frankly. 

The jury's not out for me on this one and I certainly wouldn't want to play bass in a band covering any of his music from Off The Wall onwards. 

[Unknown_User]

It's a tricky one.  If you drop songs on the premise that someone in the band has been a beast/sex case then you could easily get into a situation where a pub covers band wouldn't have anything to play.

I think part of it is the notoriety of the individual in question and possibly how premeditated it's all been.  So as mentioned Gary Glitter or the Lost Prophets would be a different case to say the Rolling Stones.  Although didn't Bill Wyman marry Mandy Smith when she was 14?  That must have been fairly premeditated and an incidence of grooming a child.

Probably just a subjective thing sadly.

[upside downer]

55 minutes ago, Unknown_User said:

Although didn't Bill Wyman marry Mandy Smith when she was 14?

He married her when she was 18. Although he had 'known' her since she was 13.

[stingrayPete1977]

20 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Jerry Lee Lewis's career took a hit when it came out that he married his 13 year old cousin.

 

After ten years living together I suppose it was only a matter of time before she'd make him choose between her and his career! 

[EliasMooseblaster]

58 minutes ago, Unknown_User said:

I think part of it is the notoriety of the individual in question and possibly how premeditated it's all been.  So as mentioned Gary Glitter or the Lost Prophets would be a different case to say the Rolling Stones.  Although didn't Bill Wyman marry Mandy Smith when she was 14?

That question of where we draw the line is a really tricky one. Ian Watkins of Lostprophets fame is an easy one to judge because it stands out as an extreme even among cases like Glitter, King, and Jackson. But at the other end of the scale, Mick and Keef have convictions for drugs charges.

Now we might not disgust us in the same way, but the law says drugs are bad (mmmkay), so should we judge them to be bad people and stop playing their songs? Of course we don't; the charges seem too trivial. Turn it up a notch and consider Jim Morrison's conviction for indecent exposure. Now, his bandmates have protested ever since that there was no substantive evidence to back this charge, but he was convicted in a court of law - is flashing a live audience morally rephrensible enough to drive fans of The Doors away from their music? Apparently not.

I don't know where the line is, and nor do many record companies, it seems: there is a CD reissue of two later Beach Boys albums (I think it's the Friends / 20:20 disc) which includes, among the unreleased bonus tracks, a couple of songs written for the group by none other than Charles Manson. Now, these tracks have only seen the light of day some 20 or 30 years after Sharon Tate's murder, but with some of her relatives still alive and having to endure the continuing pop culture references to the event, I would have thought that it was a little bit soon to be releasing those songs for public consumption.

[dlloyd]

6 minutes ago, lemmywinks said:

 

I think paedos and nazis is probably a good place to draw the line personally.

Quite. I won't listen to Lost Prophets, Gary Glitter or Michael Jackson. I won't listen to Wagner, Skrewdriver or English Rose.

There are grey areas when you get into historical figures. Wagner was overtly antisemitic and wrote a rather nasty article on the subject which, while antisemitism was not unusual in Germany at the time, does show he had a special interest in it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Judenthum_in_der_Musik

Others who are associated with nazism like Carl Orff (Carmina Burana), are less cut and dried... he had friends/associates in the White Rose resistance against the third reich and may have been a member. I'm not sure I can fault him for keeping his head down when his friends were being executed and it's clear that the general population were not aware of the extent of the horrors being perpetrated by their government.

 

 

[Paul S]

Personally I'd say flashing your willy to an audience is a rather different kettle of fish to persuading a 7 yr old boy to take it in his mouth.  Some lines are easily drawn.

[Billy Apple]

I met Mandy Smith in the late '90's. She was absolutely stunning. She looked way better than any picture in the press I'd and she was lovely to talk too to boot.

I also saw Gary Glitter live at Newcastle City Hall in '87 and have to say it was one of the most entertaining gigs I've been to. The band were monumental, especially with two drummists. Glitter brought the whole show and it was great. Bizarrely enough there were skinhead girls down the front throwing roses at him! ....Oh well 

[stingrayPete1977]

11 minutes ago, dlloyd said:

Quite. I won't listen to Lost Prophets, Gary Glitter or Michael Jackson. I won't listen to Wagner, Skrewdriver or English Rose.

There are grey areas when you get into historical figures. Wagner was overtly antisemitic and wrote a rather nasty article on the subject which, while antisemitism was not unusual in Germany at the time, does show he had a special interest in it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Judenthum_in_der_Musik

Others who are associated with nazism like Carl Orff (Carmina Burana), are less cut and dried... he had friends/associates in the White Rose resistance against the third reich and may have been a member. I'm not sure I can fault him for keeping his head down when his friends were being executed and it's clear that the general population were not aware of the extent of the horrors being perpetrated by their government.

 

 

Sounds like a certain Mr Corbyn!