The Morality Backlash

Occasionally it's a bridge too far

I can see what you want
But you seem pretty young to be searching for that kind of fun
So maybe I’m not the one

Now you’re so cute, I like your style
And I know what you mean when you give me a flash of that smile (smile)
But girl, you’re only a child

Does Your Mother Know, ABBA

Here’s jailbait rock girl band the Runaways from their first single Cherry Bomb - on the left is Joan Jett (you may recognize her from I Love Rock and Roll or I Hate Myself For Loving You amongst various other 80s songs) - in this picture, she’s fifteen. So is Lita Ford, another 80s rockergrrl - you might have heard her hit Close My Eyes Forever with Ozzy Osbourne. These girls are all 15 and 16, FWIW.

There’s a song you’ve probably heard - or at least heard sampled - and likely can’t name; it’s a tremendously generic name (though when Madonna named a track… and an album… Music … well, that still takes the cake). I’m told it was enormously popular for a while back in the day and then it absolutely and completely vanished - though you’d still hear the musical sting sampled frequently in baseball stadiums or other arenas - and eventually a subsequent generation thought “hey, isn’t this that Dr Who and the Tardis song” (KLF: The Timelords - Doctoring the Tardis samples very heavily and mashes it up with the Doctor Who theme, which is its own level of insanity). But the song in question is Rock And Roll Part Two, and the artist behind it - and the reason for its cancellation - a fellow named Gary Glitter.

Get a load of this glam-rock showboat!

Now the 1970s were a time of all sorts of excess and the Sixties and Seventies had brought us the Sexual Revolution and the Free Love Era. Many boundaries were challenged or transgressed, depending on how you wanted to look at it. And it turned out that there were some fairly prominent celebrities who wanted to ignore the age of consent.

Gary Glitter was perhaps the most prominent example of this trend, and was definitively caught with a great deal of underage content. He was sued, jailed, and rather definitively cancelled - his glam rock tracks that were once top ten and even number one songs are no longer to be found on the radio (though, somewhat ironically, you might have heard one on the recent Joker movie). He’d even had a popular Christmas album for a while in the 80s!

“Don’t Give Me No Lip I’ve Got Enough Of My Own” - from Aerosmith’s song Falling In Love Is Hard On The Knees

Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler in 1973 somewhat famously obtained guardianship of 16-year-old Julia Holcomb - he was at the time, 25 - so that she could live with him in Boston and go on tour with him, and also do a rather prodigious amount of whatever drugs Aerosmith was doing at the time. The 2021 British documentary Look Away goes on to note that Steven Tyler went on to adopt another (13 year old!) girl after he and Holcomb broke up; this would have been when Tyler was 29. Courtney Love apparently had all the dirt on this one - though her Instagram pix have, perhaps thankfully, been yanked. She also points the finger at Axl Rose and Jimmy Page for the same sorts of transgressions, and quite a number of people indicate David Bowie or Mick Jagger as being entirely willing to get it in with groupies without much regard to age.

Rock singers of this era sure seem to be known for their sizable… mouths? Mick Jagger, above, caricature below

No mention of this would be complete without noting that President Jimmy Carter found it necessary to actually pardon Peter Yarrow - you may not recognize that name on his own, but you may recognize the band name Peter Paul and Mary - as Peter had been convicted of molesting a 14 year old girl. (Understandably, this didn’t do much for the band’s family-friendly image as a folk song group.) This incident had taken place in Washington DC back in 1969 when a young fan had apparently come to ask for an autograph - he’d have been 31 when she and her sister came to his hotel room.

Peter Paul and Mary - Peter’s the one on the right.

This wasn’t really new in the 1970s, though. Jerry Lee Lewis - whose song Great Balls Of Fire is still somewhat recognizable today - defined early rock-and-roll back in the 1950s. But his career was cut rather short when it was revealed that he’d married his 13-year-old cousin Myra Gale Brown. (Also, he was technically still married to his previous wife.) If you’d like to read her side of it - she’s still somewhat upset that society didn’t approve - the link’s above.

The happy couple

More recently - and surprising no one - Marilyn Manson was revealed to be quite the freak show not just on stage. Evan Rachel Wood, who has since made a career for herself, accused him of sexual assault and abuse; other women also corroborated this and his label dropped him.

Certainly the 2019 expose Surviving R. Kelly unveiled what had been oft-whispered about that particular superstar. As I write this he’s currently serving 31 years for various charges including trafficking, exploitation of minors and child pornography. Sean “Diddy” Combs was likewise busted in 2025; Drake continues to be plagued by scandal but thus far this one hasn’t taken him down.

Comparably from the Hollywood side of the house, famous director Roman Polanski remains a fugitive in France due to rape charges for predation on a 13-year-old girl (also back in the 1970s) and one-time comedy icon Woody Allen managed to get himself cancelled and socially scorned by romancing his adoptive daughter Soon-Yi Previn when she was 17 - and while he was still involved with her adoptive mother Mia Farrow. And of course, Kevin Spacey managed to get himself into hot water by taking an inappropriate interest in various London theater boys - but thus far has managed to beat charges against him, so it’s not clear how far that went; still, I’m sure it’ll be a media circus as the civil cases come around.

This sort of thing even got winked at in classic adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark when Professor Indiana Jones (after having one of his students swoon at him in class) is revealed to have had a tryst with Marion Ravenwood when she was 15 and he 26; she clearly is somewhat bent out of shape about this in retrospect but all is well by the end of the movie as he saves the day and the girl. (And apparently they rekindle the romance for this long-running saga, because in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull we learn that Shia LeBouf’s character is of course the son of these two jokers.) But let’s leave that aside as harmless fiction.

Still though, none of all these centers of scandal seems to have captured society’s attention quite the way that Jeffrey Epstein has. Partially this is due to such a web of corruption - ensnaring royals and presidents, wealthy executives and celebrities, and influential people from across the globe - partially the very high profile nature of it, with private islands and chartered jets, and partially, as this YouTube video points out - how tremendously unlikely his outsized financial success was given that he wasn’t particularly good at making money for people.

I wonder where those files could be.

I’m sure they’ll be released any day now, and the arguments over redactions will begin immediately.

Really, I’m rather astounded they haven’t been leaked Panama Papers style. But I’m sure there’s too many people with something to lose.