Posted on 02/15/2019 5:35:38 PM PST by Drew68
(CNN) In indie music circles, there had long been whispers about Ryan Adams being a jerk. Living in Chicago's rock hotbed neighborhood of Wicker Park in the 1990s, I certainly heard them. Still, how tragic to see the rumors confirmed and amplified in the New York Times story Wednesday about the "Heartbreaker" musician, who has denied them but also apologized.
The part about his allegedly sexting a 14-year-old girl particularly gave me the shivers.
From rock's early days, when Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year old cousin, to John Lennon crooning about wife-beating on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," right up to the Adams story, there is a certain nauseating through-line in many of the bands and singers generally considered the best in the business. It makes me wonder how there has not, yet, been a more widespread #MeToo reckoning in the wider world of rock 'n' roll, which, since its inception, has been glaringly open about its disdain for, and love of abusing, women.
I say this with a heavy heart and no small amount of confusion, having been a fan of both the genre and its groupie culture since my own teen years. As a film critic, I've made my peace with the once-beloved films I need to leave behind (John Hughes' date-rapey and racist "Sixteen Candles" being a prime example), but as a music fan I have yet to weed through my old favorite albums and decide who's too creepy to listen to anymore.
The first to go should probably be Guns N' Roses, one of the primo hard-rock bands of the late 1980s and 1990s. Their first album, "Appetite for Destruction," was in heavy rotation on my playlist in high school and long after, despite its appalling original cover art (which depicts a female rape victim and a demonic robot perpetrator standing over her) and horrendously misogynist lyrics.
How to explain the disconnect of having been, generally, a self-aware young woman and also rocking out to "It's So Easy," which features lyrics like "Turn around, bitch, I got a use for you/Besides, you ain't got nothing better to do/And I'm bored"?
I am hardly alone in this; it's the top-selling US debut album of all time. (In what is perhaps not such a coincidence, in March of 1994, singer Axl Rose's then-wife filed charges against him, alleging physical and emotional abuse.) At the time, Rose did not respond to requests for comment; she later sued Rose for mental and physical abuse and the suit was reportedly settled out of court.
Aerosmith was another favorite; I'm from Massachusetts, so this was sort of a requirement (one of the band's nicknames is "the Bad Boys from Boston"). One of their biggest hits? "Walk This Way," whose lyrics include: "Schoolgirl sweetie with a classy kinda sexy/little skirt's climbin' way up her knee." As a schoolgirl myself, I managed to wrangle my way backstage at one of their concerts, wearing my own sexy little skirt. Upon actually meeting the band members, I remember feeling oh-so-clearly that I wanted nothing more than to go home, which, thankfully, I could and did (and, to be clear, nothing untoward was ever suggested by any of them).
But this was still the message you heard from your favorite rockers, over and over, as a girl: That girls and women were supposed to be candy for the dudes, who were the ones who made the music.
Let's take a quick look at some other telling songs, from cheese-metal to classics, that so many of us heard and blindly accepted:
Motley Crue, "Saints of Los Angeles:" "Red line tripping on a land mine, sipping at the Troubadour/Girls passed out naked in the back lounge, everybody's gonna score/She's all jacked up, she's down on her luck/You want it, you need it, the devils gonna feed it."
The Beatles, "Run for Your Life:" "I'd rather see you dead, little girl/Than to be with another man ... Catch you with another man/That's the end little girl."
Winger, "Seventeen:" "She's only seventeen/Daddy says she's too young, but she's old enough for me."
The Beastie Boys, "Girls:" "Girls, to do the dishes/Girls, to clean up my room/Girls, to do the laundry/Girls, and in the bathroom/Girls, that's all I really want is girls."
Ray Charles, "I've Got a Woman:" "She's there to love me/Both day and night/Never grumbles or fusses/Always treats me right/Never runnin' in the streets/Leavin' me alone/She knows a woman's place/Is right there, now, in her home."
Over the decades I soaked up these lyrics while also devouring countless "c--k-rock" music bios, feasting on the hedonistic anecdotes of The Doors ("No One Here Gets Out Alive") and Led Zeppelin ("Hammer of the Gods"), Tyler, Slash from Guns N' Roses, Tommy Lee from Motley Crue. I own a copy of "I'm With the Band," Pamela Des Barres' starry-eyed memoir of being rock's most celebrated groupie.
There's an undeniably vicarious fun in hearing about what it's like to sleep with the most celebrated men in rock. But there was also a scary, predatory undertone even in Des Barres' generally cheery tales. One of her peers, Lori Mattix/Maddox, was 15 (possibly younger) when she says she lost her virginity to David Bowie and as a teenager dated Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, among others. In a recent interview with the Guardian, she looked back on those days with a different take: "I don't think underage girls should sleep with guys. I wouldn't want this for anybody's daughter. My perspective is changing as I get older and more cynical."
It is also key to note that this has always been a one-way street, gender-wise. Count, if you can, the number of crazy, debauched FEMALE rock stars out there. The brash Courtney Love is still sort of alone in that field, and she's been reviled nonstop (largely by male Nirvana fans) for 30-plus years for her efforts.
Imagine how many women, like Adams' alleged victims, wanted to get in the rock game and gave up because they were told they didn't belong there? Even Adams' former wife, Mandy Moore, who was already a hit singer when she met Adams, describes to the Times how being with him silenced her as a musician.
Could rock be, or have been, less sexist if there had been more women encouraged to take the stage instead of standing below it, waiting to be winked at? Maybe, if we're able to re-evaluate some of the "greats" with clearer eyes, we'll have more of a chance to find out.
Except for the many credible allegations that John Lennon actually was a wife beater.
What? No Rolling Stones???
Well, "Love IS a Battlefield", after all.
Yeah, best go back to that street rap.
The only one I can think of is Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
“Bang, bang Maxwell’s silver hammer came down upon her head...”
I went back and listened, and you’re right, it’s mostly McCartney singing, with John joining in. But Lennon said he wrote that line about his relationships pre-Yoko. Why he stopped at Yoko, I’ll never know.
I recently revisited some old Stones and chuckled at the lyrics to "Under My Thumb" thinking, "This sure wouldn't fly today!"
I still wonder how John got six bullets in the chest, and Chapman couldn’t bother to spare one for Yoko.
In a 1980 interview in Playboy with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Lennon, when asked about the song, said that the song’s lyrics came personally from his own experience abusing women in relationships in the past. He states: “It is a diary form of writing. All that ‘I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved’ was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything’s the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.”
It's interesting that black entertainers have largely been given a pass by the #MeToo movement. It's almost as if liberals respect masculinity in blacks while demanding that white men be emasculated and feminized.
Hello? did you read the lyrics?
“I used to be cruel to my woman
I beat her and....”
i beat her sounds like it means hit-physical, imo.
In the morning
Don't say you love me
'Cause I'll only kick you out of the door
I know your name is Rita
'Cause your perfume smelling sweeter
Since when I saw you down on the floor, guitar
You won't need to much persuading
I don't mean to sound degrading
But with a face like that
You got nothing to laugh about
Red lips hair and fingernails
I hear your a mean old Jezebel
Let's go up stairs and read my tarot cards, c'mon
Yea I'll pay your cab fare home
You can even use my best cologne
Just don't be here in the morning when I wake up, c'mon honey
Sit down, get up, get down
So funny you posted this! I have one like it, and it is in my son’s room. I love it!
puleeze spare me.... female rockers like Janis Joplin or even the the Go-Gos would do things with the “guys” just to ‘have fun’. It’s sex, drugs and rock and roll.....
I love the pearl clutching by the liberals eating their own.
The story is not too nice, but the lyrics are great.
They fit the song and the Rockin’ Blues delivery.
As though sung from a Bar room floor.
I doubt if Rod himself wrote them.
I can imagine Tina Turner singing a song like this one, maybe 40 years ago. Just a few lyric changes. She lived the life too, unfortunately.
Ike was very violent with Tina for many years.
Why she stayed with him, I couldn’t explain.
Her real character must have been the opposite of her bold and brassy stage presence.
I hear the click-clack of your feet on the stairs
I know you’re no scare-eyed honey
There’ll be a feast if you just come upstairs
But it’s no hanging matter
It’s no capital crime
I can see that you’re fifteen years old
No I don’t want your I.D.
And I’ve seen that you’re so far from home
But it’s no hanging matter
It’s no capital crime
Oh yeah, you’re a strange stray cat
Oh yeah, don’tcha scratch like that
Oh yeah, you’re a strange stray cat
Bet your mama don’t know you scream like that
I bet your mother don’t know you can spit like that.
You look so weird and you’re so far from home
But you don’t really miss your mother
Don’t look so scared I’m no mad-brained bear
But it’s no hanging matter
It’s no capital crime
Oh, yeah
Woo!
I bet…
Love the pyrolusite! The barite ain’t bad either.
You can say that again!
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