On the back of the threads about Dilbert and Roger Waters. To what extent does the opinions or behaviour of an artist (writer, singer, comedian, actor/actress, painter etc) influence how you view their work? Would you stop enjoying their output if they had done something you regarded as immoral or even criminal, or held views you disagree with?

Or is it a question of degree? An extreme example would be someone who was a massive fan of Gary Glitter’s music. But in most instances it’s much less, maybe a band who hold political views you don’t like, or perhaps an author who writes great literature but was a pretty unpleasant individual.

Does it come down to how much you like the person’s work? Much easier to not listen to Roger Waters anymore if you were only aware of The Wall and not much else; a lot harder if you’ve been a massive Pink Floyd fan for the last forty years.

Personally I find it quite easy to separate art from artist. Maybe that’s a moral failing of my own, who knows. I’m not going to stop reading or buying Dilbert books (they are my “on the loo” choice of reading), and I quite enjoy Pink Floyd so won’t stop listening to them because Waters is a bellend.

It’s ethically sticky but personally I don’t have a problem separating it at all. I think if you found out the worst possible thing about a lot of artists you wouldn’t have much left to listen to. Michael Jackson being as sketchy as he was doesn’t change the fact that he’s got some great tunes. I would probably stop financially supporting them but still enjoy their music when it comes on.

I listen to the Smiths regularly despite regarding Morrisey as a sort of bequiffed Farage

I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed

Having said that, Johnny Marr does compensate for the begonia-waving racist by being generally lovely and not remotely bell-endish at all, so the Smiths, on balance, are ok

David Gilmour and the rest of Pink Floyd seem like decent blokes too. No wonder they don’t bother with Roger Waters

I have to say I’ve lost a bit of love for Ian Brown since coming across his crackpot conspiracy theory stuff.

Independent article

Shame. 😐

I love the movie Baby Driver but can’t watch it anymore because Kevin Spacey’s in it.

I’ve no problem listening to old Pink Floyd but won’t listen to Roger Water’s solo stuff. Likewise Michael Jackson.  I never liked Morrisey so no loss there.

Say what you want about Gary Glitter, but at least he drove slowly past schools.

I’d generally always been of the opinion you should separate the art and artist.

But all my Lost Prophets cds went in the bin.

Gill Sans is a lovely font. You won’t find it at Battersea Dogs Home.

Lost Prophets still have 10’s of thousands of monthly listens on Spotify! 🤷‍♂️

I find it hard to separate Danny Dyer from the characters he plays

Similar dilemma, was happily playing through High on Life then found out Justin Roiland has allegedly made a bad habit of chatting up underage girls. Not played it since but since he’s no longer associated with the company that released it I’m working my way back to it.

Happy to buy second hand Dilbert books.

Still feel sorry for that poor bastard from Steps (on top of being in Steps).

Dont mind the conspiracy theory stuff. I draw the line at paedos and people who’ve accepted knighthoods 😂

How far back are we applying our morals? For instance, can we listen to the works of Richard Wagner ignoring his anti-semitism?

For me, it’s all about the art. Eg. still own a Glitter album, it’s classic.

In general yes, I can separate art from artist.

I prickle a bit at particularly if I’m funnelling more cash their way on streamed listens, etc. I wouldn’t turn a Smiths song off if it came on the radio (I’d turn it up) but I won’t buy another album.

Not sure if that makes any sense at all, but that’s what it is….

I just popped in to say Lost Prophets. Stopped listening to the at the time but now I’m one of those Spotify listeners.

When it hit the news, I knew one Ian Watkins (which was very unfortunate for him) and the two famous ones. Clearly, until I looked into it I just assumed it was the bloke from Steps…

can we listen to the works of Richard Wagner ignoring his anti-semitism?

I’d love to say it was the moral high ground stopping me listening to Wagner. In reality it’s an inability to sit through several hours of impenetrable Germanic opera waiting for “that bit from Apocalypse Now”.

How far back are we applying our morals? For instance, can we listen to the works of Richard Wagner ignoring his anti-semitism?

Well it’s not like he’s going to be getting the royalties is it?

David Gilmour and the rest of Pink Floyd seem like decent blokes too. No wonder they don’t bother with Roger Waters

It’s a limited sample of one, but I’ve met and chatted to Nick Mason; he lives not far away and opens his gardens for local charities, also has a big selection of his cars on show, often wanders around buying stuff from stalls selling stuff, and happily stops and chats to people. I found a large book he’d written about his time with the band in a Bath charity shop, so year before last I took it along, together with the live CD he’d recorded with his band, and he was perfectly happy to sign them for me.

He’s having an open weekend in August, so I might get the chance to ask; “So, about Roger, then…?” 😉

I lost interest with The Wall, bought it on release, listened to it once, eventually gave it away.

For instance, can we listen to the works of Richard Wagner ignoring his anti-semitism?

Never liked Wagner. I can still listen to The Smiths, but Mozza’s solo stuff hasn’t really interested me. Lost Prophets? Who? Ian Brown? Totally indifferent to anything he’s ever done. Michael Jackson? A few decent choons, but that ‘tcha’ vocal tick he adopted absolutely drives me nuts, I can’t listen to anything much he’s recorded after The Jackson Five, he give me a sort of itch in the head that I can’t scratch! Gary Glitter? Seriously?
It’s funny, but generally speaking, most instances of artists turning out to be arse’oles of one sort or another seem to coincide with artists I’ve never taken a liking to in the first place. Van Morrison is one exception, I’ve enjoyed his music for many years, but it’s always been with the caveat that he’s never been a particularly pleasant person anyway.
It’s always been said that you should never meet your heroes, but I’ve met many artists over the decades I’ve been going to gigs, and I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t really lovely and appreciative of those who pay and turn out to see them play.

When it comes to painting and sculpture, that’s a bit more difficult; many turn out to be pretty unpleasant individuals, so that restricts the number whose work you could safely enjoy in the knowledge they were all sweetness and light.

Do you just exclude those you don’t like?
Bowie was a user / abuser of young groupies, as was Jimmy Page ( as were most artists in the 60s/70s/80s – they just didn’t bother to ask
Jerry Lee Lewis?
Jim Morrison?
Pete Docherty
John Lennon
Throughout classical music there are some pretty unsavoury characters
And I not too sure than anyone who hung around with the Medici family were nice…

Machiavelli was a real arse – but are we better not to have literature like The Prince?

mrmoofo

Do you just exclude those you don’t like?

Exclude from what?

I don’t like the music/art it’s more satisfying hating them when they turn out to be scum bags (eg. Lost Prophets, they were shit).
I do like the music/art, I just separate it from the scumbagedness.

Love Pantera still but think Phil Anselmo is a bit of an arse.

stopped buying/listening/going to see Morrissey when the penny finally dropped with me that he really was an indefensible bigoted Little Englander.

Used to love PJ Harvey but my interest started to wane when she stopped playing guitar and wailing like a banshee and decided she was some kind of real “artist” but her pro-fox hunting stance really put me off.

Dont mind the conspiracy theory stuff.

I think a lot depends on how people use their platform.

Artists make art and in many cases that art stands alone – it’s distinct from the personality of the person that made it. Whether you like the art or not it doesnt matter what you think of the person that made it  – you don’t have to like the person to like the product they make. And a lot of artists deliberately keep their personal life and their public persona very separate. Thats the reason successful artists often are very focused on privacy because who they are in public and who they are as a friend or a partner or parent etc are often very different things.

So you can like a song and not know how someone votes, or what religion they subscribe to or whatever, or what they are like to live with or whether they are nice as a neighbour – the song is about whatever the song is about and nothing else.

Even people who stand with their art as they present it- a musician or a comedian for instance. The person you see on stage isn’t really them – just someone with the same face, voice and name – but a stage persona is very rarely the person. Theres a well known comedian that I grew up with and its really interesting to see him sort of transform from the guy I know to the guy everyone knows in the space of about 5 minutes before he goes on stage – its almost like a possession – the guy I know just disappears, the new guy doesn’t even seem to know me.

But artists have a platform and if they use it to campaign, to proselytise, advance oddball theories to the audience that work gives them then then thats a power available to them that most others don’t have. It then becomes quite difficult to separate Eric Clapton’s Blues and Bob Marley covers from his Enoch Powell endorsements between the songs.

So there are artists that have done quite horrible things, they are bad people, but they don’t tell anyone about those horrible things and  their work isn’t about glorifying those horrible things, it doesn’t seek to encourage others to advance and participate horrible actions or ideas.

And the are artists who make lovely art and in-between songs spout zenophobia and on twitter encourage people to stop their cancer treatment because of jewish space lasers or whatever. It’s only words rather than actions but they can be words that ultimately harm and kill people. And the scale and scope for harm is much greater than any acts they could perpetrate personally.

I just implement “The Jacko Rule” – which I made up and which says it’s OK to enjoy any of his output from before his horrible crimes were claimed to have begun.

Fortunately in his case that means Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad are all safe – but anything after that (when his quality dropped off anyway) is questionable.

It’d be great to do a proper study plotting subjective artistic quality vs. dodgy behaviour/opinions and see if there’s a consistent relationship.

BTW – I never liked that Kevin Spacey anyway, always seemed way too smug.

I vacillate between the two stances. Fundamentally I understand that good art is good because of its quality not some quality of the artist, the opposite is also true, brilliant art doesn’t magically transform its maker into a good person.

But you really can’t listen to R Kelly singing about sex anymore; Down Low anyone? Or Ye/ Kayne’s All Falls Down without realising that what he’s said recently goes against the meaning of that song, so renders his entire back catalogue questionable.

It depends if i feel the nasty aspects of the artist are evident in the art.

TiRed
Full Member
Gill Sans is a lovely font. You won’t find it at Battersea Dogs Home.

I used to design books for a well known publisher who would never let any of Eric Gill’s fonts be used as Gill buggered raped his father when at school.

There’s an interesting BBC podcast on this, ‘Evil Genius’.  I’m not a massive fan of Russell Kane who presents it and a fair few of his panel guests are a bit irritating but it is quite thought provoking. It presents ‘evidence’ that well known people (not just artists) are ‘evil’ or ‘genius’.

Yeah, the format is a bit rubbish and superficial but it definitely unearths some dark stuff about people I’d otherwise held in high regard. And conversely, good stuff done by people you alway had pegged as wrong uns (Bernard Manning anyone?), or at least a better understanding of how they came to be such arses.

I haven’t listened to them all, but musicians covered include Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Elvis, Freddy Mercury, Prince, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., John Lennon, Amy Winehouse and loads more. It’s on Spotify as well as the BBC sounds link above.

A while ago I was stood on a train platform with some mates. An automated recording played over the tannoy saying “Have you seen anything that looks suspicious?”, just as a bloke with in a Lostprophets t-shirt walked past. My mate pointed and shouted “YES! HIM!”.

I’m still chuckling about that now!

Do you just exclude those you don’t like?
Bowie was a user / abuser of young groupies, as was Jimmy Page ( as were most artists in the 60s/70s/80s – they just didn’t bother to ask
Jerry Lee Lewis?
Jim Morrison?
Pete Docherty
John Lennon

What did Morrison and Lennon do? Is this to do with their lyrics or actions?

What did Morrison and Lennon do? Is this to do with their lyrics or actions?

Dunno about Jim Morrison, but Lennon was apparently a lot less peace and love in his relationships than in his lyrics. Domestic violence a factor in a few by all accounts.  The Evil Genius podcast goes in to this a bit. Not on the same scale, but he also falsely played up his ‘working class roots’ when he was really a bit posh, and didn’t always give due credit to others (not McCartney) who had input to his songs.

What’s the beef on Prince?

I’ve read that he could be a bit difficult and demanding, but was he implicated in anything more dodgy?

You got to feel sorry for other in bands with those that have been found to be peados or the like.

Imagine someone in the pub talking about playing in a band, you’re supposed to be proud of your achievements, so you say “oh I used to be in a band also, we had a few tracks in the charts”, “oh yeah who was that”, “oh, errr, the Lost Prophets……”, tumble weed……

I don’t think you can separate the art from the artist. I know I can’t.

Hitler painted some nice architecture water colours (so I’ve heard). I have no desire to see them due to the man he ended up being.

I understand people saying early stuff from artists is ok because that was before they did “bad things” but my head doesn’t work that way.

Lennon – just by all accounts a bit of a nasty piece of work, smug, vindictive and a hypocrite.
Morrison – serial groupie user, drug introducer and the morals of a snake

Unless you can find out that it isn’t the case, you should assume that royalties on recording sales, streaming etc. (but not playing a recording as that is free) will go to the artist. Something to take into account.

Definitely a tricky one. I’m a fan of The Doors but Morrison was a total dick. Not sure how much of that was down to drug abuse and alcoholism. It would definitely put me off a musician though. Ryan Adams as a prime example.

From the title I had assumed this was to be a thread about art (painting/sculpture/etc) and how the product can’t be taken in isolation from the status of the artist. ie – a lot of the art of Art is about building the status of the artist and maintaining it so as to keep their reputation and thus prices high.

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Morrison – serial groupie user, drug introducer and the morals of a snake

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Omg, it’s almost like he’s in a rock n roll band or something…