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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

While I agree with the people around Epstein need to come clean, I'm also going to point out that most of us don't check whether any of the people we hang out with are felons or sex offenders.

Even moreso, if you hang out with rock musicians, it's probably guaranteed that you know people in both categories... (I seem to remember some North American rock event that had to leave almost 25% of the bands at the US border because they weren't allowed to enter Canada due to various legal convictions.)

In addition, one would naturally assume that someone guilty of all the crap Epstein was wouldn't be walking around free. The fact that Epstein was free was almost certainly because he was an intelligence asset.

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> I'm also going to point out that most of us don't check whether any of the people we hang out with are felons or sex offenders.

I can assure you that people like Bill Gates have staff that check these things.

> due to various legal convictions

Wouldn’t this have been like 100% for drug possession charges? Which most people are generally and understandably not too morally upset about, especially if it’s drugs like marijuana or cocaine?

Rock musicians are notorious for that sort of illegal behavior, certainly, but not for anything worse AFAIK? Unless you’re referring to violent gang activity, though that is normally reserved for a couple other genres…

Tangentially related and not many convictions but many rock musicians have famously slept with children.

Names please.

IIRC Steven Tyler is one of those cases.

He managed to get _legal guardianship_ of a 16 yo girl when he was 20 something.

Googled this, and here's a quote from Yahoo:

> Misley’s suit directly references Tyler’s memoir, in which he recalled he “almost took a teen bride” and that the underage girl’s parents “signed a paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state. I took her on tour with me.”

I'm not a Tyler fan and know very little about his work other than the Aerosmith Collab with Run DMC, but I've always thought that song had very suspect lyrics, literally invoking the idea of sex with school girls.

There's so many failures of reasonable behavior to unpack here. I understand that times have changed, but I can't see how anybody ever thought any of this was OK. Even Walk This Way, it's very clear what the song is about. Don't care how catchy it may be.

I can only conclude that most people either don't really listen to the lyrics of something, or they can't actually process what they mean.

Jimmy Page/Lori Maddox (14) Ted Nugent Jerry Lee Lewis Elvis Presley

I'm sure there are more.

It’s really weird. “Cherry pie” was playing in a grocery store and my child said “what in the hell is this song about?” And also “Seventeen” by Winger. It’s messed up how many hair metal bands in the 80s sang about teenage girls.

Rock musicians are also notorious for domestic violence and statutory rape. [0]

[0] https://everyoneknew.com/music-bands-musicians/

The link on that page for Anthony Kiedis (https://www.laweekly.com/can-you-be-a-feminist-and-still-lov...) mentioned him getting up mid-interview, on camera (complete with video), and trying to kiss the interviewer, despite her rejecting his advances. That's just one documented example. Whilst I don't know much about RHCP beyond their music, I'm amazed that they are still in the zeitgeist, let alone signed to a major record label. Extremely disappointing.

Most of these I knew about, but some I didn't. Yikes.

I don’t disagree with you morally, but I think there’s something kind of funny here. My impression of this sort of behavior at that time is that it was meant to be morally shocking to a certain type of person, and that enacting this scandalous behavior would generate attention for the celebrity (and it worked). At the time the sort of person to be offended was like, Christian older people, parents of teenagers, I think. Now somehow it’s shifted to being modern feminists who are primarily offended, and they’re more offended than the Christians ever were! Ironic, no?

Statutory rape is not rare among rock musicians.

While there are quite a few rock musicians notorious for having sex with really young girls, young musicians banging girls a bit shy of 18 years old is not uncommon.

The age of consent being a bit shy of 18 is also not uncommon, though.

Huh. I guess you're right.

However, California is 18 and New York, Illinois and Texas are 17. That covers a LOT of the population of the US.

But three of those four are in the “a bit shy of 18” camp.

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