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Pick of the Pops yesterday
Glenn A
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I have often wondered how POTP treats charts between 1972 and 1975, when the disgraced Gary Glitter will have been in them most of the time, and found out yesterday when one of his hits scraped the Top 20 from 1975. Dale Winton simply mentioned it briefly and moved on. Actually I was under the impression charts that featured Glitter were avoided, but this must be the policy by brusquely mentioning the song and moving on as there is so much great music from this era that should be played. Seemingly re runs of TOTP from the seventies edit out any appearances by Glitter.
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Johnny Vaughan, David Dickenson, Stephen Fry, Mick Jagger, 50 Cent to name a few.
bet they didn't play the LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNG VERSION!;):D
None have the above have convictions for child sex which is regarded by most people as about as sick as you can get.
Glitter is in Jail for it at the moment so is obviously still engaged in the practise.
Adding cash to his bank account (as he wrote a lot of his hits) by playing them would be wrong on just about every level
I understand that the vile Jonathan King managed a number of pop groups. Does he still benefit from royalties?
If any of HIS songs were played on the radio & he wrote them...yes, but there were all crap anyway so no-one plays them.
Most he performed under other names like Sacharin, St Cecilia, etc. He did do Everyone's gone to the moon in 65 & One for you, one for me in 78 under his real name, but we can live without both of those as well....Don't know if he wrote them though
As for groups he managed, i don;'t think he ever wrote songs for them
Obviously most of us at some time or another have been flashed by a Gatso camera so we're not all saints but it does make you think.
You cant even go into a supermarket without being filmed, so you are correct with your findings
As for Glitters music being banned was that an industry decision?
I'm not aware "the industry" took a decision not to play Glitter anymore.
I think each PD quite rightly thought they'd find it hard to defend & his songs really haven't sttod the test of time.
Interestingly, he still gets US radio airplay
Yes, but certain crimes are worse than others aren't they.
I think Glitter & King get banned because their crimes are indefenceable to most people, while those involved in other crimes tend to get forgiven after they've served time.
Child sex is about as sick as you can get & not playing his songs reflects this.
I thought he was on probation back in the UK now after he finished his sentence in Vietnam or somewhere?
So a DJ or station might find itself at the centre of something it would prefer not to. However, to wipe out someone's music say as though it never happened might also be questionable so thankfully there are some ways to obtain obscure tracks legally and privately but it still does not get away from the fact that unfortunately those concerns still get royalties which causes problems morally.
I can think of one person is later life who was found to have had a similar situation to Glitter but was part of a group...their music was popular in the 60's as they were...should the rest of the group suffer for that one member of the group.
Another US singer still has music played and no one seems to say anything about that. But on the grounds that my memory means I could get details of who it is wrong, I would not repeat it in greater detail(I think he has died since all this was made public)and the singer I only ever heard it mentioned once on the radio in a news report many years ago.
It is very difficult.
Mapperley gives a good example of the kind of feelings that are invoked.
It is difficult as anyone who did a feature on glam rock on the radio would find it hard not to avoid Glitter's music, although the simple thing would be simply to feature glam acts in isolation and ignore him. Obviously the main problem would be if his music was played, apart from the uproar from listeners, would be he could still benefit from the royalties so he is completely by passed. Also from a musical point of view, he was like a poor man's Marc Bolan and even before he was caught out his music wasn't rated very highly by glam aficionados.
What's next...their entries in the Virgin Book of Hit Singles being deleted???
I suppose it depends on whether or not you think, as HoM/PC/whatever, your radio station is losing out by not playing them, balancing that against the kind of backlash you might get, by including them in your regular playlist.
Gary Glitter is easy to dismiss, because he was considered a parody of himself at the time; Jonathan King could be said to be slightly more awkward, because he had a chart career lasting nearly 40 years, but mainly not in his own name, so you have to explain the backstory, every time you play a song he was involved with, but which will then be overshadowed by the fact he's a convicted paedophile.
Where it gets much more difficult, is in the case of someone like Michael Jackson, who could properly claim to have influenced at least a couple of generations of music producers and listeners; during his second trial (when it looked like there was a good chance of him being convicted) I remember having many conversations about what to do doing the trial, then what to do if he got done.
If you stopped playing songs recorded by him, what about covers?
Or songs written by him, that other people recorded?
Or songs that were obviously influenced by him?
Or songs that featured samples of him?
Fortunately (for PC's everywhere) he didn't get convicted and then he died, so his work remains solid gold.
I think he's out now and is back in the UK. Every few months the newspapers normally track him down and run a story on him.
I heard someone talking about Gary Glitter a few months ago (I think it was Iain Lee on Absolute Radio) and they believed that Glitter had sold the rights to his back catalogue years ago so does not benefit from royalties. Not I that I imagine there's a big demand to hear his songs - rightly because of his crimes but also because a lot of his (and Jonathan King's) music does not pass the test of time.
Cant remember the Journo concerned but decribed Glitters "leader outfit" as "A Turkey Wrapped In Its Own Tinfoil"
One dilemma for radio programmers - if doing an old chart countdown or an 80s retrospective - would you play Doctorin' The Tardis by The Timelords (KLF), a number 1 from June 1988? The song is based around not only Blockbuster by Sweet but also Rock And Roll by GG and features GG on background vocals... and unlike GG's own output (which has aged terribly and so could be ignored anyway) it's still quite a fun song.