when it comes to this kind of dilemma; it all comes down to how it works for you: can YOU separate the man from the deed? The fact that you have sufficient doubts to consider it a dilemma suggests maybe your enjoyment is irremediably tainted. Others' mileage may vary. As they say. This is nothing new; consider Hitler's love of Wagner, combined with Wagner's own anti-Semitism. Does that mean nobody should listen to Wagner? Some say no, others say yes; some even go so far as to play Wagner in Israel, thereby reclaiming the glorious music from its composer's personal views.

Personally I don't have this dilemma with either Glitter or King, as their entire musical outputs were shit anyway.

I was wondering this just the other day. The thing that really gummed up the brainworks was another thought. We know about Gary Glitter's actions. What about the other people we know nothing about? How many people out there making records, or who have made records in the past are or were vile creatures of some shape or form that we didn't know about.....statistically the two artists you've mentioned can't be the only ones. To be safe I've stopped listening to music......

Another thought that came to mind was those musicians with drink and drug problems. Not vile creatures. Not at all. Just addicts really. But if they weren't musicians in great bands would you want to sit next to them on the bus?

We have to judge the art not the artist in these cases.the music world is full or deeply unpleasant characters who you'd cross the road to avoid in your daily life, but love to listen to at other times.I can think of one Irishman and one resident of New York in particular......

......unless it is the crime in the question that is being rhapsodised, I suppose. Liking the individual or their pastimes should not be a prerequisite to liking their musical output. JK and GG may well have been caught for their under-age doings and predelictions, and have paid or are paying a debt, of sorts, to society. I would deplore their actions to anyone, but how much younger were their "prey", and I use the word advisedly, from the barely teen hookers of LA, as described in many a 70s volume of memoir and outrage, as ravaged by many a bedenimed 70s rock god.
Changing "crimes", there has already been some equivalent debate about whether Ike Turner should be allowed in the house, as an alleged wife beater. I think the concensus was yes, but of course death is a great leveller of opinion.
Some of my favourite artists are more than likely nasty shits who one would avoid on principle, but that doesn't stop me liking them,thru' their songs? Another dead example would be Warren Zevon, who was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, by all accounts. Still love his music. Likewise, I am sure that Daniel O'Donnell is an entirely decent cove, without a criminal intent about him, but I won't be having his music near me, thanks a lot.
Until someone sings a song about sodomising small boys, of which I may find the content a wee bit strong, I will try, sometimes fail, to separate the music from the man (or woman). Yet I can sing along with Alice Cooper and Dead babies...... Funny that. It must be "ironic", the all-encompassing get out clause

...who've been wife beaters, pederasts, anti-Semites, ingrates and practitioners of other behaviours we like to fool ourselves that we have banished from contemporary society, then The Canon would be entirely out of shot.

When it comes to reprehensible behaviour then even the seediest pop stars are Little League. I draw your attention to the playwright John Osborne who called his mother "a grabbing, uncaring crone", fantasised about spitting in the eye of the corpse of one of his ex-wives and couldn't mention his daughter without saying "God rot her".

The greater the artists the less we know about them. Shakespeare and Jane Austen came before the rise of the personality cult. As soon as we know anything about them - as in the case of Charles Dickens - we find they're at least as fallible as the rest of us, very often have huge egos and find themselves presented with opportunities for sin that aren't offered to most of us.

The people I feel sorry for (other than the victims, which hopefully goes without saying), is the musicans whose pensions have probably been knackered by their bosses' predilications.

Otherwise, there is an issue of time and its healing powers here. The victims of King and Glitter would most likely take great offence at the rehabilitation of their abusers.

The victims of Leadbelly less so, and the victims of some 17th century troubadour, not one jot.

I Love You Love Me Love is actually an amazing song, and I did hear someone cover it once in an acoustic situation, thus rendering into a thing of beauty about having great hair and looking fabulous, rather than the preposterous eyebrows and tight foil-like garments.

Hitler. While The Chapman Brothers' Hell remix is possibly the greatest artwork in existence, is it okay to snigger at how dreadful an artist he was? 'He may have had an interesting approach to humanity, but he couldn't paint for toffee'. Jotting out his rather basic views while his day job was, well...

There's a doco coming soon to C4 about how Dickens had a mistress for the last 16 years of his life, perhaps even having fathered a child with her.

It was all totally at odds with his public face. It would have caused a scandal. Today, it would mean... not much.

But it makes you think - who knows what goes on behind closed doors?

Perhaps it's sometimes better not to know.

Should Michael Jackson be added to the list of Glitter and King of "the great unplayed"......or not?

innocent until proven guilty?

How do we know about the others?
For all we know Richard Thompson could be doing unspeakable things with pigs and eels. (I feel sure he isn't, but I have no definitive proof)
And he sings songs like this:

"I feel so good I'm going to break somebody's heart tonight
I feel so good I'm going to take someone apart tonight
They put me in jail for my deviant ways
Two years seven months and sixteen days
Now I'm back on the street in a purple haze

And I feel so good, and I feel so good
Well I feel so good I'm going to break somebody's heart tonight

I feel so good I'm going to make somebody's day tonight
I feel so good I'm going to make somebody pay tonight
I'm old enough to sin but I'm too young to vote
Society's been dragging on the tail of my coat
Now I've got a suitcase full of fifty pound notes
And a half-naked woman with her tongue down my throat

And I feel so good, and I feel so good
Oh I feel so good I'm going to break somebody's heart tonight

They made me pay for the things I've done
Now it's my turn to have all the fun
Well I feel so good I'm going to break somebody's heart tonight

And I feel so good, I feel so good
Well I feel so good I'm going to break somebody's heart tonight
Oh Oh Oh
I feel so good I'm going to break somebody's heart tonight
Hm break somebody's heart
Break somebody's heart
Hm break somebody's heart
Oh break somebody's heart"

Who are we to judge whether this is experience, desire or imagination?

Last New Year I went to watch basketball, ice hockey and American football in one 24-hour period in New York. At all three games they played stabs of Gary Glitter tunes (as well as Song 2, Hell's Bells etc.) to maintain the atmosphere when play was paused for yet another ad break.

The Glitter tracks sounded fantastic, which demonstrates that a) yes, they're great pop records, and b) the people in the US programming these things probably don't know who he is or what he's done - I can't imagine Glitter gets much of an outing at Old Trafford or The Reebok these days.

He is one of the best examples of a musician divided by this way of thinking. You couldn't move around the time of his death for multiple exclamations of "wife beater", regardless of the fact that he was a tremendously important musician. He played piano on the first rock 'n' roll record ever, for God's sake; inventing the sound of Jerry Lee Lewis some five years before the man himself.

You have to able to separate the art from the individual. Mind you, has anyone ever heard any of Charles Manson's material? I haven't.

was allegedly pretty awful towards his first wife, for whom he wrote "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." Dennis Wilson is about to get re-appraised (I've still got my vinyl "Pacific Ocean Blue") but was by most accounts a drunken boor. Samuel Taylor Coleridge got up to no good with Willie Wordsworth's sister, in between copious drug taking, but we still study "....Ancient Mariner" in school. I reckon there's a lot to be said for the French privacy laws: we didn't know about Mitterand's daughter until after he died because French law draws a clear distinction between your public and private life.

I was a far more impressionable Marxist type, I stopped listening to a (now dead) particular artist after hearing how he was a wife-beater. (It's not whom you suspect, by the way). These days, I listen to him again and not because I'm defending his vile actions. It's down to separating the artist and his actions.

Otherwise I'd never read Shakespeare or TS Eliot (vile anti-Semites both); listen to anything by Mick Jagger (Tory git) or rap acts involved with Farrakhan (Farrakhan, does whatever a Fara can) or watch TV shows featuring James Woods or Kelsey Grammar (Republican reptiles).

Nor is the reverse true: decent non-bigoted artists are not necessarily better than those who hang around with Old Nick. Otherwise Freda Kaho would draw better paintings than, ummm, Picasso. Aristo-apologiser Balzac wouldn't be better than, errrmmm, class warrior Helen Fielding. And Ian Curtis (post-punk's Alf Garnett) would not write better lyrics than Robert Smith (CND-supporting oobergoff).

PS Mind you, I still despise the unrepentant slug Clapton. Someone replace his guitar strings with cheese wire, pronto!

for me, albeit a indistinct blurry one. I mean unpalatable political views and being a difficult person to live with is one thing, paedohilia quite another. Not sure I could ever enjoy the music of a great artist again if I knew they had had raped someone, for example. But it is true that time changes everything and a certain distance makes it easier to accept the art as separate from the life somehow. That distance may need to be 100 years or more say, or at least after the artist's death.

I thought Peter Tatchell was a complete pillock and then I read the article in this months magazine and my views have changed somewhat. The reason I mention this is that the media ie. the guys that write this magazine and others can subvert our views about someone either intentionally or subconsciously. Some press article or some tv appearance somewhere along the line had fuelled my opinion of him and now another piece has changed that perception. It is easy to say don't get taken in by what we see and read but the truth is the media is so pervasive in all aspects of our life that it is damn near impossible to avoid doing so which explains why dictators use it so effectively.
Pete Townsend to my mind didn't persuasively answer the allegations made against him but very little of the mud stuck - I am sure part of the reason for this is that he is a legend to much of the music press and they gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Oh by the way Jonathan King and Gary Glitter are no longer popular because they are crap.Full stop.

but there's the small fact that they're both convicted paedophiles. I reckon that might actually have something to do with it.

...have been swayed by the argument that the morality of the artist is a weighty factor when it comes to judging the value of their art. From now on, in addition to reading reviews in the music press, I will also be conducting diligent research into the backgrounds of all the acts I listen to.

The media has a role to play here: WORD magazine should take it upon itself to inform the public of any skeletons lurking in the closest of the bands it covers. The best way of doing this would be the adoption of a set of universal symbols, relating to different misdemeanours, which can be attached to the bottom of album reviews. With such a system in place, readers can learn, at a glance, of any crimes committed by an act and allow this knowledge to shape their aesthetic appreciation of the music.

I also propose that WORD introduces a three strikes and you’re out policy, in which artists who have infringed upon moral decency more than three times no longer receive any coverage in the magazine. Because celebrities often evade justice in our flawed legal system, I suggest that what constitutes a strike should be decided by Mark Ellen – the editor’s decision being final in these grave and weighty matters. In his monthly letter to readers, Ellen (pictured sombrely dressed and with a black cap on his head) should elaborate on the reasons why a named act will no longer be mentioned in the pages of WORD. A spoken word version of this letter, accompanied by the national anthem, should henceforth be the first track on the free CD, given away with the magazine. (Note to David Hepworth – you will be expected to write liner notes for this track as you do with the others).

Furthermore, because music performed by n’er do wells is, by its nature, undesirable and repugnant, it follows that music made by those who have led clean and blameless lives must be more desirable and of greater aesthetic value. I hope to see this reflected in your publication and can’t wait to read your Debbie Gibson retrospective.

The music industry can help too. It seems blatantly unfair that entire bands should be penalised for the behaviour of a single member. I hope that record companies will now get to work expunging from their master tapes the input of any artist who has committed a criminal act that is considered an affront to decent society. I long for the day when I can purchase Gary Glitter’s 1973 album Touch Me, minus the vocals of Gary Glitter.

I must sign off now. Apparently some of the albums in my collection were made by heroin-users, who, with their decadent drug-use, have effectively offered their tacit support to the loathsome Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Rest assured I will be taking the offending CDs out into the garden and hurling stones at them until they are unplayable.

there's a whiff of smug modern eurocentricity about this debate.

Should an artist from somewhere a very long way away from our comfort zone here in over-privileged cotton-wool land come up with some stunning work we all fall in love with when first we hear it, will we all recoil in horror when we discover that the artist is married to three of his cousins, the youngest of which was a child bride who bore him his first son at the age of 13?

As William Blake says, those who 'are of the devil's party' (not Conservative, I don't think??) and commune with the dark and go to the brink of existence, tend to wring fromm themselves the most sincere, extreme or truthful art. It is a connundrum.

I find that I can forgive John Coltrane and Leonard Cohen their heroin addiction but have no time for idiot boy Doherty. Perhaps it's that absurd titfer perched on top of his simpering, fragile, girl's face. Albion? My arse.

Is the latest celeb who's grabbed my goat and attempted to throttle it (or smoke it). I'm sure you've all seen it - if not it, sadly, means you have to visit to the News of the world : http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/0806_amy_winehouse_crack.shtml

I try and separate Joe Orton's art from his habits of sex with young boys - but I find it difficult.

Winehouse has plundered 'black' music and proved herself to be - well - you can see for yourself.

Orton never pretended to be anything other than what he was; yet I find his honesty too brutal.

Son House killed a man, but had one of the greatest voices in blues music.

As has generally been agreed in this thread, there will always be bad and naughty artists making progressive art (and rubbish too - Doherty anyone?). Sometimes we just have to ignore their personal traits; or - live in denial.

King, Glitter and Winehouse: truly unpleasant people with nothing to say. IMO.

Gary Glitter is the only one listed above whose name is now used in rhyming slang.
How did it all go Pete Tong for him?
PC World's repair service, I believe.

... and I can't imagine much of it will be complimentary, I defy ANYONE to watch/listen to this and not love every second. Art is illogical and inconsistent; I believe Sir Cliff had something to say about the Devil and the best tunes.

I can't see me living my life without this song in it.

I shall continue to love it.

Oh honestly..you aren't listening to these people because of their moral characters. Very few artists of any persuasion led impeccable lives, and the criteria is not based upon their suitability to babysit your children. Anyway, they are all either dead, or going to die,at which point they will be sorted, one way or another,into an enormous hat.