In a hit piece in The Quietus in May 2017 – the lead singer of Gene, Martin Rossiter, added Jimmy Savile to the list of Morrissey’s heavily edited word crimes, writing:
Talking about the Jimmy Savile abuse investigation, saying: “2013 enlightenment can’t be applied to dark and dim nights of 1972, otherwise every singer who ever slept with a 14-year-old would suddenly be behind bars – and that would take a lot of bars”
The full quote is this:
As for Jimmy Savile, he is dead. He’s unlikely to care very much what The Daily Mail thinks of him. Savile has won. He got away with it, and he was obviously never a villain in his own eyes. What remains is the question of complicity, because he could not have been so successful a predator without co-conspirators. Who are they, where are they? What are the names of the police chiefs who ignored Savile’s victims? Savile was a profiteer, and those who protected him are still here. However, I’m not sure if witch-hunts against aged Radio Caroline DJs is quite the point. 2013 enlightenment can’t be applied to the dark and dim nights of 1972, otherwise every singer who ever slept with a 14 year old would suddenly be behind bars – and that would take a lot of bars. Any move against the will of another is wrong, but Savile must have imagined himself to be the kids that he assaulted, and he thought them lucky – such was the ego. (Loaded, February 2013)
Later he said:
Hot Press: How did you react to the recent revelations that M15 confiscated a paedophile dossier naming VIP figures, drawn up by Barbara Castle?
Morrissey: I didn’t even raise an eyebrow. The fact that the dossier is supposedly missing is immaterial. People read it and know what it says, and they couldn’t possibly forget the names that they read. Similarly, the ‘royal’ family have determined that the file on the famous Profumo case not be opened or made available to the public until 50 years after Prince Philip’s death. Draw your own conclusions from that. What becomes farcical is the way the modern Conservative government dictate to the public about tax and recession and recycling, and we’re expected to listen and obey, whilst that same government apparently has a history of paedophilia which they go to excessive lengths to hide, whilst telling us how naughty everyone else is. Last week the Pope announced that 2% of priests, bishops and cardinals in the Catholic church are known paedophiles! And this was the fifth story on the news! And we’re asked to have faith in the Catholic church! The world has officially gone mad.
Hot Press: A 1978 radio interview has just been unearthed in which John Lydon accuses Jimmy Savile of being “into all kinds of seediness that we all know about but aren’t allowed to talk about”. What were your impressions of Jimmy Savile?
Morrissey: I’m naïve on the subject of child abuse. I can’t even imagine what it is. My brain doesn’t lock into it. So, I think the Savile case has profoundly changed British society and obviously depressed everyone, but we’ll soon have a sterile Hollywood epic with Johnny Depp in a blond wig holding a fat cigar. Jimmy Savile worked a lot at the BBC in Manchester, and on the club circuit in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the older members of my family would always heave a sharp intake of breath at the mention of his name. I never knew why. But I think Operation Yewtree is unsurvivable for Britain. Imagine what the rest of the world is thinking. Imagine what small children are thinking. Once again, there’s no concentration on the police commissioners who ignored reports from Savile’s victims. They’re just as guilty – why not smoke them out? (Hot Press, August 2014)
Morrissey isn’t ignoring victims, he’s questioning the system that allows predators (who don’t see themselves as predators) to thrive – police, governments, the Catholic Church.
It’s the same position he has on the UK child abuse scandal that involved grooming gangs of mainly Asian heritage, and a brief spate of London acid attacks reportedly committed by (mainly) non-white people on (mainly) non-white people.
His focus is on the government, the media and the police – not (as assumed by people who say they’re anti-racist yet immediately jump to the most racist conclusion) on slandering all non-white people, or even on the perpetrators, who are criminals being criminal.
London is second only to Bangladesh for acid attacks. All of the attacks are non-white, and so they cannot be truthfully addressed by the British government or the Met Police or the BBC because of political correctness. What this means is that the perpetrator is considered to be as much of a victim as the actual victim. We live in the Age of Atrocity. (Morrissey Central, September 2018)
Telford grooming gangs? Hardly worth a whisper in The Independent. (Morrissey Central, March 2018)
And he’s not wrong that the jails would be full of 1970s DJs and pop stars if all of them were prosecuted – Jimmy Page, David Bowie, Bill Wyman, John Peel… as well as those already convicted, Jonathan King, Gary Glitter…
The underage groupie scene was well-documented, and still celebrated right up until the Harvey Weinstein scandal:
IN THE EARLY 1970S, the Sunset Strip was a magnet for rock stars: Bowie, Zeppelin, Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople, The Who. They all hung out in the VIP rooms of louche LA nightclubs like E Club, the Rainbow, and Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. And with them, of course, came groupies. Scantily clad 14- and 15-year-olds like Sable Starr and Lynn “Queenie” Koenigsaecker sipped cherry cola, dropped pills, and evolved into pubescent dream girls for the platform-shoed rockers who could get anything and anyone they desired.
Decades before Drake dissed Tyga for dating 17-year-old Kylie Jenner, and R. Kelly faced multiple allegations of having sex with minors, the most visible rock stars in the world blithely made it with girls who were barely out of junior high school. It was all glorified in the pages of a glossy magazine called Star, which reveled in the underage groupie scene for five issues. Other publications, such as the rock ‘n’ roll bible Creem, flicked at the Sunset Strip doings without so much as a wagged finger. Hell, in 1973, a leisure-suited Tom Snyder devoted an entire show to interviews with some of LA’s highly desired teenage groupies. (Thrillist, March 2015)
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/i-lost-my-virginity-to-david-bowie
Folk Devil 