![]() "So many people, when you tell them you're making a film like this, they're like 'Oh, no, please don't' - and then they name their favourite rock star because they don't want that musician or that music to be ruined for them. I think that there hasn't been an opportunity or a hunger until now to actually hear these stories in a way that challenges our ideas of what the rock scene was. Post #MeToo, Cunningham says the world is hopefully finally ready to listen: "Culturally, we're all thinking in a different way. Image: Look Away director Sophie Cunningham says she hopes the documentary can play a part in starting to instigate change. It's actually not about the rock stars at all, it's about these women and it's about them being heard - so that people don't just make the assumptions that I think a lot of people make about some of these women." I don't think it's a case of wanting to get their own back or tearing anyone down. For many of them, it's a personal reckoning. "All of the women in the film are incredible women in the sense they're forgiving and they aren't 'out to get' these rock stars. You don't want to take away from but you have to recognise that other things were at play. looks at an era I think we all feel very fondly towards, but we need to look at it in a different way. ![]() "I spoke to so many music industry insiders who made it quite clear that nothing has changed. "Although we are focusing on a certain era in this film, the music industry is still functioning in a very, very similar way," she says. Speaking out like this is not necessarily about seeking justice in the legal sense, says Cunningham, but having a voice - and trying to instigate change. Jackie Fuchs, bassist with The Runaways - who was known as Jackie Fox at the time - also shares her story, accusing Fowley, the band's manager, of rape, and detailing how people ignored it at the time. Image: (L-R): Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, Jackie Fox (Fuchs) and Lita Ford of The Runaways, pictured in 1976. She accuses him of physical abuse - grabbing her hair and dragging her - before they had sex. Kennedy was a Penthouse "Pet of the Year" and says she was invited back to a party at a hotel suite with the star. Sheila Kennedy is another woman featured in the documentary, speaking about an experience with Axl Rose in the late 1980s. It's not a different era, it's just that we look at it differently." But I think it's clear from the women who've spoken out that their experiences as girls impacted them in the same way that they would if it happened to now. "It's very, very easy to think 'It was different then, it was hedonistic, the world was a different place'. There were power structures that enabled them as long as they were selling records and as long as they were making money for the big record companies, I think there was a general understanding could pretty much get away with anything and also it could all just be written up as an excess of the time. "Musicians were these godlike creatures, especially at that time. "I think a lot of the times the artists themselves have written about their escapades with their girlfriends or what they got up to during this era and you never really hear from the women," says Cunningham. But perhaps more shocking is that for years, this kind of behaviour wasn't at all shocking. Through the lens of 2021, laid out in black and white, it all seems pretty shocking. She also claims she became pregnant with his baby, and had an abortion after coming under heavy pressure from him. Because the age of consent in the state was 18, she claims Tyler persuaded her mother to sign over guardianship to him, making her his ward, so she could travel with the star on tour.
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