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Tom Jones says the music industry has a long history of sexual harassment

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 20 October 2017

Tom Jones has said that sexual harassment is as prevalent behind the scenes in the music industry as it is in the movie business, echoing comments made by artist manager Sarah Bowden earlier this week. He also told BBC Radio 5 Live yesterday that he had been the target of unwanted attention early in his career.

“Things happen in showbusiness, and sometimes things are covered up and then they come to light, and then other people come forward”, he said of the plethora of recent accusations made against movie producer Harvey Weinstein. “Sometimes it’s like taking the cork off the top of a bottle. Things come out that maybe should have come out years ago … but justice will out. If you’ve done something wrong, you’ve got to pay for it, or prove that you haven’t done anything wrong”.

As for how the music industry fares in comparison to the film business, he added: “Things have always happened in the music industry. There’s been people complaining about … different things that they’ve been expected to do to get a record contract, just like they do to get a film contract. There’s always been that element there, that people with power sometimes abuse it”.

Though, contrary to what a number of women in the music business have said this week, Jones said he thought that it was possible to avoid these situations.

“If you’re true to yourself, you know when someone’s doing something wrong and you avoid it”, he said. “You think, if I’ve got to do this in order to do that, then I’m not going to do it. If somebody physically attacks you then that’s even worse, but just suggesting things and trying to manoeuvre you into certain situations, you just get out of there”.

This observation, he added, was based on his own experience. “At the beginning [of my career], yes, there were a few things like that”, he said. “But you avoid it. What’s tried on women is tried on men as well”.

Pressed for further detail on the incidents he was referring to, he said: “There was only once, really. [It made me feel] terrible … It wasn’t bad. It was just, somebody tried to pull. It was a question and I said, ‘No, thank you'”.

It has to be said, Jones seemed to be mainly talking about one specific form of abuse by powerful people in the music industry, which sits alongside a number of other equally unacceptable scenarios and situations that have been described this week by a number of women who work in the business in the wake of the Weinstein allegations.

In some of those other scenarios it’s not as simple as saying “no”, either because the abuser won’t accept that answer, or because doing so would cost the victim their existing job, rather than just depriving them of a new opportunity.

That said, while Jones’s comments probably only cover one element of the wider problem, his remarks on the harassment of young men in the industry does widen this week’s conversation in some ways. And, of course, all forms of abuse and harassment need to be discussed and tackled to overcome these ongoing issues.

As previously reported, earlier this week artist manager Bowden told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire that harassment in the music industry is “as bad, if not worse” than in Hollywood. It happens “all the way down through the industry”, she said, and is “as common as being wolf-whistled at in the street”.