Where next for Lostprohets?

IT’S hard to see how things can ever be the same for Lostprophets.

Frontman Ian Watkins, 35, will appear in court in the UK on December 31 facing chargesincluding conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child under 13 andfour offences relating to possession and distribution of indecent images ofchildren.

The remaining members – Jamie Oliver, Lee Gaze, Luke Johnson, Mike Lewis and Stuart Richardson – issued a statement this week speaking of their ‘state of shock’.

Understandably so.

“It is a difficult time for us and our families, and we want to thank our fans for their support as we seek answers,” they said.

If Ian Watkins is found guilty – and let’s be clear, there is no proven guilt at this time – Lostprophets are no more. Bands have, of course, lost their singer in the past and carried on.

Alice In Chains and Drowning Pool are the examples that leap to mind straight away. But, sadly, those guys passed on and left a legacy.

If a person goes to jail for the type of crimes Ian Watkins has been charged with, surely you can’t carry on under the same banner with a new guy singing the old songs.

Crime and music are, of course, regular bedfellows. Gangsta rap wouldn’t be that without it’s tales of guns and drugs.

And of course there are current examples, like Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God, who is facing manslaughter charges after a fan died following one of the band’s gigs in Prague in May 2010. He has consistently protested his innocence, but faces five to 10 years in prison if found guilty.

Where do his bandmates go from there?

Perhaps that’s too current an example to speculate on the future of the band. Ian Watkins will have his day in court before Randy Blythe.

There are plenty of others from history though.

JamesBrown and Chuck Berry are two examples of musicians who have been found guilty of crimes and who have continued to perform and maintain their audience.

Brown – like his younger, more current namesake Chris – was arrested over domestic abuse, but his penchant for hitting women never did anything to dampen his fans love for him and indeed performed to a crowd of 80,000 at the Oxegen festival in Ireland a short while before his death in 2006.

Berry – like Ian Watkins – found himself facing child abuse charges after a police raid found on his home found video tapes of females using the restroom at his Southern Air restaurant in Missouri, including a minor.

Drugs were also found and Berry was able to avoid the child abuse charges by pleading guilty to possession of marijuana. He got a six-month suspended sentence.

But these charges did little to curtail his career either and, at the age of 86, he’s still performing, albeit less and less due to health reasons. And, of course, the guilt there was never proven.

There is a British artist who – having sold more than 40million records – finds it almost impossible to have a public image after being sentenced to seven years in prison in 2001 for the sexual assault of five boys dating back to the late 1980s.

JonathanKing was something of a big deal in music in the second half of the 1960s and into the 70s, before moving more into television in the 1980s.

He ended up serving three-and-a-half years but has always protested his innocence, insisting the boys he was accused of abusing were 16 or 17 and not 14 or 15 as had been claimed.

In aninterview with the Independent newspaper in November 2011 he said: “Until I was in my twenties, any kind of gay contact was illegal. It's wrong to judge the morality of then by the morality of now.”

His career has continued of sorts. That interview with the Independent laments how he has not been allowed to return to the public eye, although his publishing company – which owns the rights to Abba and Genesis’ music – still brings him in a healthy salary. Around £10,000 a month from iTunes sales, he claims.

And so to the most obvious offender of them all – Gary Glitter.

In the age of glam rock, Glitter was one of the masters as he fought the likes of Slade and T-Rex for chart domination. Although his career dipped, he had enjoyed something of a comeback until his arrest for possession of indecent images of children in 1997 and jailing in 1999.

He went on to commit much worse crimes while in exile in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Quite rightly, he is now seen as a figure of disgust and although several compilations of his songs are still being released – the most recent in 2011 – it seems there is justly no way back for him in popular culture.

And so it seems where the guilt of offences against children are proven, there is little or no way back into the public eye for the offender.

The members of Lostprophets not currently being held in custody said they are seeking answers. No doubt one of the questions will be ‘where do we go from here?’