Melbourne band Teenage Mothers have a habit of making headlines for all the wrong reasons, stirring up controversy everywhere they go.
The punk four piece are best known as the band that were the support act for M83’s Laneway sideshow tour in 2012, only to be unceremoniously booted and subsequently got into a war of words with the French electro act’s frontman, Anthony Gonzales; who said Teenage Mothers’ singer James ‘JK’ Kennedy ‘looked like a junkie’ after inhaling nitrous oxide onstage – or as the band call it: “a nang.”
Teenage Mothers continued their contentious track record (and headline count) by starting a bar brawl at St. Kilda’s The Espy that let do a riot squad arrest a few short months later, and personally criticising Michael Chugg and his touring company for “pursuing a vicious vendetta” against them, accusing the promoter of blackballing them from the Mystery Jets’ Australian tour
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Now their frontman Raph Brous has found himself at the centre of a defamation lawsuit stemming from a disagreement that started on David Jones’ Facebook page of all places. To understand how it came to this, we’ve got to go back more than a year. So strap yourself in and get the popcorn.
Back in 2013, in reply to a story about model and David Jones spokesperson Miranda Kerr posted by the fashion retailer on Facebook, Teenage Mothers posted a link to their infamous tune ‘Orlando & Miranda’ with controversial lyrics such as “Miranda, when he’s fucking you, do you ask who blessed your name? Orlando, when she’s sucking you, do you thank your god of fame?”
Charlie Goldsmith, PR representative for David Jones, took exception to this and advised them to never post on his company’s wall again, and allegedly offering to tell them in person. It should also be said, that as well as David Jones PR rep, Goldsmith also counts Miranda Kerr as a personal friend.
Teenage Mothers were none too happy with Goldsmith’s response to their song. “Are you threatening me? On what legal grounds? I reminded him that freedom of expression is protected by Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights,” Brous told TheLostZine.
“That song is about the timeless injustice of ‘beauty’. We all see that ‘beautiful’ people live in undeserved privilege (socially and economically), while average-looking people become junkies and homeless bums. That inequality is paraded by the tabloids like candy in a shop window.”
“Go to a toffy private grammar school and look at the students. It’s no accident that they’re disproportionately tall Aryan ubermenschen. Then they have good-looking kids. So disadvantage is entrenched not only economically and culturally, but genetically too. That’s just how the world works.”
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Fast forward to 2014 and Brous continued the beef on air on Melbourne’s 3RRR community station’s Livewire program. Allegedly Brous said on air of Goldsmith: “He will probably try to sue me in defamation but I don’t care. He is a knob jockey. He is an A1 turd burglar. I guarantee you. He is an Aryan ubermenschen, par excellence.”
Now Goldsmith has launched legal action, saying that the broadcast was false and defamatory, wrongly accusing him of fraud, hypocrisy, dishonesty, being a religious traitor and lacking integrity.
According to The Daily Telegraph, in an open letter dated August 12, Brous claimed that Goldsmith’s objection to being called a “turd burglar” and “knob jockey” was a form of homophobia and said he would call on his “contacts at gay magazines and gay websites and journalists from major newspapers” for support.
“The media coverage will be unflattering to Mr Goldsmith, who will be publicly condemned for his homophobia and I will not hesitate to involve high profile friends in the Australian gay rights lobby,” the letter read.
But now that legal action has actually been initiated, Brous is singing a different tune, offering to donate money to charity in lieu of damages and has written several apologies to Goldsmith’s lawyers.
“I hereby apologise unreservedly to Mr Charlie Goldsmith for my ill-judged and gratuitous comments on the 3RRR ‘Livewire’ program,” he wrote on Facebook. “I retract those comments. I acknowledge that Mr Goldsmith is a respected member of the community and I regret causing him offence.”
3RRR confirmed it had since removed audio of the show from its website. The song ‘Orlando & Miranda’ however is still widely available.
