⭐️𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐁𝐄𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐅 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐁𝐎’𝐒 𝐃𝐄𝐁𝐔𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐔𝐌⭐️

𝑰𝒕’𝒔 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒃𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒚 𝒂 𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒚 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒃𝒖𝒎?

Photo credits:  album cover; David Fox - Lorne Campbell Guzelian; David Fox's Twitter / edit by Olga

📢 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧: This is the photographer's cousin. There was some positive thing about this photo. The boy's father [brother – Ed.] had just died, and the fact that the cover photo appeared on posters all over England was very comforting to him. This photo somewhat helped him to endure his personal tragedy, and in this way, we were able to ease his pain. I hope so.
(𝐹𝑈𝑍𝑍, "𝐵𝑖𝑔 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒", 𝐽𝑢𝑙-𝐴𝑢𝑔'00)

But… a supposedly positive beginning turned out into an unexpectedly controversial continuation of the story.

However, my goal today is not to just exhume Placebo’s complications from the past – useless complications in fact, because there obviously was no blame on their side – but to generally discuss the topics of bullying and its consequences, AND taking (or not) the responsibility for one’s own future instead of keeping the role of a victim and trying to use this role in some way...

Photo credit unknown

🔸 🔸"𝑷𝑳𝑨𝑪𝑬𝑩𝑶 𝑴𝑨𝑫𝑬 𝑴𝒀 𝑳𝑰𝑭𝑬 𝑯𝑬𝑳𝑳"🔸 🔸 
𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐲 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐮𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐝
His face was plastered across billboards, in music shops and on T-shirts when he was just a 12-year-old schoolboy who grieved over the death of his brother.

Sixteen years on, 𝑫𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒅 𝑭𝒐𝒙 is hoping to sue band Placebo claiming they used the picture of him on their debut album cover without consent.

He says the image of him tugging at his cheeks and wearing a baggy red jumper ruined his life and led to him being bullied out of school when the album was released in 1996.
David, now 27, explained: “My older brother Duane had just passed away from muscular dystrophy, and my cousin Saul Fletcher came to the funeral. I didn’t know him very well because he lived in London and I was a lot younger than him.

“He was a professional photographer and came with all his camera
equipment. He got me outside and asked me to pull different faces and poses. We all thought it was for his personal use.”

But a month later, David got a call from Saul.
“His exact words to me were, ‘You’re going to be on a CD cover.’ That was it. It was just a statement, not a question.
“At that age I didn’t understand what was going on.”

Within a week of that phone call, the album bearing David’s face was in the shops. He added: “My mum brought home a copy of the album and I was overwhelmed. At first I thought it was pretty cool.”
But David’s life quickly turned upside down when he started getting bullied at school. Previously popular, in the next two weeks, classmates he once considered close friends began to tease and even fight him. He claimed: “That picture ruined my life. When I was in school I used to be well-known and have loads of mates. We used to play football together and I was really happy.
“But when the album came out, the friends I did have begun to pick on me. I think they might have been jealous. Or they saw a boy pulling a silly face and didn’t want to hang out with him anymore because he looks weird.

Photo credit: Adrian Green

“Because I lived in such a tiny village, everyone was friends with each
other. I think I could have got away with it if I lived in a big city.”
The album stormed the charts, reaching number five in the UK, and David soon became haunted by his own image. He began to see his face everywhere in shops, on billboards and even on TV.
He said: “I was watching EastEnders with my mum and I saw one of the billboards by the Tube with a massive poster of my face on it. My mum was gob smacked.”

By then the constant hounding at his primary school in New Holland, North Lincs, had already begun.
David said: “When we played games in break time, the team captains would never pick me anymore. Sometimes my old friends would mimic the face I was pulling on the front cover.
“I got hit a few times. I started hovering round the dinner ladies at
lunch for protection.

“Once an older kid threatened that he would be waiting for me after school. I told an older cousin who was also at that school and he walked me home. But then he got beaten up for sticking up for me.
“In the end my mum had to drive me home because the other kids would wait for me outside the gates.”
David, who says he previously loved school, soon started to hate it. He bunked off and even caused trouble in class just so he would get sent home and avoid the torment.

He revealed: “I used to mess around in class so I’d get sent out. Once I chucked a chair in the classroom at a wall so I could get sent home and avoid the bullies.
“Even at the weekend if I went down to play football I would get chased out of the park by kids on their bikes.
“I ended up staying in, playing on the computer or in the back garden. I had no brothers or sisters to play with. It was really lonely.”

 
And the bullying soon started to take its toll mentally.
“It wasn’t getting hit that bothered me most. It was the constant uncertainty of whether today would be a day I was going to get chased or whacked.
“Every day in my last class when I had 15 minutes left I would worry about whether someone would be around the corner or not.”
After four months of torment, David could no longer take the bullying and dropped out of school. He took a year out doing “absolutely nothing but playing computer games” and later had a home tutor for a year.

Photo credit: Scarlet Page

He claims that because he was so badly bullied as a result of the Placebo album, he became naturally defensive, putting up his guard when he met new people, and so his isolation continued.
He said: “At my new schools, I wouldn’t let anybody be my friend. Because of the extent of the teasing, I assumed people were going to bully me, even if it was only friendly banter.”
Between the ages of 12 to 16, David attended four different schools and eventually ended up in a boarding school for children with behavioural needs in Hessle, East Yorks.

Although he said the school gave him back his confidence, he still dropped out of his GCSEs because his grades were not up to scratch.
He added: “Because I was bullied out of my first school, my reading,
writing and maths wasn’t top notch. If I’d taken my exams I would have failed them all.”
Now an unemployed chef living in Portsmouth, David said: “When I see the picture now, I hate it. It has too many bad memories. If I could walk into every shop and bin it I would.
“If I didn’t have all these problems at school I might have taken my
GCSEs, got a better job and even achieved my ambition of owning a nightclub.
“Now I’m out of work and would take any job I can find.”

David says he has been saving for almost ten years to sue Placebo, which he is now doing with the financial help of his mum.
He said: “I’m using all the spare money I have. I’ve found a solicitor
and have started making calls. There are posters and even T-shirts with my face on and I had no idea.”
He claimed: “Apparently Placebo’s management tried to contact me in 2006 to get some photos of how I am now, but they never found me. I was still living at the same address where my cousin had taken the photo so they didn’t look very hard.

“My mum never signed anything giving her permission, and never received any documents or phone calls asking for her consent. She’s as angry as me.”
David, who claims he could also be due royalties, said: “I’m angry with my cousin for doing what he’s done. I haven’t seen him since he took that photo and I’ve no idea how much he made from it.
“And I’m annoyed with the band’s managers and record labels because they should have sent through documentation for consent.

“It’s not about the money for me. It’s about the principle and what it’s done to me. It hasn’t had an impact on them. They haven’t had to live with the consequences.”
(𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑢𝑛, 𝐽𝑢𝑛𝑒 2012, 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑦 𝐸𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑒 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑠)

📍 Placebo’s management, 𝑹𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒏, reasonably told The Times (June 24, 2012) that Mr. Fox's case should be directed against Virgin, the label that put the album out, rather than the band themselves.
📍 However, there was no subsequent news concerning any legal action. Instead, David Fox turned up on an episode of 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐳𝐳𝐜𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐬 in October 2013, as part of the "𝑰𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒆" game, replicating his Placebo cover pose, which he proudly revealed on his Twitter…

Post by Olga