The Tastemaker: My Life with the Legends and Geniuses of Rock Music

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Monster pieces calling for multiple soloists, a lusty chorus and an orchestra almost toppling off the stage... ★★★★☆ The Washington-born, Baltimore-based pianist Lafayette Gilchrist treads a very personal path, combining the stride and blues styles of the old school with the hip-hop and go-go funk rhythms of his youth. It’s a powerful blend, especially on this densely arranged sextet album of originals. Solid... Lafayette Gilchrist Rugby union | Premiership guide Why omens are bad for Gloucester at Sale, Exeter’s stat kings and Leicester on alert The Tastemaker charts the singular life of a man who has been at the beating heart of music's most iconic moments for over sixty years and features stories of his time working with everyone from the Beatles to the Ronettes and Elton John to the Rolling Stones. Then, after a couple of years of this, in 1970, King was off again, this time to Apple, The Beatles’ company, having been offered a job as their chief A&R man by Ringo Starr. He started travelling to the US and while in New York happened upon the Continental Baths, “which was an eye-opener”. The following year he was flown to the US to launch the Ringo album, swanning around New York in his Tommy Nutter suits, causing havoc at every turn, cruising around in a rented Thunderbird. After three weeks he was just about to fly home when he got a call from John Lennon’s girlfriend, May Pang, asking him if he’d stay to help promote his new album, Mind Games.

Tony King — Robert Caskie Tony King — Robert Caskie

Monster pieces calling for multiple soloists, a lusty chorus and an orchestra almost toppling off the stage have become one of the specialities of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner, its principal conductor. One month ago their concert account of Tippett’s opera The Midsummer Marriage... ★★★★☆ I had high hopes for this memoir, given that Tony King had one of the best seats in the house for much of the 60s and 70s. i remember descriptions of tony from elton john's autobiography, and it was immediatelly clear how immersed he was in the scene. tony was a guest on probably the best beatles podcast there is (something about the beatles), where he promoted the book and i knew it is a must-read for me. Living in an era of seismic social, technological and cultural transformation, King experienced these defining moments as an influential figure in London and New York's gay scenes. Despite his heady life in showbusiness, however, he would soon learn that a glittering career couldn't shield him from heartbreak – witness to the AIDS crisis and the devastating consequences, his personal life was intermittently marked by tumult and turmoil. I’d lie on the bed with [Freddie Mercury] and hold his stone-cold hand while he bid for things from Christie’s’I asked Freddie outright if he was gay and he said, ‘Well, yeah.’ So I said, ‘Does Mary know? And he said, ‘Well, I haven’t said anything.’ So I told him he had to live an honest life and if you don’t live an honest life then you’re not going to be very happy. Within 24 hours he called me up and he goes, ‘Well, darling, I’ve done it.’ I said, ‘What do you mean ‘done it’?’ He said, ‘I told Mary and she was OK.’ Marc writes (main picture): I specifically focused on the South Africa captain Siya Kolisi, far left, as he sung the national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, as he sings with so much passion and emotion. He spent more than sixty years in the music industry working as promotion man, creative director, label chief and personal manager to some of the biggest stars out of the UK. When the disco boom started to fade, King became RCA’s creative director, but by this time he was so burned out that on Good Friday in 1981 he joined AA. “I got sober and I’ve been sober ever since, but it wasn’t easy,” says King. “Six weeks into my sobriety Elton came to town doing copious amounts of coke. And then a few weeks later, bloody Freddie Mercury arrives. ‘Darling, I’m here.’ By the last 1970s he is in New York. A gay man living in Greenwich Village, he is at ground zero for the AIDS crisis. The telling of living through that is the best and most touching section of the book.

Tony King on seven decades as fixer, muse and confidante to Tony King on seven decades as fixer, muse and confidante to

It was all going swimmingly for these two and then last weekend, to put it bluntly, Sale and Gloucester got slapped. Let’s start with Sale. The 2023 runners-up put in one of their worst performances in recent memory as they were battered by Exeter Chiefs 43-0 — the first time Sale have been left pointless since a defeat... Sale Sharks v Gloucester I suppose I was always very straightforward, a straight speaker,” King says. “I wasn’t an artist but I understood the artists, I was in their camp. I think I had an innate understanding of what artists needed, and I didn’t put up with bullshit.” I thought he was the most stylish person I had ever seen,” says Elton John. “He had elegance from the word go.” Leaving school at the age of sixteen to start his career in the music industry at Decca Records, Tony King would soon find himself becoming a close friend and confidante to some of the world's biggest artists – a far cry from his childhood days in Eastbourne. He has worked with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Ronettes, Elton John and many more, and his personal friendships included Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. King would spend inordinate amounts of time with Lennon and for a while became his regular drinking buddy.

Tony King's masterclass memoir offers a whirlwind tour from nascent rock 'n' roll in the 1950s through the present

UK: Rishi Sunak hosts talks with Kamala Harris, vice-president of the US, at No 10, followed by a private dinner; Harris also delivers a policy speech on the future of AI at the US embassy in London; Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, speaks at the annual conference of the King’s Fund, a health think tank; start of Movember, the moustache-growing charity event held during November each year to raise funds and awareness for men’s health. Meanwhile, Ono emerges from The Tastemaker as an absolute hoot, a hilarious eccentric who encourages King to take magic mushrooms before a business meeting with a music industry executive. “Oh my God, I took off halfway through lunch,” he laughs. “I was flying. And Yoko leans across the table and says” – his voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper – ‘Good, aren’t they?’” An out gay man before the 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalised homosexuality – “I knew no other way, to be honest” – it was King who encouraged his friend Freddie Mercury to tell his partner, Mary Austin, that he was gay. Meanwhile, King’s unabashed flamboyance had a profound effect on Elton John, who, when they first met, was a struggling singer-songwriter given to dressing down: “Tony would have attracted attention in the middle of a Martian invasion,” John subsequently recalled. “I wanted to be that stylish and exotic and outrageous.” I wasn’t ambitious. I just flew by the seat of my pants. My ambition was to have a good time, hang out with famous pop stars and get paid for it. I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, I could become this or that.’ No, I was just looking after pop stars and I was really good at it.”

The Tastemaker by Tony King: My Life with the Legends and The Tastemaker by Tony King: My Life with the Legends and

Later that summer, as King prepared Lennon's new album for the pop music marketplace, he proposed the concept of a Thanksgiving gig to the former Beatle. "So he says to me," King recalled, "'I'll tell you what, if the record gets to number one, I'll do it.' Of course, he was never thinking it was going to get to number one." Propelled by a deft marketing campaign — and aided, no doubt, by Elton's superstardom during that era — "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" topped the U.S. charts.At Decca he started as an office boy, aged 16, but was soon approached by various heads of department to change jobs. “I was very pretty at the time,” says King, with a wink. After a few years he was approached by the promotor Tony Hall and went to work for him. He was 19, living in London and soon a stalwart of the gay scene. “I was very different. I was very young. Promotion men at that time were not 19.”

The Tastemaker: My Life with the Legends and - WHSmith

The Tastemaker has a nice conversational tone. It is warm, full of good humor and insight like the man himself.

Summary

By the time King discovered he had contracted HIV himself, drugs were available that meant the disease was no longer a death sentence. Nevertheless, he ended up in rehab after a breakdown that seems to have been brought about by seeing so many friends die: “I’d just suffered so much grief. Survivor’s guilt.”