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

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Rugby union | Premiership guide Why omens are bad for Gloucester at Sale, Exeter’s stat kings and Leicester on alert 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 | Waterstones

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. 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

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. 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. Lennon had an edge to him. You didn’t want to get on his wrong side, because he could cut you down’ The Tastemaker has a nice conversational tone. It is warm, full of good humor and insight like the man himself. 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.”

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

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. Tony King (standing, third left) with the Ronettes, Phil Spector (seated) and George Harrison in 1964. Photograph: From the author’s collection 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.” While he's undoubtedly a lovely guy, unfortunately his anecdotes and descriptions don't often venture beyond the superficial.

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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. 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. 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. 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.

The Tastemaker: My Life with the Legends and - WHSmith

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.” King thought he was grounded, but in reality he was anything but. “I would get on the Concorde and come to London and go down to see my mum and she would say, ‘What do you pay for butter in America?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, Mum,’ but I made sure to learn before I came home again.”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. King would spend inordinate amounts of time with Lennon and for a while became his regular drinking buddy. 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.’ As Lennon was going into semi-retirement, and as Apple was winding down, King started looking around for his next perch.