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

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A lot of the autobiographies/biographies books I have this year have been either been sports related or music related, and I am absolutely fine with that. Tony has the most impeccable eye,” says David Furnish. “It takes years of experience to develop and train your eye to recognise and champion aesthetic brilliance. Throughout his career, Tony has worked with the biggest and best artists in the business. That level of taste and sophistication he’s developed makes him second to none. He’s our tastemaker extraordinaire. That’s why his business card title says ‘Éminence Grise’.

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

He recovered and ended his career working with Elton John, overseeing his album sleeves and working on the staging of his Las Vegas show and ongoing farewell tour. Now retired, he says that writing The Tastemaker was a strange experience, tinged with sadness and regret: many of the characters in it are gone; it ends with the death of Charlie Watts. Then again, King achieved what he set out to do. 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. The Tastemaker has a nice conversational tone. It is warm, full of good humor and insight like the man himself. 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.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?’” This is a brilliant book by a brilliant man. A magician with perfect taste. Thank God I met him. He is gold dust!” - Elton John As Lennon was going into semi-retirement, and as Apple was winding down, King started looking around for his next perch. We live in an age of extraordinary change, an era in which entire industries have been born, while others have been scuttled aside, victims of our rapidly shifting technologies. New jobs exist that we never could have imagined, with countless other employment opportunities on the horizon.

The Tastemaker By Tony King | New | 9780571371938 | World of

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. 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.’ King would spend inordinate amounts of time with Lennon and for a while became his regular drinking buddy. Tony King talks about his new book, The Tastemaker, which charts the singular life of a man who has been at the beating heart of music's most iconic moments for over sixty years.King worked for Hall for three years before being poached by Andrew Loog Oldham, who at the time was managing The Rolling Stones and was even younger than King. This was when Swinging London started to move through the gears and when suddenly teenagers were in positions of genuine power. Tony [Hall] joined me at Ivor Court to launch Immediate Records and promote the Stones,” says King. “He speaks well of and to, dresses well, shops well, keeps well and laughs well. Tony would only put up with the very best of you and had the ability to help you find it.” 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.” On John Lennon "But John was special, too. I always say that, of the Beatles, he was the Jose Mourinho-the special one."

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

Tony King (standing, third left) with the Ronettes, Phil Spector (seated) and George Harrison in 1964. Photograph: From the author’s collection 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.

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. While he's undoubtedly a lovely guy, unfortunately his anecdotes and descriptions don't often venture beyond the superficial.