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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.”
By then King was too fond of his (grand) Mom and (grand) Dad to allow the relationship of parents and son to be changed. He continued to treat his grandparents as his ‘real’ parents for all of his life. This loyalty of King’s becomes a recurring theme throughout the book. This is a brilliant book by a brilliant man. A magician with perfect taste. Thank God I met him. He is gold dust!'
Gift Guide 2023
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.” Part of King’s personality is his ability to remain good friends with the stars that he has met and worked with through the years; this has served him well. Writing in Air Mail, Victoria Segal shared some impressions of King’s memoir. Segal writes that King “knows how to balance irreverent entertainment with respectful discretion” and “has little interest in dishing real dirt.” And it sounds like a compelling read, from its firsthand accounts of some of music’s biggest names to what Segal describes as a harrowing look at the rise of AIDS.
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?’” Tony eventually repairs to America where he works with John Lennon and Ringo Starr on their solo work.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. 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.
As Lennon was going into semi-retirement, and as Apple was winding down, King started looking around for his next perch. 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. This included spending time with with his friend Freddie Mercury in the Queen frontman's final days. 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.” 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. 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.Clearly, someone with that life must have some stories to tell. Which begs the question: what stories is King telling in his new book? Throughout The Tastemaker, King’s tone, and sometimes his turn of phrase, is that of an elderly benign colonel telling stories of his military career. While he indulges in a great deal of name-dropping, The Tastemaker provides a flavour of how life was in the mad, Atlantic-hopping lives of many of the stars and personalities whose music has withstood the test of time. He’s brilliant to work with on any creative level and has never lost his eye,” says Elton. “Even now, he’s light years ahead of anyone. Plus, he has an historic knowledge and love of popular music, gleaned from an early career at Decca and having to deal with big stars from America, Britain and Europe. With Tony it’s all about instinct – choosing the right interview, the album cover, etc. Nobody has that more than him. He also has unwavering loyalty and I can’t recall him ever bad-mouthing any of his clients.” This is a brilliant book by a brilliant man. A magician with perfect taste. Thank God I met him. He is gold dust!’ From there he worked his way into the music industry in the London of the swinging sixties. His timing could not have been better.
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