Book review: Tony King's biography shows he has earned his moniker of ‘Tastemaker’

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

Sun, 29 Jan, 2023 - 10:00

Diarmuid O'Donovan

By naming his biography The Tastemaker, Tony King sets very high expectations for his book. The cover features pictures of Tony King with Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and Elton John among others. To those who do not know of his role in rock music, he appears to be just another fan with a picture.

Therein lies the intrigue of the Tony King story. He was a child of the Second World War; the product of a fleeting romance that saw his father and mother soon part company.

He was reared by his maternal grandparents, believing them to be his parents. He was almost in his teens when he realised that his Aunt Kay, the flighty one who loved partying, was his birth mother.

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.

Tony King’s eyes and ears were opened to the world of rock by Elvis Presley. Hearing ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ for the first time was his Road to Damascus moment. Smitten by the music and dealing with the problems of being a gay young man in late 1950s England, King left his home, his parents, and his school to move to London to work in a record store.

From there he worked his way into the music industry in the London of the swinging sixties. His timing could not have been better.

“In the 1960s,” we are told, “London burst from black and white into technicolour.” While King never showed a great talent for playing music he innately understood the world of fashion and image.

He became a problem solver firstly for the record label companies and later to the stars. He often acted as a guide to visiting American stars — in this role, he once stopped a Rolls Royce on the street and persuaded the owner to sell the car to Roy Orbison who had admired the car as it drove by.

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.

King met the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on their way to becoming the standard bearers of their generation. Reg Dwight (Elton John) hung around the AIR Records office when King worked there.

King got him some work and from there a friendship developed that has lasted to this very day.

In the 1970s King moved to the US. He toggled between California and New York and organised concerts and records for John Lennon and others.

He then moved to RCA Records to become head of disco just as the genre took off in the mid 1970s.

While King never graphically deals with the seedier or sordid side of the music business, he tells enough tales to inform the reader of the high rate of attrition in the rock music world.

He also deals with the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and describes how it tore through the gay community. His experiences and the loss of many friends led him to give up alcohol and to dabble in religion.

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.

King has successfully worked on many of the iconic albums and tours of the last 60 years. He has earned his moniker of ‘Tastemaker’.

He’s still doing it; those who enjoyed the Elton John concerts in Ireland last summer would have sampled King’s most recent work. His personality shines through the pages of the book and has convinced this reader for one, that to sit beside him on a plane trip across the Atlantic would make for one very short journey indeed.