Fifty years ago this week, The Beatles were wrapping up what many critics believe to be the greatest rock ‘n roll album ever made, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” by recording it’s last track, “A Day in the Life.” In my opinion, that track is the most influential song on that most influential album. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as The Beatles number one song of all time. It was recorded in early 1967 in three sessions: First the basic track was laid down on January 19-20, then the orchestra was added on February 10, then the last note was dubbed in on February 22. For many, it is that last chord, which went on a full 42 seconds, that most remember.
But there is so much more to this complicated Beatles song. For example, the title never appears in the song’s lyrics. The song is actually an amalgam of two songs, one written independently by John Lennon and the other by Paul McCartney. The song’s alleged drug culture reference in the line “I’d love to turn you on” (a nod to LSD guru Timothy Leary’s mantra “Turn on, Tune In, Drop Out”) resulted in the song initially being banned from broadcast until March 13, 1972 by the BBC. And of course, there is that final chord. Known musically as a “deceptive cadence,” it was made by five musicians on five pianos striking the same five keys as the engineer increased the recording sound level while the vibration faded out. Towards the end of the chord the recording level was so high that listeners can hear the sounds of the studio, including rustling papers and a squeaking chair. It took nine attempts to record a satisfactory version, as the five performers had trouble hitting the chord at precisely the same time.
The song has been covered by many artists over the years including Sting, Bobby Darin, José Feliciano, Wes Montgomery, Neil Young, Eric Burdon, Tori Amos, Jeff Beck, the Bee Gees, and Phish. But only the most dedicated audiophiles lay claim to having heard any of those versions.
It is John Lennon’s haunting jump start to the song that remains implanted in our collected musical memories. “I read the news today, oh boy, About a lucky man who made the grade. And though the news was rather sad, well I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph. He blew his mind out in a car, He didn’t notice that the lights had changed. A crowd of people stood and stared. They’d seen his face before. Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords.” The song says so much but reveals little. Turns out this most evocative of all Beatles songs was born of severe writer’s block.
On January 17, 1967, just two days before the Beatles were set to head to Abbey Road Studios to record it, John Lennon sat at his piano searching for lyrics but finding none. He casually placed a copy of London’s Daily Mail newspaper on the piano’s music stand and began to flip through the pages when he happened upon a story about the coroner’s verdict into Tara Browne’s death. The 21-year-old heir to the Guinness beer fortune had died after crashing his sports car into a a parked van on December 18, 1966 in Redcliffe Gardens, Earls Court in London.
Browne had been an acquaintance of Lennon and close friend of Paul McCartney. More importantly, Browne was the epitome of Swingin’ London, whose mortal death also signified the death of that culture he epitomized. Filthy rich, classically handsome and easy cool, Tara mingled with rock stars, luminaries of stage and screen, politicians, royalty and scions of the wealthiest families alongside denizens of the underworld. From Carnaby Street to Downing Street, Tara Browne was the living, breathing quintessence of sixties London. An unabashed dandy living the life of a young prince, Browne was heavily into the recreational drug scene and thrilled to danger of any kind.
Browne was a member of the Irish aristocracy, born the son of Dominick Browne, the fourth Baron Oranmore and Browne, and Oonagh Guinness, heiress to the Guinness fortune. Browne was in line to inherit a $17 million fortune upon his 25th birthday, and died leaving the considerable sum of nearly $1 million in his estate. Tara’s house in posh Eaton Row became London’s unofficial after-hours party scene. Every Sunday morning, Tara’s wife Nicki bought five dozen eggs to make breakfast for whichever guests had crashed on the floors of the house. “The house was always strewn with bodies,” Nicki remembered. “You never knew who was a Beatle, who was an Animal, who was a Trogg and who was a Pretty Thing.”
Peter Sellers and his wife, Britt Ekland, who were living around the corner, popped in from time to time, and Roman Polanski was another regular caller. Tara and close friend Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones would drink the finest cognac, listen to Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys and shove the furniture against the wall to play with Tara’s latest slot car race track set. Tara gained fame as the man who gave Paul McCartney his very first hit of LSD.
According to Nicki, Tara didn’t take it that night. “Because it was Paul’s first time,” she said, “he felt it was important for him to stay lucid just in case Paul had a bad trip. And what Paul did was he spent his whole trip looking at this art book of mine called Private View. He wasn’t interested in any of the females there. He wasn’t interested in listening to music either. He just stared at this art book.” Although Tara was close to Paul, John Lennon wasn’t picking up on what the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Guinness heir was putting down. Lennon was still too class-conscious to ever warm to Tara, according to Nicki. “I think he really sneered at people from Tara’s background,” she said.
Ominously, Tara, who told friends that his real ambition was to become a race car driver, had lost his license for most of 1966 for getting a speeding ticket. He had invested heavily in a garage and drove a hand-painted pale blue Lotus sports car. Although it sounds comical today, Browne’s car had a record player built into its dash, the needle skipping across the vinyl as he weaved through traffic. He would often take roundabouts at full speed which would result in the record flying off the turntable like a Frisbee. On Wednesday, December 14, he got his driving licence back and wasted no time in getting back behind the wheel.
On December 17th, a week before the 1966 Christmas holiday and while separated from his wife Nicki, Tara spent the day with his friend, Brian Jones. That evening he took his new girlfriend, 19-year-old model Suki Poitier, one of the Bond girls in Casino Royale, out to dinner at a restaurant on Abingdon Road in South Kensington. Just after midnight on the 18th, while driving Suki home through the Christmas light festooned streets of London, Browne slammed his sportscar into a “a parked lorry” on a Chelsea street.
Authorities estimated Tara was traveling at over 106 miles per hour when he lost control of his Lotus Elan. He failed to notice a red traffic light and drove through the junction of Redcliffe Square and Redcliffe Gardens, colliding with a stationary van after swerving to avoid an oncoming car. While alcohol or drugs were not a factor, speed was determined as the cause of the accident. Several witnesses claimed that as the car flew past them, it was accelerating and braking wildly. The car made a loud noise and seconds later, there was a bang and the sound of the engine stopped.
Tara never had a chance; he suffered a fractured skull and lacerations to his brain. Suki survived with only minor bruises. She held Tara, dying in her arms, while she waited 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. He was taken to St. Stephen’s Hospital in Fulham. Two hours later, the Dublin-born brewery heir, music lover, style icon, race car driver and Vogue model was pronounced dead. Suki later claimed that Browne “wasn’t going particularly fast.” She claimed the cause of the crash was a white car — either a Volvo or an E-Type Jaguar (both never verified) — pulling out unexpectedly from a side street that forced Tara to swerve. Potier claimed that Browne’s final act was to swerve the car to absorb the impact of the crash to save her life.
Although remembered today as the source of an iconic Beatles song, Tara Browne’s death in West London marked the end of an era. No longer would happy-go-lucky hedonistic young people innocently change the world solely with their colorful clothes and positive vibes. The cultural wake of the 1960s was ebbing from London and lapping up on the beaches of California. The late 1960s focus was now on revolution, heavy drugs, Charles Manson, race riots, violent street protests, Vietnam and political assassinations. Browne’s death came while the youth culture was still happy and optimistic, and in London that made him a perfect icon of the times.
To most in his circle, his was the first untimely death of a peer. At that age, the youth culture felt like they were bulletproof — they were used to grandparents dying, but not to the death of a contemporary. Anita Pallenberg, girlfriend of Stones guitarist Brian Jones, said that after Browne died, “the Sixties weren’t the Sixties any more.” Ironically, the tragedy led Suki Potier right into the arms of Brian Jones. Suki said, “He gave me a shoulder to cry on and he picked up the pieces and made me feel a woman again.” The two dated for approximately two years. Suki moved into a 15th century farmhouse, once the home of Winnie the Pooh creator A.A. Milne, with 27-year-old Brian. It was there in the swimming pool that Brian, who had by then left the Rolling Stones, drowned mysteriously on July 3, 1969. On June 23, 1981, Suki was herself killed in an automobile accident.
Incidentally, Tara Browne’s connection to the Beatles is not solely confined to friendship and song. Paul McCartney invited Tara and wife Nicki to visit Liverpool at Christmas 1965. In anticipation of the visit, Paul rented a pair of mopeds for the duo to cruise around the countryside. On Boxing Day night, after smoking several joints, Paul and Tara went for a ride. Upon their return a few hours later, Paul’s face was heavily swollen and stitched up. Seems that the “Handsome Beatle” had flipped over the handlebars, chipping a front tooth and splitting his lip upon landing. His extended absence from the public during recuperation would later become the source of the outlandish “Paul is Dead” conspiracy theory I have discussed in previous columns.
In 1969, a rumor was started by students on an Iowa university campus claiming that Paul McCartney was dead. As proof, they cited clues found on Beatles album covers. One theory suggested that Paul was killed in that moped crash and that he was replaced by a lookalike: Tara Browne. Reportedly, Tara underwent cosmetic surgery to make him look like Paul. Only thing is, Tara Browne had been dead for three years by then.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
