Fifty Years Ago Today

January 17, 1967. A Tuesday, like today. John Lennon was sitting at his piano with the Daily Mail propped up in front of him. The Daily Mail was and remains a right-wing tabloid rather like the Toronto Sun, but the Beatles didn't much care for Harold Wilson's Labour government anyway. The reasons why were explained by George Harrison in "Taxman" - with Wilson's 95% supertax ("one for you, nineteen for me"), the Beatles were taking care of the UK's balance of payments problem almost single-handedly.

The Mail that day had an article on the death of Tara Browne in a car crash a few weeks earlier. A week before Christmas, Browne had run a red light at high speed in South Kensington and crashed into a van. Browne was the heir to the Guinness fortune on his mother's side. His father Dominick Browne, the 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, had sat in the House of Lords since 1927.

Browne was just 21, rich and handsome, cool and charming, in the centre of the social life of Swinging London. He liked to party, he liked to consume drugs, he liked to drive very fast. His chums were Terence Stamp and David Hemmings, Michael Caine and David Bailey. Lennon knew Browne slightly, but didn't much like him just on general principle. Lennon, a kind of reverse snob, had little use for anyone with Browne's upper class background. McCartney knew him much better. It was Tara Browne who introduced Macca to acid. It was Tara Browne with whom Paul went out riding mopeds while high as kites. Macca crashed, broke a tooth, split his lip, and grew the first Beatle moustache while it healed. The Rolling Stones knew Tara better still. Brian Jones was especially close to Browne, and Keith and Anita named their third child Tara in his memory.

Lennon and McCartney had been wondering a few days earlier if Tara would have inherited his father's seat in the upper House. He wouldn't have - Tara had three older brothers, one of whom would inherit the peerage, while another would eventually become one of the founders of the Chieftains. Anyway, the elder Browne lived to be 100 and held his seat until it was abolished in 1999. Even so, he had served in the upper chamber for 72 years, longer than any other peer. In all that time, the old man never once made a speech to the House.

The Mail article that day reported on the coroner's verdict on Browne's accident. He was driving much too fast. He missed the light. Sources disagree as to whether he was high or not.

                        "I saw the photograph..."

Also in the Mail that day was a short piece on the sorry state of England's roads.