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.

Another Reason to Love David Bowie

Yesterday would have been Bowie's 70th birthday, and I thought I'd mention just one more reason why we should all love David Bowie.

In June 1972, Bowie released his fifth album - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. It quite suddenly made him an enormous international star, after years of trying. Did he take advantage of his sudden fame, and go berserk on all the drugs and sex that were now at his fingertips?

Well, yeah, of course he did.

But not right away. There was a band called Mott the Hoople who were on the verge of breaking up. Bowie discovered this when Mott's bass player, Pete Watts, made enquiries about joining Bowie's band. But Bowie was a fan, and very much wanted to see them to stay together. So he offered to produce a single for them and even gave them a song. It was called "Drive-in Saturday" and - amazingly - Mott turned it down. (Can't you just hear Ian Hunter singing that? What were they thinking?) Undaunted, Bowie offered them another song. This one was called "Suffragette City," and Mott passed on that one too. They were clearly all quite eager to go back to their factory jobs or whatever it was they had in mind. But there was no way they or anyone could resist "All the Young Dudes." Bowie spent June and July 1972 in the studio with them, recording the album that would save their career.

That done, in August 1972 Bowie and Mick Ronson went into the studio with Lou Reed. Big Lou was one of Bowie's idols. His solo career was floundering after his first album had disappeared without a trace. And he was Lou Reed, of course. Lou was a notoriously difficult person to work with, and often enough he was just a difficult person to be in the same room with. But Bowie found a way. This collaboration produced Transformer and "Walk on the Wild Side" gave Lou the only thing resembling a hit in his long career. Lou Reed on AM radio? That actually happened? Yes, David Bowie made it happen, and Transformer is still one of the great Reed records, full of great songs like "Perfect Day" and "Satellite of Love"

Finally, in September and October 1972, Bowie breathed life back into Iggy Pop. The world's forgotten boy had been shooting heroin and living on the street since the demise of the original Stooges after 1970's Fun House. The first record they made together, Raw Power, revived Iggy's career and while it sure has a funny mix it also has some of the definitive Iggy songs: "Gimme Danger," "Search and Destroy," "Penetration."

These months of public and artistic service behind him... yeah, then I guess Bowie went nuts with the drugs and the sex and all that. But you sure have to appreciate his priorities.