Tara Browne

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Tara Browne (born March 4, 1945 in London , England , † December 18, 1966 ) was a British nobleman and heir to the Guinness family. He was a figurehead of Swinging London in the mid-1960s. His accidental death inspired the Beatles song A Day in the Life .

Life

Tara Browne was the son of Dominick Browne, 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne , member of the House of Lords from 1927 to 1999, and Oonagh Guinness, brewery heiress and the youngest of the three "Golden Guinness Girls". Oonagh Guinness was married to Dominick Browne for the second time, for whom this was also the second marriage. They had three children together: Garech Browne (* 1939), a son who died shortly after the birth (* 1943), and finally Tara Browne. Tara had several half-siblings from his parents' other marriages. The parents' marriage was dissolved in 1950. Both parents entered into a third marriage.

In August 1963, Browne married the farmer's daughter Noreen Anne MacSherry (1941 - June 11, 2012), who called herself Nicky and had run away from home to live in London. The two had met the previous year at the Battersea Fun Faire . They soon had two children, Dorian and Julian.

Using his fortune, Browne tried his hand at business. He was involved in a fashion boutique and financed Sibylla's nightclub, which opened in June 1966. Most recently he turned to car racing and bought a turquoise Lotus Elan .

As a teenager, Tara Browne took part in the thriving alternative scene of Swinging London. He is said to have given Paul McCartney his first LSD trip.

Browne celebrated his 21st birthday in Luggala, his mother's country estate in the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin . He had around 200 guests flown in, including John Paul Getty II , Mick Jagger , Brian Jones , Anita Pallenberg and Paul McCartney. The Lovin 'Spoonful played as a live band . A little later, Tara and Nicky Browne split. In 1966, Browne met regularly with model Suki Potier, and the two became a couple.

death

On December 18, 1966, Tara Browne drove his Lotus Elan through Chelsea at high speed . His then partner Suki Potier was the co-driver. He ran over an intersection at a red light on the main street, Redcliffe Gardens, and rammed into a parked van. He died of his injuries, while Suki Potier survived with minor injuries.

A day in the life

On January 17, 1967, John Lennon , Browne's friend, read the investigation report into Browne's accident in the Daily Mail . He processed the article into a song that developed through the collaboration with Paul McCartney, who was also friends with Tara, to A Day in the Life . It says:

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

A lesser known song about Tara Brown is by Seán Ó Riada . The song Death of a Socialite from Pretty Things (1967) is also said to deal with Tara Browne.

literature

  • Paul Howard: I Read the News Today, Oh Boy. The short and gilded life of Tara Browne, the man who inspired The Beatles' greatest song , London 2016. ISBN 978-1-5098-1495-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Keiron Pim: Tara Browne: the James Dean of Sixties London who inspired The Beatles . The Telegraph of October 31, 2016.
  2. ↑ Michael Luke: Obituary: Ooonagh Oranmore . The Independent , August 12, 1995
  3. ↑ Glenys Roberts: A Day in the Life: Tragic true story behind one of the Beatles' most famous hits revealed in new book . Daily Mail , November 23, 2012 (English)
  4. ↑ a b c d Nicky Browne . Obituary. The Telegraph , June 22, 2012 (English)
  5. ^ A b c Hugo Williams: The short life of Tara Browne . The Spectator , August 13, 2011 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Browne, Tara
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British nobleman and heir to the Guinness family
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England
DATE OF DEATH 18th December 1966
Place of death London , England