He’s brilliant to work with on any creative level and has never lost his eye,” says Elton. “Even now, he’s light years ahead of anyone. Plus, he has an historic knowledge and love of popular music, gleaned from an early career at Decca and having to deal with big stars from America, Britain and Europe. With Tony it’s all about instinct – choosing the right interview, the album cover, etc. Nobody has that more than him. He also has unwavering loyalty and I can’t recall him ever bad-mouthing any of his clients.” On John Lennon "But John was special, too. I always say that, of the Beatles, he was the Jose Mourinho-the special one." The Tastemaker charts the singular life of a man who has been at the beating heart of music's most iconic moments for over sixty years and features stories of his time working with everyone from the Beatles to the Ronettes and Elton John to the Rolling Stones. UK: Rishi Sunak hosts talks with Kamala Harris, vice-president of the US, at No 10, followed by a private dinner; Harris also delivers a policy speech on the future of AI at the US embassy in London; Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, speaks at the annual conference of the King’s Fund, a health think tank; start of Movember, the moustache-growing charity event held during November each year to raise funds and awareness for men’s health. Leaving school at the age of sixteen to start his career in the music industry at Decca Records, Tony King would soon find himself becoming a close friend and confidante to some of the world's biggest artists – a far cry from his childhood days in Eastbourne. He has worked with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Ronettes, Elton John and many more, and his personal friendships included Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.

The Tastemaker by Tony King: My Life with the Legends and The Tastemaker by Tony King: My Life with the Legends and

Suffused with Tony King's disarming warmth and unparalleled charisma – and at times profoundly moving – The Tastemaker paints an intimate portrait of a music legend and captures the unpredictable world he stamped his indelible mark upon. Rugby union | Premiership guide Why omens are bad for Gloucester at Sale, Exeter’s stat kings and Leicester on alert He recovered and ended his career working with Elton John, overseeing his album sleeves and working on the staging of his Las Vegas show and ongoing farewell tour. Now retired, he says that writing The Tastemaker was a strange experience, tinged with sadness and regret: many of the characters in it are gone; it ends with the death of Charlie Watts. Then again, King achieved what he set out to do.

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We live in an age of extraordinary change, an era in which entire industries have been born, while others have been scuttled aside, victims of our rapidly shifting technologies. New jobs exist that we never could have imagined, with countless other employment opportunities on the horizon. When the disco boom started to fade, King became RCA’s creative director, but by this time he was so burned out that on Good Friday in 1981 he joined AA. “I got sober and I’ve been sober ever since, but it wasn’t easy,” says King. “Six weeks into my sobriety Elton came to town doing copious amounts of coke. And then a few weeks later, bloody Freddie Mercury arrives. ‘Darling, I’m here.’

The Tastemaker: My Life with the Legends and Geniuses o…

Tony eventually repairs to America where he works with John Lennon and Ringo Starr on their solo work. As Lennon was going into semi-retirement, and as Apple was winding down, King started looking around for his next perch.I’d lie on the bed with [Freddie Mercury] and hold his stone-cold hand while he bid for things from Christie’s’ I became enamoured with people who knew what they were doing. Jagger certainly knew what he was doing’