A day in the life of Tara Browne

It is a cruel paradox: Tara Browne, golden boy of Swinging London, has been immortalized by the accident that ended her life. Until then, he was mainly known for being one of the heirs of the Guinness brewery; In reality, he would receive his share of that fortune when he turned 25. And he was only 21 that night in December 1966 when, at the wheel of a Lotus Elan, he crashed on a London street. Weeks later, John Lennon used that misfortune, with the details carefully altered, for the undaunted beginning of what would become A Day In the Life, then completed with a rhythmic quip by Paul McCartney. The song would close his most celebrated LP, Sgt. Pepper. Backed by a turbulent symphony orchestra, the Beatles seemed to portray the banality of everyday life and suggest a personal quest for artificial paradises (the BBC immediately banned their broadcast).

All very unusual. Lennon did not sympathize with Tara, who was a friend of McCartney: in fact, the first LSD that Paul took was a gift from Browne, who remained sober to intervene if the beatle skidded on a bad trip. No good deed goes unpunished: for a long time, Paul denied that the song was referring to Tara Browne.

It turns out that the future millionaire was more in tune with the Rolling Stones. A few months before he killed himself, he had celebrated his birthday with a party at his mother’s mansion in Ireland: he chartered a Caravelle to take a hundred London colleagues, including Mick Jagger and Brian Jones; later another similar plane would arrive, with Parisian friends. You can imagine: the musical entertainment was provided by Lovin’ Spoonfulthe great New York band.

Tara Browne had grown up between aristocracy and bohemia, dealing with figures such as John Huston, Lucien Freud and Brendan Behan. True, she also lived with leeches like Miguel Ferreras, her mother’s third husband, a supposed Cuban couturier. Years later, they discovered that he was a petty thief from Madrid, José María Ozores Laredo, who had avoided successive prison sentences by volunteering for the Blue Division and the Waffen SS; In 1946, he acquired his new identity with the birth certificate of a Havana native who would die of tuberculosis. A garment.

Some called Tara the Great Gatsby of pop London. But that suit didn’t fit him. Refractory to education, he acquired culture by osmosis: he was not a speller but his writing resembled hieroglyphs. He felt immature when, in the middle of his affair With Amanda Lear, he must have witnessed her being seduced by Salvador Dalí. He had a musical culture, used to buying American records by the dozen, although he did not get involved in that world: he preferred motors and car racing.

In some ways, Tara did leave a formidable musical legacy: she bought shares in Claddagh Records, a record label founded by her older brother, Garech Browne. In the late 1950s, both brothers toured Ireland with a professional tape recorder, recording folk songs and old people’s stories, something most shocking since the Guinness family was historically Anglophile and opposed to independence. Claddagh changed the way traditional Irish music was presented, including careful covers that avoided clichés. There, among many other artists and poets, the glorious Chieftains debuted.

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