Tara Browne
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Tara Browne (4 March 1945 – 18 December 1966) was an Irish socialite and heir to a part of the Guinness fortune. His December 1966 death in a car crash was referenced in the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life".<ref name=Tel>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>McCartney: Songwriter Template:ISBN p. 188</ref><ref name="mccartney-the-lyrics">Template:Cite bookTemplate:Page needed</ref>
Early lifeEdit
Browne was the younger son of the 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, who was also the 2nd Baron Mereworth, and Oonagh Guinness. His father, Lord Oranmore and Browne, was an Anglo-Irish peer and member of the House of Lords who served in that house for 72 years, longer than any other peer up to that time (ending only by eviction during government reforms in 1999). His mother, Oonagh Guinness, was an heiress to the Guinness fortune.<ref name=Tel />
Browne was a member of Swinging London's counterculture of the 1960s<ref name=Tel /> and had stood to inherit £1 million at age 25.<ref name=Tel /> In August 1963, at age 18, he married Noreen "Nicky" MacSherry; the couple had two sons, Dorian and Julian.Template:Citation needed
For his 21st birthday, he threw a "lavish" party at Luggala, the Gothic Browne family seat in the Wicklow Mountains, where "two private jets flew the 200 or so guests to Ireland, including John Paul Getty, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones [and] Jones' then-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg."<ref name=Tel />
Browne facilitated his friend Paul McCartney's first LSD trip in 1966, at Browne's home in Belgravia.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
His life was captured in Paul Howard's biography I Read the News Today, Oh Boy, published in 2016.
DeathEdit
On 17 December 1966, Browne was driving with his girlfriend, model Suki Potier, in his Lotus Elan through South Kensington at high speed (some reports suggesting in excess of 106 mph/170 km/h). Miss Potier however told an inquest that Tara drove “not very fast” down Earls Court road into Redcliffe gardens. Browne proceeded through the junction of Redcliffe Square and Redcliffe Gardens, colliding with a parked lorry. He died of his injuries the following day. Potier told the inquest “Suddenly I saw this white car coming at the crossroads”. Potier claimed that Browne swerved the car to absorb the impact of the crash to save her life. “There would have been a collision with the white car if Tara had not swerved – and I think I would have been killed.” At the inquest, Pathologist Dr Donald Teare said that Mr Browne had drunk only from half-a-pint to a pint of beer. The inquest jury gave a verdict of accidental death.
Browne's body was brought back to Ireland and buried on the Guinness family's Luggala Estate. His grave is one of three situated on the shore of Lough Tay, next to an ornamental building known as the Temple; the two other people buried there are his unnamed baby brother, who was born and died in December 1943, and his half-sister.
Following his death, his estranged wife launched a public legal battle for custody of their two young children; Browne's mother also sought custody. A judge eventually ruled that the boys should live with their grandmother.<ref name=Tel/>
"A Day in the Life"Edit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The death of Browne inspired some of the lyrics of the song "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles, which was released on their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, John Lennon said, "I was reading the paper one day [...] the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash."<ref name="playboy">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Lennon, who was a friend of Browne, read the coroner's verdict into Browne's death while composing music at his piano. It was this news which inspired him to write the following lines:
In 1997, Paul McCartney gave a different explanation of these lines: Template:Quote