Tara Browne (4 March 1945 – 18 December 1966) was a British 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".[1][2][3]
His life was captured in Paul Howard's biography I Read the News Today, Oh Boy, published in 2016.
Death
On 17 December 1966, Browne was driving with his girlfriend, modelSuki Potier, in his Lotus Elan through South Kensington at high speed (some reports suggesting in excess of 106 mph/170 km/h). He was under the influence of alcohol and other drugs at the time. Browne failed to see a traffic light and proceeded through the junction of Redcliffe Square and Redcliffe Gardens, colliding with a parked lorry. He died of his injuries the following day. Potier claimed that Browne swerved the car to absorb the impact of the crash to save her life.
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.[1]
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."[5] 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:
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
In 1997, Paul McCartney gave a different explanation of these lines:
The verse about the politician blowing his mind out in a car we wrote together. It has been attributed to Tara Browne, the Guinness heir, which I don't believe is the case; certainly as we were writing it, I was not attributing it to Tara in my head. In John's head it might have been. In my head I was imagining a politician bombed out on drugs who'd stopped at some traffic lights and didn't notice that the lights had changed. The "blew his mind" was purely a drugs reference, nothing to do with a car crash.[6]
However, in his 2021 book The Lyrics, McCartney confirmed that the lyrics were about the death of Tara Browne.[3]
