Tony King
Tony King started his 61 year career in the music business in 1958 at Decca, where he travelled every day from his hometown of Eastbourne. At 19 he became the youngest promotion man of the time, and looked after visiting American artists such as Roy Orbison, Brenda Lee, The Ronettes and their Svengali producer Phil Spector.
When he met The Beatles they struck up a friendship over their mutual love of American music. After setting up Immediate Records with the Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham, Tony was approached by Sir George Martin’s independent production company to do promotion for his artists and others in the company produced by his co partners - among them Cilla Black, The Hollies, Manfred Man, Tom Jones, and The Beatles. In 1970 Tony joined Apple as general manager, which gave him his first dream ticket to New York.
In 1973 he went to America again for Apple, this time to Los Angeles to pull together the album Ringo for Ringo Starr. It went to no 1 and he was asked to stay on to do the same thing for John Lennon’s upcoming album Mind Games. For the next two or three years he worked with John and Ringo out of the Capitol Tower in Hollywood. When Apple closed in 1976 Tony became Executive VP of Elton John’s label, Rocket, working with Neil Sedaka, Kiki Dee and, of course, Elton.
In 1978 Rocket moved to New York. Tony soon became Head of Club Promotion for RCA, which was followed two years later by a move to Creative Director for RCA. In 1984 Mick Jagger was looking for someone to pull together his first solo album, She’s The Boss. He took the job that was offered and stayed with Mick, and subsequently The Stones, for the next 27 years. In 2011 he joined Elton John’s team, initially working on his Las Vegas show, The Million Dollar Piano, and then working on his albums and current World Tour.
His memoir, THE TASTEMAKER, was published by Faber in February 2023 in hardback and February 2024 in paperback.