Tara Browne, friend or not?

[plastic paul]

Ok so, Tara Browne, Guinness heir, present at Paul's "moped accident"

Paul says of him; "I had a very good friend who lived in London called Tara Browne, a Guinness heir - a nice Irish guy, very sensitive bloke. I'd see him from time to time, and enjoyed being around him"

I always thought he was supposed to be the inspiration for "A Day In The Life", yet John and Paul (surprise, surprise) don't quite agree, john says; "I noticed two stories. One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash." (this could have possibly gone in my other thread about hints...) Paul says; "John got 'he blew his mind out in a car' from a newspaper story. We transposed it a bit - 'blew his mind out' was a bit dramatic. In fact he crashed his car.

So John says it's "the Guinness heir", Paul's "very good friend" and its just "the Guinness heir", and what's more Paul doesn't mention him whatsoever!

Something doesn't add up here, Was Tara involved in that accident? Did he die or not? Was he a mate of Paul's or not? If it wasn't Tara the who was killed in that car accident?

It all sounds very convenient eh folks?

[byrdsmaniac]

I deleted my earlier post about this, and will try yet again to respond.
Your post is confusing because it says, "Paul says of him, 'I had a very good friend'..."
but then you say "Paul doesn't mention him whatsoever."
So did FAUL say "I had a very good friend..", but Paul never mentioned him?
Or are you saying that Faul had said that HE was a very good friend, but then never said anything along the lines of "my friend Tara Browne" when John was talking about their inspiration for the song, and you feel that he would have?
Paul may have been a friend of Tara Browne, but if Faul wasn't, it might not have occured to him to say
"my good friend Tara Browne (etc.)"

I think John was being honest about the source of the material: two newspaper stories. One being the story about Tara Browne dying in a car crash,
and the other being about the holes in the road at Blackbyrne, Lancashire. So they put the two together.
Consider that Sgt. Pepper was about revealing that
Paul was dead. And so, prior to people picking up on that, John and the others would have to say the song
was about Tara Browne when asked who "the lucky man" was.
("Ooooh what a lucky man he was" sing Emerson Lake and Palmer.)
They may have wanted people to come to the conclusion that the song was actually about Paul once they'd figured out that the album's message was "Paul is dead".
But I think they also wanted people to think about
life and death, and its implications. "A Day In the Life" of anyone.

[byrdsmaniac]

Oonagh Guinness
Oonagh was the youngest daughter of Ernest Guinness, born on 22 Feb 1910...

On April 29 1936, she married Dominick Geoffrey Edward Browne, 4th Lord Oranmore and Browne. They divorced in 1950, not before they had 3 children, including Garech Domnagh Browne in 1939 and Tara Browne (1945 - 1966).


The second son died after a week.

The third was Tara Browne, a friend of John Lennon and an enthusiast of the London Counterculture and, like all its members, a user of mind expanding drugs, who on 18th of December 1966, drove his Lotus Elan at high speeds through red lights in South Kensington, smashing into a van and killing himself. Whether or not he was tripping at the time is unknown, though Lennon clearly thought so. Reading the report of the coroner's verdict, he recorded it in the opening verses of A day in the life, taking the detached view of the onlookers whose only interest was in the dead man's celebrity. Tara's Girlfriend, model Suki Poiter was also in the car, but was not injured.


edited from: www.gallot.co.nz/Guinness/oonagh_Guiness.htm

Another source said Tara Browne "drove his Lotus Elan into a lamp-post in Redcliffe Square, London".

So take your pick: lamp post or van.

Also Oonagh's husband, 'Lord Oranmore and Browne' eventually divorced Oonagh and married Constance Vera Stephens, known as actress "Sally Gray", who had been trained as a dancer by Fred Astaire.
So the line: "She said she'd always been a dancer" in "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window"
could be a reference to Tara Browne's mother
coming to speak with Faul in his pre-Beatle days.

[plastic paul]

Right sorry byrds, what i'm saying is that in one quote "Paul" (whichever incarnation in't an issue) said that he's a very good friend earlier, but when it comes to the accident referring to Tara Browne which John says about, "Paul" doesn't mention him then, where you would have thought that he would have said "oh yes i was distraught when tara died, he was a good friend" etc. etc. Instead he says he died in a car crash as if it was someone he didn't know.

So what i'm saying is, whether or not JPM made the initial quote, it's clear he spent time with him before he died, so you would have thought he would have talked about how he felt about his mate dying.

I feel this lends to the conspiracy that Paul really did die in a car crash, perhaps the same one.

[abbey]

Remember Idiot boy keeps re-writing history........oh, Idiot boy is another name I call Bill.....

Tara was actually a friend of Mike's but was with Paul when he had the moped accident. Both Tara and Paul were drunk and high.

Tara had a big mouth.......guess he was used to being a spoiled rich kid.....that mouth had to be silenced. The brakes on his car were cut. A bit strange, what?

[plastic paul]

That would definitely be the obvious answer, my point is Paul refers to him as a good friend, yet when he dies and John writes a song about him, its "some guy died"

Makes sense?

Hmmmm........