Tara Browne: The Guinness heir who inspired two classic Beatles songs
The Beatles drew upon a vast range of influence throughout their celebrated tenure, from the mind-expanding world of spirituality and transcendental meditation to the dark underbelly of heroin addiction. The Fab Four were perfectly capable of adapting sombre subjects to optimistic pop songs and joyous premises into heartbreaking ballads. In fact, some of their most acclaimed efforts came from the unlikely inspiration of Tara Browne, heir to the Guinness fortune.
You might think that the life of a successful socialite, with an endless supply of stout and an inheritance that would make the Royal Family shiver, was a fairly euphoric one. Indeed, Tara Browne did not let his incredible victory in the genetic lottery go to waste. A stalwart of the swinging scene of 1960s London, the Guinness heir was known for his wild parties, flamboyant lifestyle, and close relationships with people like Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Paul McCartney. So much so that the socialite became the subject of two iconic Beatles tracks.
In 1968, McCartney penned the Americana-style ballad ‘Rocky Raccoon’ for The Beatles’ White Album. The track tells the story of Rocky, who gets shot in a barroom brawl and is then treated by a drunken doctor before happening upon a Gideon’s Bible – in fairness to McCartney, this period of Beatles history was storied by heavy drug use. Macca drew upon various sources of inspiration for the song, but the idea for a drunken doctor came after a moped accident that had happened years prior.
As McCartney explains, “I fell off a moped and busted my lip open, and we had to get the doctor round to my cousin Betty’s house.”
The story goes that the doctor arrived stinking of gin. The bassist’s bust lip needed stitches, but the task proved more difficult than expected. “He’s got to try and thread a little needle, a curved surgical needle, but he’s seeing three needles at least,” the Beatle explained.
McCartney wasn’t alone on the moped, as he shared, “That was around this same time, when I was twenty-something and going out on the moped from my dad’s house to Betty’s house. I was taking a friend, Tara Guinness.” Although Browne was unscathed in the minor moped accident, it seems as though he did play a role, however small, in the inspiration for the divisive ‘Rocky Raccoon’, being the first person to introduce Macca to the world of LSD.
Tragically, Browne would provide much larger inspiration for ‘A Day in the Life’, one of The Beatles’ greatest efforts. In December of 1966, the Guinness heir was speeding through London in a Lotus Elan alongside his girlfriend, Suki Potier. The amount of drugs and alcohol in his system meant that he was unable to see the red light in front of him, and so he shot straight across a junction before colliding with a parked lorry. The socialite succumbed to his injuries the following day, though Potier made a recovery.
This horrific accident inspired McCartney to write ‘A Day in the Life’, specifically the lines, “He blew his mind out in a car, he didn’t notice that the lights had changed”.
So Browne offered a much more melancholic influence on the Sgt Pepper’s track than ‘Rocky Raccoon’, though it seems as though he regularly occupied Macca’s mind. During The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present, he summed up the tragic figure of Tara Browne with the simple epitaph, “He was a nice boy”.
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