This is a brilliant book by a brilliant man. A magician with perfect taste. Thank God I met him. He is gold dust!’ King met the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on their way to becoming the standard bearers of their generation. Reg Dwight (Elton John) hung around the AIR Records office when King worked there. Meanwhile, Ono emerges from The Tastemaker as an absolute hoot, a hilarious eccentric who encourages King to take magic mushrooms before a business meeting with a music industry executive. “Oh my God, I took off halfway through lunch,” he laughs. “I was flying. And Yoko leans across the table and says” – his voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper – ‘Good, aren’t they?’” Living in an era of seismic social, technological and cultural transformation, King experienced these defining moments as an influential figure in London and New York's gay scenes. Despite his heady life in showbusiness, however, he would soon learn that a glittering career couldn't shield him from heartbreak - witness to the AIDS crisis and the devastating consequences, his personal life was intermittently marked by tumult and turmoil. This included spending time with with his friend Freddie Mercury in the Queen frontman's final days. The Tastemaker has a nice conversational tone. It is warm, full of good humor and insight like the man himself.

The Tastemaker charts the singular life of a man who has been at the beating heart of music's most iconic moments for over sixty years and features stories of his time working with everyone from the Beatles to the Ronettes and Elton John to the Rolling Stones.King thought he was grounded, but in reality he was anything but. “I would get on the Concorde and come to London and go down to see my mum and she would say, ‘What do you pay for butter in America?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, Mum,’ but I made sure to learn before I came home again.” Writing in Air Mail, Victoria Segal shared some impressions of King’s memoir. Segal writes that King “knows how to balance irreverent entertainment with respectful discretion” and “has little interest in dishing real dirt.” And it sounds like a compelling read, from its firsthand accounts of some of music’s biggest names to what Segal describes as a harrowing look at the rise of AIDS. King would spend inordinate amounts of time with Lennon and for a while became his regular drinking buddy.

Throughout The Tastemaker, King’s tone, and sometimes his turn of phrase, is that of an elderly benign colonel telling stories of his military career. While he indulges in a great deal of name-dropping, The Tastemaker provides a flavour of how life was in the mad, Atlantic-hopping lives of many of the stars and personalities whose music has withstood the test of time.Readers will especially enjoy King's tales about promoting the industry's superstars, including the likes of John Lennon, Elton John, the Rolling Stones and Queen, among others. Beatles fans will relish the opportunity to experience King's insider's view of Lennon's Thanksgiving 1974 performance with John at Madison Square Garden. Save for an April 1975 TV special in honor of Sir Lew Grade, it would mark the last time the Beatle played a live show. From there he worked his way into the music industry in the London of the swinging sixties. His timing could not have been better.

When the disco boom started to fade, King became RCA’s creative director, but by this time he was so burned out that on Good Friday in 1981 he joined AA. “I got sober and I’ve been sober ever since, but it wasn’t easy,” says King. “Six weeks into my sobriety Elton came to town doing copious amounts of coke. And then a few weeks later, bloody Freddie Mercury arrives. ‘Darling, I’m here.’ By then King was too fond of his (grand) Mom and (grand) Dad to allow the relationship of parents and son to be changed. He continued to treat his grandparents as his ‘real’ parents for all of his life. This loyalty of King’s becomes a recurring theme throughout the book.I thought he was the most stylish person I had ever seen,” says Elton John. “He had elegance from the word go.” He’s brilliant to work with on any creative level and has never lost his eye,” says Elton. “Even now, he’s light years ahead of anyone. Plus, he has an historic knowledge and love of popular music, gleaned from an early career at Decca and having to deal with big stars from America, Britain and Europe. With Tony it’s all about instinct – choosing the right interview, the album cover, etc. Nobody has that more than him. He also has unwavering loyalty and I can’t recall him ever bad-mouthing any of his clients.” Part of King’s personality is his ability to remain good friends with the stars that he has met and worked with through the years; this has served him well.