The Man Who Invented the UK Music Industry. 65: My Life So Far by Jonathan King - a review by Sean Bw Parker

Jonathan King

Born Kenneth King some 81 years ago, Jonathan King has sold 40 million-plus records since his number one Everyone’s Gone To The Moon in 1965. After attending Charterhouse and Cambridge, King went on to name Genesis and produce their first album, steer The Rocky Horror Picture Show and 10CC to success, present Entertainment USA and US radio shows, and produce the BRIT awards and Eurovision in their halcyon 90s pomp.

Since King published 65: My Life So Far in 2010 he has released two follow-ups, with his 80: That’s All Folks! coming out in 2025. In a review in The Telegraph of the latter, Gareth Roberts made much of his view of King being a ‘parasite’, this new labelling being the consequence of now quarter-century old convictions relating to King with underage males, of which King continues to maintain his innocence.

But ‘parasite’? What his first autobiography details is how in fact Jonathan King was one of a handful of individuals who essentially invented the British music industry. Part of this invention was the now much-maligned ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s and 70s, where the youth of the day did indeed ‘let it all hang out’ (the title of one of King’s early hits). This sexual revolution included a widening of the scope of publicly ‘acceptable’ sexual orientation, including homosexuality and bisexuality, leading to a position in the 2020s where gays are disproportionately ‘overrepresented’ in the media.

Many of these beneficiaries of the changes ushered in by King and co are now deafeningly histrionic in their condemnation of King, because headlines rule in the ‘meejah’ (another King coining in the book). Another coinage that has defined King’s creative output is the False Allegations Industry, reflecting his learning of the process since the eye-watering costs of his trials (millions). Since then there have been attempts to control the narrative, and the first-hand experience of the absolute pivot from liberation to social puritanism, ramping up around the year 2000.

These days, the one-time National Treasure (many still love and remember JK’s debut hit and his 1980s Entertainment USA TV series) is put in a media-created box named ‘historical celebrity nonce’ or somesuch, while Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing receive posthumous pardons for sexual convictions received in their lifetimes. Now in his early 80s, and with his wits still very much about him, King’s YouTube series A Victim Bites Back continues to (semi) regularly report on his travels, his lunches, and his ongoing battles with a media-justice system which he was one of the first to call out.

The book itself is a compellingly readable bookstop/page-turner, from post-war aspirations, putting his ‘good ears’ to brilliant use in the 60s and 70s, and largely going to TV presenter and generalist pop producer at the end of the twentieth century - before the knock on the door. King has more integrity and honesty, about himself and others, in his little finger than the contemporary media industry in the UK put together (and let’s not even mention the legal scene).

A pop culture provocateur since the early days, King must have got up so many people’s noses with his waspish Sun column in the 80s, let alone his post-prison sentence musical Vile Pervert, which is as on-the-nose as its title might suggest. In fairness, JK’s Who Let The Dogs Out?, refashioned by The Baha Men in the late 90s, was enough to merit a prison sentence on its own (but that’s just your humble reviewer!).

Elsewhere the music was terrific, from ...Moon, a beautiful lullaby with tinges of Summer of Love psychedelia, to the perilously catchy Johnny Reggae, to holiday classic versions of Una Paloma Blanca and Gloria. Contemporary David Frost was able to go from serious interviewer, a-la Nixon, to surreal satire with The Frost Report, to daytime froth with Through The Keyhole. King was no less successful going from Top Of The Pops head to acerbic cultural critic on TV and in the papers, and being a Lord of Spin long before Alistair Campbell and Max Clifford came along.

And, as 65 details, it was Clifford who set the dogs on King as he was about to be awarded presidentship of EMI Records, having steered Eurovision and the BRIT awards through some of their most memorable years. Clifford, whose daughter continues to maintain his innocence on his behalf, died during a prison sentence of his own, granted for not massively dissimilar reasons.

What seeps through the pages of 65 is how much making people happy was, and is, JK’s reason for being, whether that be through producing catchy pop, provoking prejudices/the intellect, or sharing ‘moments’ with (always consensual) others. King also has a kind of truth-telling gene that he always knew would get him in trouble, and he learned to play on it, since the ‘stoopid’ public, in his framing, seemed to him to enjoy having its dimwit soft underbelly mocked.

This desire to have people love him by hating him was part of a contrarian, Swiftian tradition that had not been tested on a mass-appeal mainstream pop market, and made King stick out like the multicoloured afro wig he started wearing in the 70s/80s.

In A Victim Bites Back JK often describes himself as a left-leaning liberal - ok, boomer - but seems not to locate the year 2000 as a pivot point after which leftist forces in media and law decided to get serious on maturing libertines like him. Gradually, DJs were defenestrated from Dave Lee Travis to Dr Fox to Jimmy Savile to Tim Westwood, musicians like Pete Townshend, Paul Weller, Mick Hucknall or (actual wrongdoer) Paul ‘Gary Glitter’ Gadd. And this was long before the #MeToo movement.

Thus, 65 becomes a book of two halves, with the first half detailing what feels like every major pop music moment from meeting Beatles manager Brian Epstein in Hawaii in the mid-60s on his year off and handing him a tape, to probably the most shocking anecdote involving Elton John I’ve ever read (and that’s up against some pretty stiff competition). In the second, shorter half, it’s safe to say that JK is forced to ‘grow up’, as the State suddenly becomes in control of his fate - and the agonies of that when you’ve been such a self-propelling force up until that point.

So, back to Roberts’ ‘parasite’. JK’s fall from pop’s favourite posh(ish) flaneur to marginalised howling voice was slammed shut and boxed up by a newly right-on culture industry that had technologised into a kind of consensus-machine, leaving binned buccaneers like JK peering in at the window. But, it was his compulsion to telling the truth about everything around him, with lots of discretion added, welded to knowing what made an outrageous hook work - thus pleasing the masses, the constant aim - that in fact created an industry which multitudes then moved in on and parasited off themselves.

The slurs come from media reports of his convictions - there was more than one trial - which were surprisingly complex, with truths here and complete falsehoods there. Central to things is that JK didn’t agree that if the age of consent was to be 16 for young females then it must be for young males too. Indeed, the age was equalled just after his trial, so obvious did the discrepancy then seem - but too late for him. (His legal details are more complicated than this, but it is a central plank.)

All in all, 65 reads like a first-person epic, from a man whose instinct to intellectually provoke and sonically please defined pop culture in the second half of the twentieth century. In describing his schooldays JK acknowledges that the sexual experimentation with his dorm-mates may well have led him down the path of bisexuality, which later seemed to define so many aspects of how the public later perceived him.

That stands at distinct odds with his clear, deep affection for ‘nation’s sweetheart’ Samantha Fox in the 1980s when they were boyfriend and girlfriend. JK says Fox was a ‘natural mother’, and he knew he wasn’t cut out to be the kind of patriarch that she might need. JK’s love of music seems to be as true and individualistic as his enjoyment of sex, for years; but when it was all happening no one was checking other people’s mental health records, or signing consent forms to make sure power-dynamic relationship boundaries at work were being obeyed. This was a pyre built for the likes of King’s pop-creating generation, and ultimately led the way to ‘good stories’ in the meejah.

Despite all the tribulations and trials (prison was something of a breeze), it was the death of King’s beloved, open-minded mother that hit him the hardest. This was another facet of the ‘unknown King’ - the aforementioned integrity. This was, and is, an integrity that values individual choice and freedom to choose, to enjoy, to eat, drink, dance and allow oneself to be happy over most other things. This was weaponised against King in line with the objectives of the neo-puritanical 21st century, without anyone letting him (or his contemporaries) know.

JK says his third autobiography 80: That’s All Folks! is as true to a literary ending as its title, but with an imagination and zest for life as fecund and irrepressible as his, a filmed version of all three - produced by the man himself of course - would actually be the best full stop. My God would people flock to see it.

By Sean Bw Parker

65: My life so far by Jonathan King is available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/65-My-Life-So-Far/dp/1838207252