Tara Browne

Tara Browne (4 March 1945 – 18 December 1966) was an Irish socialite and heir to a part of the Guinness fortune. His December 1966 death in a car crash was referred to in the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life".

Early life Browne was the younger son of the 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, who was also the 2nd Baron Mereworth, and Oonagh Guinness. His father, Lord Oranmore and Browne, was an Anglo-Irish peer and member of the House of Lords who served in that house for 72 years, longer than any other peer up to that time (ending only by eviction during government reforms in 1999). His mother, Oonagh Guinness, was an heiress to the Guinness fortune.

For his 21st birthday, Browne threw a "lavish" party at Luggala, the Gothic Browne family seat in the Wicklow Mountains, where "two private jets flew the 200 or so guests to Ireland, including John Paul Getty, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones [and] Jones' then-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg." Lennon, who was a friend of Browne, read the coroner's verdict into Browne's death while composing music at his piano. It was this news which inspired him to write the following lines:

However, in 1997, Paul McCartney gave a different explanation of these lines:

Browne's death also inspired a song by the Pretty Things, "Death of a Socialite", which appears on the album Emotions, released in April 1967 (about one month before Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band).