Jonathan King

Jonathan King (born Kenneth George King; 6 December 1944) is an English singer-songwriter, record producer, music entrepreneur, and former TV and radio presenter.

King entered the music industry with his 1965 single "Everyone's Gone to the Moon", which was a hit. He followed this with more record releases of which several made the charts in the 1960s and 1970s.

King also worked with other acts. He discovered and named Genesis. He produced the Bay City Rollers' first hit. He started the record label UK Records in 1972.^[1] An early signing was 10cc whom he named and who released their product with the label. In the 1980s King increased his media work and appeared as a presenter of British television programmes including Entertainment USA.

King was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2001 for sexually abusing five boys, aged 14 and 15, in the 1980s.^[2][3]

Early life and education

King was born in London of an American-born father and English-born mother. His father, a company managing director, died when King was nine.^[4] The family had moved to Surrey, and King and his two brothers, James and Anthony, were raised in the village of Ewhurst near Dorking.^[5] He attended Stoke House boarding school in Seaford, East Sussex, and later Charterhouse, in Godalming, Surrey, both private schools.^[6]

On a trip around the world, King met the manager of The Beatles, Brian Epstein in Hawaii. He was encouraged by Epstein to pursue a career in the music industry.^[7] He had earlier been recorded by producer Joe Meek but those tracks were never released. King studied at Trinity College, Cambridge.

1960s–1970s

Photograph by Allan Warren, 1969

Between 1965 and 1979, 18 of the singles released by King, on which he performed, appeared in the Top 75 of the UK Singles Chart; five made the Top 10.^[8] He was the producer on several others. Some were studio "novelty" records released under his own name or as a pseudonymous band or artiste.^[9]

Whilst still an undergraduate, King wrote and sang "Everyone's Gone to the Moon", released through Decca Records. It reached the top 5 of the UK charts, also charting in other countries, and was later awarded a gold disc.^[10] He wrote and produced "It's Good News Week" by Hedgehoppers Anonymous, which, later in 1965, was also a hit in the UK and reached the top 50 in America.^[11][12]

In 1967, after leaving university, he presented a television show on ITV, Good Evening; I'm Jonathan King. It ran for six months on Saturday evenings.^[11][13] Around this time, King was recruited by Sir Edward Lewis, the founder of Decca Records, to be his personal assistant.^[14][15]

In 1967, King discovered and signed,^{[lower-alpha 1]} the band that was to become Genesis.^[11][17] During a visit to his old school, Charterhouse, a friend of one of the band members handed him a recording by the band, whose members were pupils at the school.^[18] King decided that he would be the band's record producer, choosing its name, Genesis, to mark the start of his production career.^[19][20] He produced its first single, "The Silent Sun" (which the band subsequently described as a "Bee Gees pastiche"), and its first album, From Genesis to Revelation, which bears little resemblance to the band's later work.^[16][21] Neither record made any impact, with the album selling only 650 copies.^[22] Genesis parted with King after this and the band gradually reshaped its music in the style that subsequently made it famous.^[11][19] King still holds the rights to the first album and has re-released it several times under a variety of titles.^[21] Genesis is said to have disowned the record and have been embarrassed by its re-release.^[16] Nevertheless, bassist Mike Rutherford has commented that "for all his faults" King had given the band an opportunity to record which was, at that time, hard to come by for an amateur band.^{[23] [24]}

King released records, as producer, writer, label boss and performer, several of which made the charts.^[11] Examples of these were "Loop di Love", credited pseudonymously as Shag, and "Johnny Reggae" as The Piglets.^[25][26] He recorded the country song Hooked On A Feeling and turned it into a pop track by adding an unusual intro. This was covered by Swedish group Blue Swede in 1974, giving them a US Number One, which has featured in shows and movies since then, including the 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy (film)^[27] In 1971 King produced the Bay City Rollers and gave them their first hit. ^[28] The single "Keep on Dancing", reached number 9 in the UK charts.^[29]

In September 1972, King set up the record label UK Records,^[30] initially distributed by Decca.^[11] UK Records' most significant signing was 10cc^[11][31] The band made eight UK singles with the label, including "Donna" and "Rubber Bullets".^[32][33] Although the band also released four US singles^[33] it failed to penetrate the American market.^[32] 10cc left UK Records in 1975 for Mercury Records,^[33] after which it achieved success in America.^[32] Other signings to UK Records included Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs, Roy C, The First Class and Lobo, and it also released King's own recordings.^[34]

In 1973, King became one of the original backers of the The Rocky Horror Show.^[4][11] After seeing it on its second night, he took a 20% stake in the show and produced the original cast album, released on King's music label.^[4]

King closed UK Records in 1979 but has regularly re-released recordings from the UK Records catalogue.^[34]

In April 1978, he stood for the United Kingdom Parliament as an independent in the Epsom and Ewell by-election, where he gained over 5% of the vote and was not elected.^[35][36]

1980s–1990s

King (left) with Jon Bon Jovi

In the 1980s, King moved away from working in the music industry and developed his career in other parts of the media.^[25] During 1980 and 1981, King presented a daily radio talk show on New York's WMCA from 10–12 weekday mornings, and regularly reported from the U.S. on Top of the Pops. A spinoff series, Entertainment USA was broadcast on BBC2. He was associate producer of the youth TV show No Limits. He co-hosted the ITV programme Ultra Quiz during 1983. He wrote a weekly page in The Sun for eight years called "Bizarre USA". He also wrote two novels, Bible Two and The Booker Prize Winner.^[13] He continued some music projects, including the rock group "Gogmagog",^[37] and hosted the Brit Awards for the BBC in 1987.^[38] He then produced the event from 1990 to 1992.^[39][40][41]

King's media work included producing the BBC quest for a Eurovision Song Contest entrant from 1995.^[13] Ooh Aah... Just a Little Bit, the UK's entrant in 1996, performed by Australian singer Gina G, was a number one single in the UK, and came eighth in the competition.^[42] The UK won in 1997 with Love Shine A Light performed by Katrina and the Waves.^[43] He also founded, in 1993, The Tip Sheet, a magazine promoting unsigned musical acts.^[44] It stopped printing in 2002 to be replaced by an online version.^[45] In 1997, he was awarded the British Phonographic Industry Man of the Year Award with a message of support from the then-prime minister Tony Blair for his "important contribution to one of this country's great success stories."^[46]

2000s–2010s

In 2000 King was investigated by police about allegations of sexual offences committed against boys since the 1960s. The investigation had been prompted by one of his alleged victims contacting the publicist Max Clifford, who advised him to contact the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) in May that year, initially in relation to alleged offences committed by another celebrity. ^[47]The complainant subsequently alleged that King had assaulted him in the early 1970s when the complainant was a teenager. NCIS handed the investigation over to Surrey Police, who found a second complainant who made similar allegations. The police interviewed King in November, and he went on television denying "these absurd allegations". As a result of this appearance other men came forward to make similar allegations. Surrey Police claimed that their investigation, covering the years 1969 to 1989, had found that King had approached 10,000 to 20,000 boys, ostensibly to question them for research, which the police said was "a device to get to the boys and start speaking to them and grooming them for his purposes."^[48][49]

The investigation led to King's prosecution which was split between several trials at the Old Bailey.^[2][3] King denied the charges but, in September 2001, he was found guilty, in the first of the trials, of four offences of indecent assault, one of buggery and one of attempted buggery against five boys aged 14 and 15 during the 1980s.^[2][3] In sentencing him, Judge David Paget, QC, said "You used your fame and success to attract adolescent and impressionable boys. You then abused the trust they and their parents placed in you."^[50][51] The Judge ordered the remaining charges dropped and sentenced him to 7 years' imprisonment for the offences in the first trial as a sample for all charges.

He was found not guilty in a second trial two months later. The prosecution offered no further evidence when the alleged victim admitted during the trial that he was "probably over 16" at the time of the alleged offences. The prosecution failed to prove that any sex was non-consensual.^{[lower-alpha 2][3][50]} The defence position was that King had never met the man. The prosecution dropped the charges in a third trial.^[2]

King has always maintained that he is innocent of all the offences of which he was convicted.^[4] He claims that he is a victim of a miscarriage of justice brought about by an incredibly unfair legal system, the conduct of the press and police and false allegations generated as a result of media publicity.^[53][54] Journalists Richard Stott and Lynn Barber wrote that he had been over-harshly treated, although neither believed him innocent of the charges.^[2][55][56]

King served the first five months of his sentence in Belmarsh Prison, but was then sent to Maidstone Prison.^[2] In 2003, the Court of Appeal rejected his application to hear an appeal of both the conviction and the sentence.^[57] He was released on parole in March 2005.^[58] He appealed his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the European Court of Human Rights, but without success.^[4][59][60] King remains on the Sex Offenders Register and is prohibited from working with anyone under the age of 18.^[4]

2010 onwards

King has maintained an interest in prison issues and, since his release, has continued to write a column for Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners, which he began writing while he was in prison.^[61][62][63] In October 2011, then BBC Director-General Mark Thompson apologised to Jonathan King, following the removal of King's performance of "It Only Takes a Minute" from a 1976 episode of Top of the Pops that was repeated on BBC Four.^[64]

Since his release from prison, King has produced several films, albums, and books.^[65] His creative output has been described as being, at times, "a primal scream of rage".^[4] In July 2007, King posted a video on YouTube, from his movie Vile Pervert: The Musical, of a song entitled "The True Story of Harold Shipman", which suggested that serial killer Harold Shipman had been a victim of the media.^[66] The song provoked an angry response from the relatives of Shipman's victims.^[67]

In May 2008, King posted for free download on the internet his 96-minute film, Vile Pervert: The Musical.^[65] King is the only actor in the movie and portrays 21 different roles. The Telegraph described it as an attempted justification of the events that led to his conviction and a "bizarre home-made film" about a television celebrity who was subjected to "malicious abuse allegations, in a fictional case that King clearly intends to represent his own demise".^[68] The Spectator's Rod Liddle called it "a fantastically berserk, bravado performance".^[69]

King also published two volumes of autobiography, 65 My Life So Far and 70 FFFY^[70] and two novels, Beware The Monkey Man and Death Flies, Missing Girls and Brigitte Bardot, and he has produced two films, Me Me Me (2011)^[71][72] and The Pink Marble Egg (2013).^[73] King says that he has made no money from his internet films.

In August 2015 The Spectator published an article by King about former Prime Minister Edward Heath.^[74]

On 9 September 2015, it was reported that King had been arrested as part of Operation Ravine, an investigation relating to claims of child sexual abuse at the Walton Hop Disco in the 1970s and 1980s.^[75]

Discography

Chart singles

Credited as performer

Uncredited performer

Other productions

See also

• Operation Arundel

Notes

References