Chart entered : 3 November 1979
Chart peak : 65
Well this story has an erm interesting ending but I'll try to be fair and objective here.
Jonathan looked set to be a one hit wonder after numerous identical-sounding follow-ups ( not excluding a cover of Dylan's Just Like A Woman ) to "Everyone's Gone To The Moon" failed to chart. Notwithstanding that his career progressed in other directions with a TV show on ITV just after graduating and then a plum job at Decca Records in 1967. There he resurrected his recording career as a pop satirist long before The KLF, making deliberately flimsy singles in whatever style was current starting with 1970's cod-psychedelic "Let It All Hang Out" . Some of them were recorded under pseudonyms and one or two, in spite of his intentions, were decent records such as 1976's " It Only Takes A Minute Girl" which was to attract a big-selling cover in the nineties. Not all were hits but enough to make his reputation and the Radio One jocks played along by making him the man we love to hate.
As punk rehabilitated the 7 inch single the public's appetite for his japes waned and the hits got a lot smaller. Earlier in the year Jonathan had shut down his UK record label so he recorded this single with Ariola. With this one Jonathan was repeating a trick he'd played in 1975, translating a big European hit and then recording it himself ( in that case "Una Paloma Blanca" which reached number 5 ). "Gloria" was written and recorded by Italian Umberto Tozzi and had been a monster hit all over Europe that summer. Jonathan's version uses less synths in favour of piano and acoustic guitar. That and his indifferent vocal give the whole thing the cheap feel of a Top of the Pops album re-recording. Giving away two of his biggest hits and putting a picture of his model girlfriend Janet Atkinson on the cover was probably necessary to get it into the charts. The song was a much bigger hit three years later for Laura Branigan ( who didn't use Jonathan's translation ), ironically after Jonathan had promoted it in his US charts feature on Top of the Pops.
Jonathan made relatively few records in the eighties. After the immediate follow-up to this, "It's Illegal, It's Immoral, It's Unhealthy But It's Fun" in June 1980, which I haven't heard , he didn't release a single for nearly three years. He was much more interested in resurrecting his career as a TV presenter and in 1982 started doing his reports on the US charts, about which I've fulminated elsewhere. Jonathan's apparent compulsion to needle people now took the form of an aggressively anti-patriotic stance in which everything American was automatically bigger and better than what shabby old Britain could offer . He became the Trojan horse for American cultural imperialism. The slot eventually developed into two completely separate shows "Entertainment USA" ( the theme for which was his next single "I'll Slap Your Face " in 1983 and the youth-orientated magazine "No Limits" which stuck to the same all-American music policy.
Jonathan's fondness for Reagan's America also got him a weekly page in The Sun . In 1987 he released the single "Wild World" a poor quality mash-up aiming to prove The Pet Shop Boys had ripped off the Cat Stevens song for the melody of their number one single It's A Sin. There is some smilarity ( although Jonathan's wretched record actually helped the Boys' case by sounding so clumsy ) but that was hardly new in pop and it's difficult to know what JK was trying to do. Perhaps he really liked the Stevens tune or he was simply trying to puncture a British succcess story ( and a left-leaning one at that ). In the end nobody was actually sued but it didn't do much for his reputation.
Later that year his TV career suffered a major setback when Janet Street-Porter became head of youth and entertainment features on BBC2 and promptly axed both his programmes, a decision he didn't take particularly well. He was partially rehabilitated a couple of years later when he was asked to take charge of the Brit Awards ceremony after the Sam Fox / Mick Fleetwood fiasco. He discharged that responsibility competently enough and gradually moved back into the record business.
His last single in 1993 was a techno version of Teresa Brewer's ancient hit "Music Music Music" to promote a ten part history of music he was narrating for Radio One. That same year he started publishing The Tip Sheet a magazine with a CD insert to guide A & R men towards unsigned bands. It's not clear how influential this was but it certainly had plenty of subscribers. From 1995 he started managing Britain's entries to the Eurovision Song Contest and was vindicated by Katrina and the Waves's win in 1997. Largely for this he got the BPI Man of the Year Award that year and a commendation from new PM Tony Blair.
Three years later his world began to crumble when accusations began to surface that he had been having sex with teenage boys in the seventies alongside known paedophiles Tam Paton and Chris Denning at a disco called The Walton Hop. As has become a familiar pattern now , more accusers came out of the woodwork and though Jonathan's lawyers managed to bat away a lot of the accusations enough remained to put him on trial. He received an exceptionally harsh seven year sentence which you can't help but feel was influenced by his customary arrogant demeanour in court.
I don't believe his protestations of innocence but I do agree he was harshly treated. Firstly, his victims were not exactly children; they were all teenagers . Some he had befriended and seduced over a period of time and they "went back for more". Secondly, the prosecution case was grossly unfair in describing his teenage research packs as "seduction kits" when they were clearly the tools of his trade and the foundation of much of his career. It would have been physically impossible for him to bugger all the recipients and many went out to girls. And take just one of his "victims" Jeremy Davis ( I'm not outing him ; he waived his anonymity to the Sunday Mirror and his case didn't proceed ) The article's worth quoting at length :
"I didn't have a happy home life. A family friend had abused me in my younger years and I could never settle anywhere. I always wanted to escape, to forget".....Jeremy says his life has been completely overshadowed by King' abuse. It has destroyed his two long-term relationships , and is the reason he says he now lives alone and hasn't got a job...."it's always there gnawing away. I don't know how to love properly. Every day I wonder who or what I might have been if I'd never met Jonathan King. Maybe I would have let women get closer, maybe I'd have a great career , maybe I'd still be married... I became a terrible father and husband, we rowed all the time....That man ruined my life "
I mean , doubtless having sex with Jonathan King ( on at least four occasions ) isn't the stuff of fond memories but can you really blame every subsequent failure in your life on it ? And how are you separating the impact of the relationship with King from the earlier abuse you mention ? Was it worse because JK's got a bit more money to compensate you ? At the time and since, Jonathan railed that his accusers had been to Max Clifford and were chasing a payday and reading stuff like that does make you wonder.
Anyway Jonathan was released in 2005. His brother kept The Tip Sheet going in his absence and he is still involved in the record business, Understandably, precise details of his activities are hard to come by although he is thought to have had some involvement in the careers of Alex Day and Orson. He has broken cover with self-produced novels and films on the internet including Vile Pervert : The Musical in 2008 , a deranged account of his fall from grace with Jonathan playing all 21 characters. You're also likely to find him among the comments on any of his old hits on YouTube. Jonathan King is now 70.
No comments:
Post a Comment