Historically, the music business has been rife — notorious even — for seedy salaciousness and some very degenerate depravity. Think Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Bill Wyman, Gary Glitter, Rolf Harris, and, of course, Jimmy Savile.
While Britain’s entertainment industry looked set to erupt in a Me Too type blaze of recriminations over dodgy conduct with minors, it flared briefly but eventually fizzled out. Rather like all the calumnious bunch above, who, with the annoying exception of Wyman and Glitter, are long gone.
But there is one name missing. King. Jonathan King.
Should the mere mention of his name turn your stomach and raise your blood pressure, please be advised that you are not the first to be appalled by the loquacious lank-haired self-publicist in the comedy specs who (as he loved to slip in to virtually every conversation with nauseating predictability) discovered Peter Gabriel and Genesis.
If you didn’t know, the since disgraced music “mogul” and presenter Jonathan King was jailed historic sex offences against teenage boys in 2001.
In other words, a homo Simon Bates with a skewed motormouth gob. One which has got him into trouble on many an occasion.
When the Pet Shop Boys went to No. 1 with It’s A Sin in the summer of 1987, Jonathan King wrote about it in his weekly column in the Sun newspaper, which suggested the duo had committed an act of plagiarism from Cat Stevens and that they should be punished for it. (Cat Stevens, who, as Yusuf Islam was soon to become embroiled in the Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses affair, was contacted by another tabloid but calmly declared that he wasn’t bovvered.)
After the king of cheese repeated the accusation Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe instigated defamation proceedings. As the case neared court, he even released a typically dreadful self-aggrandising record in support of himself, using the arrangement of It’s A Sin but with the lyrics to Wild World awkwardly grafted on top, so that it went “It’s a/it’s a/oh baby baby it’s a wild world” (Hilariously, Lowe bought a copy because he liked it).
If anything it weakened his case, even if sneakily the B-side was made up of a medley of the Chiffons’ He’s So Fine and the song that was adjudged to have been cribbed from it by George Harrison, My Sweet Lord. Eventually King settled out of court, made a donation to the Jefferiss Research Foundation (a charity specified by PSB, which specialises in education of sexually transmitted diseases) and apologised.
This wasn’t the first time, oddly, that Tennant had crossed Jonathan King’s troublesome trail. Around 1973, when the would-be singer was studying at the Polytechnic of North London, he answered an advert King had placed, searching for young talent for his record company, UK Records. The bookish bespectacled teen dressed up in his best “baggy, Navy-surplus trousers” and sashayed down to a rehearsal studio in the capital.
“I played him two songs,” Tennant recounted to Chris Heath in the 1989* tour book Literally, “and he said they were too introspective. And of course he was absolutely right. But he said he liked my trousers.”
There’s a film there somewhere. Perhaps they could call it Nolita.
The second known occasion Tennant and King met was in the spring of 1983, when the rookie Smash Hits journalist grudgingly interviewed his former rejector as the latter’s new BBC series Entertainment USA was about to premiere. You can almost hear the resentment of the decade prior.
It was a sort of public caning, I can’t call it anything else. And it’s reproduced here for your delectation defecation.
Jonathan King: “I Think About 90% of the Public Really Hate Me — and I Don’t Like Them”
Neil Tennant, Smash Hits, 14 April 1983
There you have it — the Jonathan King philosophy. So far it’s got him loads of hit records, a slot on Top Of The Pops and now his very own British TV show, Entertainment USA. We sent Neil Tennant to meet him so you can answer that burning question — is this man a twit (and if not, why not?)
AS HE FREELY admits, Jonathan King was born “in the late ’40s, before most of your readers’ parents”. He made his name when he was 17 and a fresh-faced Cambridge University student, with a song called Everyone’s Gone To The Moon. Deciding he wasn’t really cut out to be a pop star, he turned to producing. He discovered, produced and even named the original Genesis and then began working with The Bay City Rollers, 10cc and the ’70s rock spectacular The Rocky Horror Show.
After that he formed his own record label, UK Records, which at one time in the early ’70s had three of the top five singles in the British charts. He’s actually sung on about 25 Top 30 British records under various names – Loop-de-Loup, Bubblerock, The Weathermen, 100 Tons And A Feather.
What he’s best known for now is his Radio One Saturday slot, A King In New York and his notorious American chart rundown slot on Top Of The Pops.
How come you got on Top Of The Pops?
I came up with this idea because I felt – this was 18 months ago – that the American and British charts were totally different and that the best records in one country ought to be hits in the other and that has absolutely happened over the last 18 months. We’ve now got the best American hits happening in Britain and the best British hits now happening in America.
Why do you think those British bands are having success in America now?
Because of Top Of The Pops! The American acts come over here to do Top Of The Pops and concerts. Because of my slot, they come over with a hit in the charts. They see and hear the good British acts, like Culture Club, Musical Youth and Duran Duran. They go back and rave about them to their record company executives with the net result that the best British records are now hits in America while the best American hits are hits in Britain.
Hasn’t this made your Top Of The Pops slot rather redundant?
It would if we featured more than three or four records but there are always going to be some that will be hits first in America and that wouldn’t be hits here if it wasn’t for Top Of The Pops. Africa by Toto actually came out here nine months before America, was never played and died a death. The day after I featured it on the Top Of The Pops thing, there were 20,000 sales. It has a really positive effect.
Having done this segment, I thought: why not have an entire half-hour? It can look at some of the acts that are happening in America, some of the music, the films, the new TV shows that are popular there. Groups like Van Halen who are huge in America but get no exposure over here will be featured. There’s room for those kind of acts. You never see Bruce Springsteen on television or Kenny Loggins or Bob Seger.
Who do you think all this will appeal to? All the letters sent to Smash Hits about you are from people who absolutely hate your Top Of The Pops slot.
I get a lot of hate mail and a lot of love mail. It’s always the two extremes. A lot of the younger listeners do think they hate that kind of music but in reality a lot of them would like it fi they could hear it. The danger is that a lot of young kids will fall for an image and will then like records which a band may put out which will not necessarily be very good. The current one it’s happening to is Paul Weller. The Jam made three or four really great records, Eton Rifles and The Bitterest Pill, for instance, but the new Paul Weller single [the Style Council’s Speak Like A Child] is very inferior, I think. However it charted at Number Six, because there’s a big body of Jam fans around. I would guarantee that nine out of ten of your readers think that it’s not very good but the one out of ten who are raving Paul Weller fans are the more vocal.
But nine out of ten also think that Toto’s record is awful.
There I don’t know. I think there is a large wasteland of kids who are not particularly into all the current new British records but like the occasional Duran Duran or Culture Club record, and if they hear these new American acts they may start thinking, “Hey, some of these are quite good.”
The thing is, if you’re about 15 years old and you’re watching Bob Seger play, it’s like watching your dad play, really.
Well, I think pop music is basically a young person’s thing but there is room to make good music for all types. When The Police happened, it didn’t bother people that they were in their 30s.
What image do you try to project on TV?
I don’t, really, and that’s why I’ll never be a big star. I’m an irritant: I say what I think and I feel and that irritates people. I think 90% of the population really hate me, really find me absolutely horrid.
Does that worry you?
No. I feel the same way about them. I don’t care if they don’t like me. The 10% of the public I like have the same sort of sense of humour as me and a bit of brains in their heads. I don’t like stupid people.
Why do you wear the clothes you wear?
I’m the worst dresser in the world. That bombardier jacket I wore on Top Of The Pops was dug out of mothballs. It was the actual jacket that started the Sgt Pepper look (as seen on The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper LP cover in ’67). I found it in a junk shop in 1965, wore it down the clubs, John Lennon saw me wearing it and bought one himself from the same junk shop and then the Beatles all wore them. I wore it on TV because I know the public are very stupid. The jacket has a huge red front – a primary colour – and so they can identify with it.
Are you a cynic?
Yes.
Introduction by Steve Pafford, 2025
*I encountered King at a Eurythmics concert at Wembley Arena that same year, 1989. All I’ll say is that his companion looked younger than the age Neil Tennant would have been when he first met him. Ugh.
