The pianist, playwright and composer died in mid-February of complications from surgery, his niece Rachel Trousdale confirms exclusively to PEOPLE
John Meyer, the pianist, playwright and composer who once loved Judy Garland, has died at 86.
He died in mid-February due to complications from surgery, his niece Rachel Trousdale confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.
Meyer was in his late 20s when he first met Garland, then 46, in 1968 through a mutual friend.
“She had a trunk, a little black dress, a pair of fishnet stockings and a pair of heels,” he told PEOPLE in 2019. “That was about it, and mink.”
At that time, he was a young pianist, and she was one of the world’s greatest entertainers who had fallen on hard times. He played her a song he wrote, “I like to hate myself in the morning and raise a little hell tonight.”
She liked the song and immediately moved in with Meyer — and his parents — in their family apartment on Park Ave. As Meyer, who wrote about their romance in his 2006 memoir, Heartbreakertold PEOPLE, “She pointed to herself and then to me and said ‘I’m with you’ and that was it.”
John Meyer and Debbie Wileman Celebrate Judy Garland’s Happy 100th Birthday Starring Debbie Wileman held at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on June 25, 2022 in New York City.
Joseph Marzullo/MediaPunch/IPX
At the time, Garland was broke, divorced from husband #4 (Mark Herron), addicted to a combination of Ritalin and vodka, and recently kicked out of her Manhattan hotel for not paying her bill.
Meyer said, “Her reality was that she relied on the kindness of strangers.”
He booked her gigs at several New York clubs for “$100 and a cab,” he recalled.
“I became her manager, her agent, her lover, her companion, a shoulder she could lean on,” he said. “Her big motivation was ‘love me’.”
Judy Garland’s lover, John Meyer, shares the tragic, intimate details of the actress’ last months
He remembers making her dinner while she serenaded him with “It Never Was You” as they danced in the kitchen and her stories from Wizard of Oz. “She said the munchkins were a bunch of hot dudes and they didn’t mind pinching her ass,” he said with a laugh.
It was only a few weeks before she moved to London to perform a series of concerts at the Talk of the Town nightclub, which is the subject of the 2019 film. Judy, with Renee Zellweger as Garland.
He last saw her in January 1969, just a few months before her death on June 22, 1969, aged 47, from an accidental overdose. By then she had already moved on. “She gave me a quick kiss and said ‘Hi, Johnny,'” he recalled.
He attended her funeral in New York and as he walked out, he remembered thinking, No more jokes, no more fun. “It was the most wonderful party,” he said. “That’s what nobody really talks about.”
So was Meyer, a beloved witty man who always had a story to share about his many adventures, music and unique memories. His niece Rachel Trousdale says: “He was really generous in helping other artists make connections and find opportunities and was always up for a joke, loved wine and trips to France and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the classic films and music of his era. Enough is to whistle the beat of any tune and he’ll know what it is.”
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