John Meyer, Musician and a Lover of Judy Garland, Dead at 86 (Exclusive)

The pianist, playwright, and composer died in mid February due to complications following surgery, his niece Rachel Trousdale confirms to PEOPLE exclusively

John Meyer, a pianist, playwright, and composer who once loved Judy Garland, has died at 86.

He died in mid February due to complications following 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 suitcase, a little black dress, a pair of fishnet stockings and a pair of heels,” he told PEOPLE in 2019. “That was about it, and a mink.”

At the 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’d written, “I Like to Hate Myself in the Morning and Raise a Little Hell Tonight.”

She liked the song and she promptly moved in with Meyer — and his parents — at their family apartment on Park Ave. As Meyer, who wrote about their romance in his 2006 memoir, Heartbreaker, told PEOPLE, “She pointed to herself and then to me and mouthed the phrase ‘I’m with you’ and that was that.'"

Garland was broke at the time, divorced from husband No. 4 (Mark Herrron), reliant on a combination of Ritalin and vodka, and had recently been kicked out of her Manhattan hotel for not paying the bill.

Said Meyer: “Her reality was that she would rely on the kindness of strangers.”

He booked her gigs at a few New York City clubs for “100 dollars and cab fare,” he recalled.

“I became her manager, her agent, her lover, her companion, the shoulder that she could lean on,” he said. “Her big overriding motivation was ‘love me.’”

Related: Judy Garland's Lover John Meyer Shares Tragic, Intimate Details of the Star's Final Months

He remembers making her dinner as she serenaded him with “It Never Was You” as they danced in the kitchen and her tales from the Wizard of Oz. “She said the munchkins were a bunch of horny little guys and they were not above pinching her ass," he said with a laugh.

It was just a few weeks before she was moving to London to perform a concert series at the Talk of the Town nightclub, the subject of the 2019 film, Judy, starring Renee Zellweger as Garland.

He last saw her in January 1969, just a few months before her death on June 22, 1969 at age 47 from an accidental overdose. By then, she had moved on. “She gave me a cursory kiss and said ‘So long Johnny,’” he remembered.

He attended her funeral in New York and as he exited, he remembered thinking, No more jokes, no more fun. "She was the most marvelous fun," he said. "That’s what nobody really speaks about.”

So was Meyer, a beloved wit who always had a story to share of his many adventures, his music, and his one of a kind memories.  Says his niece Rachel Trousdale, "He was really generous in helping other artists make connections and find opportunities and he was always ready with a joke, He loved wine and traveling to France and had an encyclopedic knowledge of classic films and music of his era. Just whistle a bar of any tune, and he knew what it was."

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.