Tina Knowles Remembers Beyoncé’s Beloved Uncle Johnny
Klaudia//April 28, 2025
Vogue shared an excerpt from Tina Knowles’ “Matriarch” about Uncle Johnny. Read below.
We were so busy traveling and touring with Destiny’s Child that it was easy for Johnny to hide that he was getting sicker. He began having episodes where he acted erratic, which made him withdraw more from family. Then he was hospitalized, and Selena found out. Johnny was her heart and best friend. She called me immediately and I caught the next flight to be with him. The diagnosis was AIDS-related dementia, which was causing a sort of delirium and paranoia.
Johnny got medication, which helped him get a little better, but not for very long. He started to lose motor control. We got him into a long-term care facility, not quite a nursing home but close. The staff was lovely, but very clear that this would be Johnny’s home until he went into hospice.
When the family wasn’t in some city with Destiny’s Child, I would bring Johnny home with me on the weekends to spend time with Solange and Beyoncé. Saturday mornings, my daughters would put on the house music he used to play as he helped raise them. Now they played it to him, dancing around as he bobbed his head to Robin S singing “Show Me Love” or Crystal Waters going “la da dee, la do daa.”
Solange was 11 and would clown for him, pulling out all the stops to make him laugh. She would get him his “funny cigarettes,” and they would sit out on the little patio where I let Johnny smoke weed because it eased his nausea. I had always lectured the girls about Johnny’s funny cigarettes and how I didn’t want him smoking around them, but we were focused on more important things now. Watching Johnny decline was very hard on Solange. She feels things so deeply, internalizing pain until it reappears later as art or words.
I was at an airport when I got the call. Johnny needed to move to hospice. It was getting to be his time, they said. I visited him often, staying overnight sometimes. Johnny liked me to get him into a wheelchair so I could take him outside. We loved the sun, and it would relieve the chill he felt down in the bones. We could have been sitting high up on the plank in the pecan tree, a landmark of our shared childhood. I have a picture of him with me outside near the end. Those moments outside were an escape.
Johnny took his last breath on July 29, 1998. He was 48. We had his memorial the following Saturday at Wynn Funeral Home in Galveston. Beyoncé and Kelly [Rowland] sang with the other girls from Destiny’s Child. They had just been touring with Boyz II Men and now they were here crying. I don’t know how they got through “Amazing Grace,” but they did.
Years later, in the summer of 2022, I was in the Hamptons at Beyoncé’s home. She and Jay were hosting a Renaissance album drop party, and Blue and Rumi—then 10 and 5—had decorated the place. This album was her tribute to the house music Johnny had schooled my daughters in. I hadn’t yet heard the song “HEATED,” and as we all danced, Jay suddenly said to me, “Listen to this.”
Then I heard the next line, Beyoncé singing on the record: “Uncle Johnny made my dress.” I started to cry and smile at the same time, knowing this was what Johnny wanted. To be loved and celebrated. We raised a toast and danced on it. “Here’s to Johnny.”
When we went on the Renaissance World Tour, fans all over the world would turn to sing the line to me, and every time, my hand went to my heart. I wished Johnny were there to dance with me. But I would always see people in the crowd who reminded me of him, and I would do everything I could to get to them. I drove security crazy: “Bring him! Yes, that one!” I would send the cameras their way. “Make sure you get them! Oh, they’re fabulous.” I collected pictures of so many Johnnys.
Beyoncé closed the show with a photo of me and Johnny huge across the stage. It shows me out one night, looking at him with adoring but skeptical eyes, readying for the next thing out of his mouth. Beyoncé had asked me to give her a picture of Johnny and me for Renaissance’s album art, last-minute of course. That photograph was right on top of a pile when I opened a box, Johnny picking just the right one for us to admire him. When the photo of us was up there on the stage in stadiums across the world, all the young people who felt kinship with our beloved Johnny erupted in cheers.
“Yessss, Lucy,” I heard, Johnny’s voice so close in my ear, loud over the house music he and my daughters loved. “They know what time it is!”
We were so busy traveling and touring with Destiny’s Child that it was easy for Johnny to hide that he was getting sicker. He began having episodes where he acted erratic, which made him withdraw more from family. Then he was hospitalized, and Selena found out. Johnny was her heart and best friend. She called me immediately and I caught the next flight to be with him. The diagnosis was AIDS-related dementia, which was causing a sort of delirium and paranoia.
Johnny got medication, which helped him get a little better, but not for very long. He started to lose motor control. We got him into a long-term care facility, not quite a nursing home but close. The staff was lovely, but very clear that this would be Johnny’s home until he went into hospice.
When the family wasn’t in some city with Destiny’s Child, I would bring Johnny home with me on the weekends to spend time with Solange and Beyoncé. Saturday mornings, my daughters would put on the house music he used to play as he helped raise them. Now they played it to him, dancing around as he bobbed his head to Robin S singing “Show Me Love” or Crystal Waters going “la da dee, la do daa.”
Solange was 11 and would clown for him, pulling out all the stops to make him laugh. She would get him his “funny cigarettes,” and they would sit out on the little patio where I let Johnny smoke weed because it eased his nausea. I had always lectured the girls about Johnny’s funny cigarettes and how I didn’t want him smoking around them, but we were focused on more important things now. Watching Johnny decline was very hard on Solange. She feels things so deeply, internalizing pain until it reappears later as art or words.
I was at an airport when I got the call. Johnny needed to move to hospice. It was getting to be his time, they said. I visited him often, staying overnight sometimes. Johnny liked me to get him into a wheelchair so I could take him outside. We loved the sun, and it would relieve the chill he felt down in the bones. We could have been sitting high up on the plank in the pecan tree, a landmark of our shared childhood. I have a picture of him with me outside near the end. Those moments outside were an escape.
Johnny took his last breath on July 29, 1998. He was 48. We had his memorial the following Saturday at Wynn Funeral Home in Galveston. Beyoncé and Kelly [Rowland] sang with the other girls from Destiny’s Child. They had just been touring with Boyz II Men and now they were here crying. I don’t know how they got through “Amazing Grace,” but they did.
Years later, in the summer of 2022, I was in the Hamptons at Beyoncé’s home. She and Jay were hosting a Renaissance album drop party, and Blue and Rumi—then 10 and 5—had decorated the place. This album was her tribute to the house music Johnny had schooled my daughters in. I hadn’t yet heard the song “HEATED,” and as we all danced, Jay suddenly said to me, “Listen to this.”
Then I heard the next line, Beyoncé singing on the record: “Uncle Johnny made my dress.” I started to cry and smile at the same time, knowing this was what Johnny wanted. To be loved and celebrated. We raised a toast and danced on it. “Here’s to Johnny.”
When we went on the Renaissance World Tour, fans all over the world would turn to sing the line to me, and every time, my hand went to my heart. I wished Johnny were there to dance with me. But I would always see people in the crowd who reminded me of him, and I would do everything I could to get to them. I drove security crazy: “Bring him! Yes, that one!” I would send the cameras their way. “Make sure you get them! Oh, they’re fabulous.” I collected pictures of so many Johnnys.
Beyoncé closed the show with a photo of me and Johnny huge across the stage. It shows me out one night, looking at him with adoring but skeptical eyes, readying for the next thing out of his mouth. Beyoncé had asked me to give her a picture of Johnny and me for Renaissance’s album art, last-minute of course. That photograph was right on top of a pile when I opened a box, Johnny picking just the right one for us to admire him. When the photo of us was up there on the stage in stadiums across the world, all the young people who felt kinship with our beloved Johnny erupted in cheers.
“Yessss, Lucy,” I heard, Johnny’s voice so close in my ear, loud over the house music he and my daughters loved. “They know what time it is!”