If the name ‘Joe Meek’ doesn’t mean anything to you, then perhaps it should.  All the music we listen to today owes a debt to Joe Meek – a debt so great as to be almost ‘too obvious’ and therefore often overlooked. For Joe Meek was the first person to use the recording studio as an ‘instrument’ in its own right, and not merely as a tool in which to record.  Britain’s first independent producer, Joe Meek (who had no musical talent whatsoever) revolutionized the way pop music was recorded. A renegade sonic genius, what Joe lacked in musical talent he more than made up for with imagination, enthusiasm and a genuine obsession with ‘sound.’

Sadly, for many years his bizarre personal life and strange death over-shadowed his contribution to popular music.  Meek was remembered (if he was remembered at all) as a ‘character,’ a ‘weirdo’ whose life reads like a pulp fiction novel; murders, gangsters, ghosts, bodies in suitcases and schizophrenia were all part of Joe’s private world.  As with all ‘sensational’ characters, he was eventually forgotten, with only die-hard retro music aficionados remembering his name.  Happily, the past two or three years have seen a ‘Joe Meek Renaissance;’ re-issues of his records and a focus on his work (as opposed to his life) slowly helping to re-establish Meek as one of pop’s chief contributors – the forefather of modern production.

Born Robert George Meek in 1929, he spent his childhood messing around with tape recorders and dressing as a girl;  his mother had  wanted a daughter, and little Joe was forced to wear dresses which – in fairness – he seems to have liked.  Later, a job with the Midlands Electricity Board gave him ample opportunity to swipe equipment with which he built his own disc-cutter, recording local bands and submitting demos to record labels – all of which were refused.  He eventually found work with Radio Luxembourg, although his ‘big break’ came in 1956 when his bizarre recording of a jazz trumpeter made the Top 40.   In 1960, Joe moved into a flat above a leather shop in London’s Holloway Road. Installing a small recording studio in his bedroom, he founded his own record label (RGM) and – slowly but surely – a true legend was born.

From 1960 until his premature death six years later, Joe Meek released 245 singles, 45 of which made the Top 50.  The greatest of these hits was undoubtedly 1962’s Telstar by The Tornadoes, the innovative sound effects helping make it the first American No.1 by a British act.  Telstar  - as with all his other hits – was recorded in his bedroom, the high-tech facilities of Abbey Road a far cry from Meek’s humble studio.   More hits followed – and so did countless ‘misses.’  This is not difficult to understand, considering he turned down both The Beatles and a young David Bowie.  Meek truly didn’t have a ‘musical’ ear; it was sound which interested him, not songs.

His business partner, Geoff Goddard, had the musicality Joe lacked, and it was Goddard who penned the better-known RGM singles.  Yet, even with a competent songwriter at the helm, Meek’s records were often just too weird to find mass appeal.  His obsession with ‘sound effects’ found him recording the flushing of toilets and the brushing of teeth, even going so far as to set up his recording equipment in cemeteries in the hopes of catching some ghoulish noise from beyond the grave.  Humorous as all this may sound, George Martin borrowed many of Meek’s recording techniques for The Beatle’s Sgt Pepper L.P, this ‘revolutionary’ album owing as much to Joe Meek as it does to ‘The Fifth Beatle.’

‘Tall, dark and handsome,’ Joe was never quite able to exploit his good looks, fame and talent to their best advantage.  He was simply too strange.  Fixated with the occult, he would hold séances in the hope of contacting Buddy Holly (whose death he had accurately predicted via the ouji board).  Reliant on barbiturates, Meek had a famous temper, one notable occasion finding him holding a gun to the head of drummer Mitch Mitchell to ‘inspire’ a mistake-free performance.  Often faced with lawsuits, the increasingly paranoid Meek found himself in court in 1963, charged with (and found guilty of) ‘importuning for immoral purposes.’  Joe was gay, and as homosexuality was illegal in Britain at the time, it is not surprising to find his sexual orientation hauled into court on a genuinely unfair charge.

Rumored to be suffering from a multiple personality disorder, Joe’s private nightmare came to a bizarre head when he was implicated in a ‘Body in a Suitcase’ murder.  Although it is extremely unlikely that Joe had anything to do with the murder, it’s probable that he knew more about it than he wanted to. It is also probable that he knew more about The Krays than he wanted to; rumor has it that the notorious gangland twins had a price on Joe’s head.

On February 3, 1967, something inside him snapped.  For reasons unknown, he took a revolver and shot his landlady dead. She was a close friend, and one of the few people who still tolerated Joe’s increasingly psychotic behavior.  He then turned the gun on himself, and the world lost its first pioneer of record production. 

Although much of Meek’s recorded output now sounds like facile, novelty-based fluff, it is important to remember that it is not the songs which mattered to him, but the way they sounded.  Everything we find in today’s recording studios was initially put there by Meek.  The first to use a ‘compressor,’ an ‘echo chamber,’ ‘reverb’ and ‘samples,’ Joe Meek’s contribution to the world of music cannot be understated.  It is often said that - had his personal life not been so bizarre - his professional life would have seen his name both international and ‘household.’  However, it can also be argued that – had he not been so peculiar – he would never have dreamed up the weird and wonderful world he created on vinyl.

ownload Suggestions:Telstar by The Tornadoes.Have I The Right? by The Honeycombs. I Hear I New World by Joe Meek and The Bluemen. Recent compilation CDs of Joe Meek/RGM recordings are available via Amazon.com (keyword: Joe Meek.)