Joe Meek
Robert George "'Joe" Meek' was an English record producer and songwriter considered one of the most influential sound engineers of all time, being one of the first to develop ideas such as the recording studio as an instrument, and becoming one of the first producers to be recognised for his individual identity as an artist. Meek pioneered space age and experimental pop music, and assisted in the development of recording practices like overdubbing, sampling and reverberation.
The Tornados' instrumental "Telstar", written and produced by Meek, became the first record by a British rock group to reach number one in the US Hot 100. It also spent five weeks at number one in the UK singles chart, with Meek receiving an Ivor Novello Award for this production as the "Best-Selling A-Side" of 1962. Charting singles Meek produced for other artists include "Johnny Remember Me", "Just Like Eddie", "Angela Jones", "Have I the Right?", and "Tribute to Buddy Holly". He also produced music for films such as Live It Up!, a pop music film. Meek's concept album I Hear a New World, which contains innovative use of electronic sounds, was not fully released in his lifetime.
Meek was affected by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. His commercial success as a producer was short-lived, and he gradually sank into debt and depression. On 3 February 1967, using a shotgun owned by musician Heinz Burt, Meek killed his landlady, Violet Shenton, with whom he had argued over the loudness of his studio, which he rented from her, and then shot himself.
At the time of his death, Meek possessed thousands of unreleased recordings later dubbed "The Tea Chest Tapes". His reputation for experiments in recording music was acknowledged by the Music Producers Guild who in 2009 created "The Joe Meek Award for Innovation in Production" as a "homage to remarkable producer's pioneering spirit". In 2014, Meek was ranked the greatest producer of all time by NME, elaborating: "Meek was a complete trailblazer, attempting endless new ideas in his search for the perfect sound.... The legacy of his endless experimentation is writ large over most of your favourite music today."
Childhood and early interests
Meek was born at 1 Market Square, Newent, Gloucestershire, and developed an interest in electronics and performance art at a very early age, filling his parents' garden shed with begged and borrowed electronic components, building circuits, radios and what is believed to be the region's first working television. During his national service in the Royal Air Force, he worked as a radar technician which increased his interest in electronics and outer space. From 1953 he worked for the Midlands Electricity Board. He used the resources of the company to develop his interest in electronics and music production, including acquiring a disc cutter and producing his first record.Music career
He left the electricity board to work as an audio engineer for a leading independent radio production company which made programmes for Radio Luxembourg, and made his breakthrough with his work on Ivy Benson's Music for Lonely Lovers.His technical ingenuity was first shown on the Humphrey Lyttelton jazz single "Bad Penny Blues" when, contrary to Lyttelton's wishes, Meek modified the sound of the piano and compressed the sound to a greater than normal extent. The record became a hit.
Lansdowne Studios
He then put enormous effort into Denis Preston's Landsdowne Studio but tensions between Preston and Meek soon saw Meek leaving. During his time he recorded US actor George Chakiris for SAGA Records and it was this that led him to Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks and an independent career. He also engineered many jazz and calypso records including vocalist and percussionist Frank Holder and band leader Kenny Graham.Meek was also working as a songwriter at this time, using the name "Robert Duke". After being initially released by Eddie Silver and later by Tommy Steele, the Duke composition "Put A Ring On My Finger" was recorded by Les Paul & Mary Ford in 1958, and reached number 32 on the US chart.
Triumph Records
In January 1960, together with William Barrington-Coupe, Meek founded Triumph Records. At the time Barrington-Coupe was working at SAGA records in Empire Yard, Holloway Road for Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks and it was the Major who provided the finance. The label very nearly had a No.1 hit with Meek's production of "Angela Jones" by Michael Cox. Cox was one of the featured singers on Jack Good's TV music show Boy Meets Girls and the song was given massive promotion. As an independent label, Triumph was dependent on small pressing plants, which were unable to meet the demand for product. The record made a respectable appearance in the Top Ten, but it demonstrated that Meek needed the distribution network of the major companies for his records to reach retail outlets.Its indifferent business results and Meek's temperament eventually led to the label's demise. Meek later licensed many Triumph recordings to labels such as Top Rank and Pye. That year Meek conceived, wrote and produced an "Outer Space Music Fantasy" album titled I Hear a New World with a band called Rod Freeman & the Blue Men. The album was shelved for decades, apart from the release of some EP tracks taken from it.
304 Holloway Road Studio
Meek went on to set up his own production company known as RGM Sound Ltd with toy importer Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks as his financial backer. He operated from his home studio which he constructed at 304 Holloway Road, Islington, a three-floor flat above a leather-goods store.His first hit from Holloway Road reached number one in the UK Singles Chart: John Leyton's "Johnny Remember Me" written by Geoff Goddard. This "death ditty" was cleverly promoted by Leyton's manager, expatriate Australian entrepreneur Robert Stigwood. Stigwood was able to gain Leyton a booking to perform the song several times in an episode of Harpers West One, a short-lived ITV soap opera, in which he was making a guest appearance.
The instrumental "Telstar", written and produced by Meek, was recorded at the Holloway Road studio in July 1962. It was released in August 1962 and reached number one in the UK and on the US Billboard Hot 100 in December 1962.
Meek's third UK number one and last major success was with the Honeycombs' "Have I the Right?" in 1964, written by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. The Meek-produced track also became a number 5 hit on the American Billboard pop charts. The success of these recordings was instrumental in establishing Stigwood and Meek as two of Britain's first independent record producers.
When his landlady, Violet Shenton, who lived downstairs, felt that the noise was too much, she would bang on the ceiling with a broom. Meek would signal his contempt by placing loudspeakers in the stairwell and turning up the volume.
A privately manufactured "black plaque" has since been placed at the location of the studio to commemorate Meek's life and work.
Artistry
Meek was one of the first producers to grasp and fully exploit the possibilities of the modern recording studio. Up to that time, pop recordings sought to "capture a live performance" by recording all the performers "live in a studio", often situated around just a few microphones. Instead, Meek pioneered multiple over-dubbing on one- and two-track machines to combine separately recorded performances, segments, and even samples, into a painstakingly constructed composite recording, long before the Beatles made some of these techniques famous with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or extended by Pink Floyd with The Dark Side of the Moon.By physically separating instruments, and using close miking, he could avoid "bleed", such as drum sounds appearing in vocal tracks, which freed him up to combine signals from different "takes", and allowed him to manipulate their individual signals.
He pioneered signal processing by using direct input units on bass guitars, and treating instruments and voices with echo, reverb and compression, or his fabled home-made electronic devices. At a time when studio engineers limited themselves to maintaining clarity and fidelity, Meek was never afraid to distort or manipulate the sound if it created the effect he was seeking.
Unlike other producers, his search was for the 'right' sound rather than for a catchy musical tune, and throughout his brief career he single-mindedly followed his quest to create a unique "sonic signature" for every record he produced.
Personal life
Meek became fascinated with the idea of communicating with the dead, after reading the works about EVP of Friedrich Jurgenson and Konstantins Raudive. He would set up tape machines in graveyards in an attempt to record voices from beyond the grave, in one instance capturing the meows of a cat he believed was speaking in human tones, asking for help. In particular, he had an obsession with Buddy Holly. By the end of his career, Meek's fascination with these topics had taken over his life following the deterioration in his mental health, and he started to believe that his flat contained poltergeists, that aliens were substituting his speech by controlling his mind, and that photographs in his studio were trying to communicate with him.Mental health
Meek was affected by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and, upon receiving an apparently innocent phone call from American record producer Phil Spector, Meek immediately accused Spector of stealing his ideas before hanging up angrily. His professional efforts were often hindered by his paranoia, depression, and extreme mood swings. In later years, Meek started experiencing psychotic delusions, culminating in his refusal to use the studio telephone for important communications due to his belief that his landlady was eavesdropping on his calls through the chimney, that he could control the minds of others with his recording equipment, and that he could monitor his acts while away from the studio through supernatural means.Meek was also a frequent recreational drug user, with his barbiturate abuse further worsening his depressive episodes. In addition, his heavy consumption of amphetamines caused him to fly into volatile rages with little or no provocation, at one point leading him to hold a gun to the head of drummer Mitch Mitchell to 'inspire' a high-quality performance.