I blew my entire Incendiary stipend on a skeleton which used to belong to Who bassist, John Entwhistle.
I blew my entire Incendiary stipend on a skeleton which used to belong to Who bassist, John Entwhistle.
The other day I found myself walking along a busy main road in a grimy part of North London, doing something I had promised to do for a long time. It is an area where if you didn’t live or work there, then you are probably passing through it at speed and wouldn’t take too much notice.
Admittedly, the Holloway Road, also known as the A1, which runs from the bars and restaurants of Highbury and Islington up to the suburbs and traffic filled roads leading you north of the city, seems an unlikely place for musical innovation.
But stop awhile outside 304 Holloway Road (about half way between Highbury Corner and Archway) and above a cycle shop you’ll see a plaque dedicated to one of the UK’s first pop music innovators. You will have to look closely for it as it is partially obscured by a "To Let" sign but the plaque tells us proudly that "Joe Meek, Record Producer, "The Telstar Man" 1929 – 1967, Pioneer of Sound Recording Technology lived, worked and died here."
It’s not a place too many visitors to London will end up (although is close to an eye-catching and controversial Libeskind designed building for the nearby University and was also the setting for "Diary of a Nobody", when the area would have been classed well and truly as suburbia on the outskirts of the city), but in memory of Meek’s impact on the music world I’m pleased I made the pilgrimage and would encourage everyone else to do the same if they ever find the time.
To call him a British Phil Spector is probably a good starting place if not a bit of a lame comparison – Meek’s style and technique were very different from the Wall of Sound. Legend has it that Phil Spector called Joe Meek at the Holloway Road flat only for the paranoid Meek to accuse him of stealing his secrets before slamming the receiver down. Meek was the UK’s first independent rock n roll producer, making a series of hits between during the late 50s and 60s, which were leased to labels for distribution.
He may have been tone deaf (listen to his vocals for Telstar, on the Songs in the Key of Z compilation – ed) and couldn’t sing or play any instruments but his production techniques were ahead of his time and turned the music rule book on its head, no doubt paving the way for producers such as George Martin and starting a trail which would eventually lead to Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin and any other electronic innovator you could care to mention.
Stand outside 304 Holloway Road and you’ll probably find it hard to take in that such innovation ever took place there. The recordings seem all the more remarkable as they were produced not in a state of the art studio, such as nearby Abbey Road, but in Meek’s own handmade facility set up in his flat’s bedroom on the top floor above a leather goods shop. Lo-fi doesn’t do it justice – microphones attached to the banisters with bicycle clips, a jumble of wires and reel to reel tape, miked up milk bottles banged with spoons and singers, guitarists and string sections all in different rooms in conditions so cramped they could barely perform. In a world before Pro Tools, Meek would obsessively take the back off his equipment to adapt it make new sounds and would experiment endlessly with recording flushed toilets, coins, chains, broken clockwork toys – anything to get the sonic landscape he wanted.
The conditions at the studio didn’t stop Meek from churning out dozens of hits including Johnny Remember Me, Angela Jones, Have I the Right? amongst many others. Meek is perhaps most well-known for his hit Telstar recorded by the Tornados. Famously this is Margaret Thatcher’s favourite record (don’t let that put you off), is the best selling instrumental record of all time and was the first British rock n roll record to top the US charts, a year ahead of the Beatles.
I won’t give you the full story of Joe’s amazing but short and tragic life (check out the links at the bottom for more information) but will throw in a series of real and alleged episodes which will whet your appetite and hopefully get you along to 304 Holloway Road to pay tribute for yourself, or at least seek out some of his recordings.
Between 1956 and 1967, Meek recorded over 300 records, whilst allegedly indulging in black magic, Tarot cards reading and seances to contact the spirits of Buddy Holly, Mario Lanza and Aleister Crowley. As the Sixties wore on, Meek’s increasingly erratic behaviour, fuelled by amphetamine pills, found him dressing totally in black and wandering graveyards searching for voices and sounds from the other side.
In 1963, Meek was arrested for importuning in a Gents toilet in nearby Madras Place (further down the Holloway Road closer to the Garage gig venue in Highbury Corner). The police claimed he had smiled at an old man – Meek’s response after his conviction and £15 fine: "who wants a fucking old man?" Meek was well known for hitting on male musicians who recorded at his flat including Chas Hodges, who would later find fame as one half of Chas n Dave. His conviction sadly led to him becoming a target for blackmail in a society which was less tolerant to homosexuality than today.
This would prove to be the start of a tragic downward spiral in Meek’s life which would end at the young age of just 37, when he murdered his long suffering landlady immediately before turning the shotgun on himself at his Holloway Road flat/studio.
Hopefully my little paean will inspire you to visit the Holloway area next time you are in London. The site of the studio and plaque is simple to find – turn left out of Holloway Road tube station, cross the road and you’ll find 304 in the row of shops close to the Hobgoblin pub.
If you aren’t planning to visit London any time soon, why not check out some of Joe Meek’s recordings which have been handily compiled on CD. The Alchemist of Pop is a double disc with the big hits and a number of rare collector’s items. Let’s Go! with Joe Meek’s Girls is well worth a listen and his masterpiece I Hear a New World (only recently released after being shelved following its completion in 1960) is patchy but should be heard at least once just to admire the ambition of the man as he tried to create his own "Outer space stereo music fantasy."
http://www.mccready.cwc.net/meek.html
http://www.bizarremag.com/bizarre_lives.php?id=1675
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Music is math according to our friends at Boards of Canada and it was certainly a mathematical conundrum that lead me to see Willard Grant Conspiracy at Camden Barfly. How would a loose knit alt country collective with anything up to 30 members fare at one of London’s smallest venues? My mind boggled – it would be the polar opposite of Har Mar Superstar at the same venue. HMS was on stage by himself with a beat-box until he leapt down into the crowd. The crowd promptly headed for the back of the venue – tout suite – what would you do if an overweight man in his 30s looking like a sex pest and sweating like Scrooge at a cash-point suddenly charged towards you?
Anyway, I digress – turns out there was a hardcore of six musicians on the stage including main man Robert Fisher. The Barfly is a weird venue. It is tiny but it is still just about impossible to see the performers as the stage is too low – despite being a very big bloke, Fisher was hard to see from the back as he was seated. They were a little harder than stuff I had heard before, although still with nice alt.country tunes lying underneath. I’d like to tell you more about the songs but most of them were from the forthcoming album so I didn’t know them at all. There was also a nice line in inter-song banter one episode of which culminated in the punch-line "if you can cope being hugged by a fat man…"
One of the other recent highlights came during a recent sojourn across the North Sea to Holland (should this be a Letter from Leiden?) and the chance to catch up with the living icon that is Nancy Sinatra at the Motel Mozaique festival. In stark contrast to British Sea Power (who were also excellent but in their own very English way), Nancy was pure charisma and voice and held the audience in the palm of her hand. Not many artists can boast a Bond theme and a song used in Kill Bill, or can show movie clips of themselves with Elvis and still throw in singing the chorus of one of their songs with a look-a-like transvestite. The show was tempered by a weird duet with her father’s voice on tape, which was a little well…creepy. She also didn’t play my personal favourites – the duets with Lee Hazlewood (especially Some Velvet Morning with Lee’s sleazy "one velvet morning when I’m straight, I’m going to open up your gate". Still, minor quibbles when faced with the overall brilliance of the show.
What else can I tell you? I blew my entire Incendiary stipend on a skeleton which used to belong to Who bassist, John Entwhistle. Apparently he used to use two skeletons to scare visitors to his big house in the country. Other items which were amongst the 700 items put up for auction from his estate included a mounted bust of Princess Anne, a red leather torso, life-size Marilyn Monroe dolls and a metronome shaped like a troll. Sounds just like Incendiary Towers on press day…
Still anything from that auction would have been better value for money than the £50, £75 and £125 charged to see Cream at the Royal Albert Hall recently. OK – it was the first time reunion of one of rock’s most enduring bands since the late 1960s but even so. Must admit I didn’t follow up to find out how the gigs were reviewed. Kind of lost interest when I saw those prices but I just hope it was all worth it.
To sign off with a bit of a gloat as I secured my Glastonbury tickets. Well more accurately my friend with a more powerful internet connection did. Seemed to me to be a bit of an irony for a festival with such hippy roots and credentials – the more expensive and superior your choice of technology the easier it was to get through and book tickets. But as my friend and Glastonbury companion, Hag wisely pointed out, the festival has steadily been losing its hippy appeal ever since Mean Fiddler got involved a few years ago. Not that you would have heard me saying that as I danced around the room when Hag texted to say he’d got the tickets…