Joe Meek

One of Britain's most intriguing and contentious pop figures, Joe Meek was a groundbreaking, unconventional and ultimately tragic songwriter and producer who masterminded a series of major 1960s hits and was the subject of a movie in 2009. Beginning his career as an audio engineer for a radio production company that created shows for Radio Luxembourg, Meek's inventive engineering techniques on records like Humphrey Lyttelton's Bad Penny Blues soon turned heads. In 1960 he founded Triumph Records with William Barrington-Coupe and then the production company RGM Sound and achieved his first major hit with an innovatively echoey production of John Leyton's Johnny Remember Me. He created the instrumental smash Telstar by The Tornados - the first British record to top the US charts - and masterminded further hits like The Honeycombs' Have I The Right and Just Like Eddie by Heinz. Meek appeared to have the midas touch, but was ultimately derailed by his inner demons. An extreme and erratic character, he was obsessed with the occult and also suffered severe bouts of depression and in 1963 was convicted of "importuning for immoral purposes". Constantly falling out with business associates, he spiralled out of control when the hits dried up and in 1967 killed his landlady before turning the gun on himself. His music continues to fascinate students of pop and in 2009 Con O'Neill portrayed him in the movie Telstar: The Joe Meek Story.

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