Joe Meek – Part 2 The Freakbeat Years

A blend of British R&B and a US garage influence with Joe Meek’s taste for in the weird created a new sound in 60s pop. Owen Adams gets freaky.

Newent, a tiny town on the edge of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, defines the word ‘backwater’. Its medieval black-and-white marketplace hosts an annual onion-eating competition, part of an age-old fair which The Wurzels recently headlined. Meek remains one of the most common surnames in the area.

Young Robert George Meek, commonly known as Joe, was a big hit on the Newent swing scene in the 1940s with his gramophone selection, and the homemade devices he wired up to emit unearthly ghostly sounds added a certain lustre to amateur dramatic productions. Before he left to become an RAF radar operator, then an electrical engineer for Gloucester’s Midland Electricity Board branch, and finally hotfooting it to London, he even cut an acetate with his brother’s girlfriend on vocals; a song (rather presciently) called Secret Love.

It’s unsurprising that arriving in London from such a rural outpost, just a few miles from where Dick Whittington started his journey, Joe Meek found it hard to fit in with the music industry. His strong West Country burr, combined with his thenillegal homosexuality, his all-black attire and indoor shades, fascination with the occult and outer space and utter refusal to play the game in the studio ensured his outsider status.

But, at the same time, he was tuned in to the common …

by Owen Adams
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