Joe Meek - The Spector of British pop

Genius producer, maverick indie label boss…on the 40th anniversary of his death, ROB BRADFORD tells the stories behind Joe Meek’s ten greatest tracks.

Joe Meek died 40 years ago, on 3 February, 1967. In a short and chaotic career he had created some of the most stunningly original sounds of the 60s, and pioneered the role of the independent record producer and label boss.

When he engineered his very first recording for Pye in 1955, Edmund Hockridge’s No Other Love, Britain was emerging from ten years of post-war austerity. Rationing had only just ended, but rock and roll had arrived via Bill Haley, Elvis, Gene Vincent and Little Richard.

For the very first time Britain had a generation of teenagers with disposable income and music to call their own. Sales of record players such as Dansettes (especially when brittle shellac 10” 78 rpm discs began to give way to ‘indestructible’ vinyl 45 rpm singles) began to run into the hundreds of thousands. Coffee bars proliferated. By 1957, Harold Macmillan was telling the nation: ‘You’ve never had it so good’. It was the start of the age of space exploration, of Sputnik, and the first space walks.

The UK economy was booming and London was at the centre of music and fashion. And at the very epicentre of it all, very much the man of the moment, was Joe Meek. From his tiny studio at 304 Holloway Road, Joe took on the four main labels, Decca, EMI, Phillips and Pye, single-handed. For the next seven years he …

by Rob Bradford
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