Joe Meek THE MOVIE

Rob Bradford goes behind the scenes of Telstar, the acclaimed new film which opens this month.

Telstar, the new movie released this month, could well be subtitled The Joe Meek Story or even, (there is an excellent, lengthy real-life documentary of this name doing the rounds of film festivals and art house cinemas) A Life In The Death Of Joe Meek.

Meek’s incredibly turbulent and manic lifestyle personifies the old adage ‘truth is stranger than fiction’. As you can see from the 100 records featured on pages xx-xx, between 1955 and 1966, Joe Meek was at the epicentre of the British popular music business. His success, and his subsequent tragic death, are the stuff of pop legend.

In 1995, Nick Moran was a young ‘underemployed’ actor and with a friend who staggered drunkenly into a taxi on London’s Holloway Road. They picked up the taxi outside an old shop (number 304, Holloway Road), which bore an English Heritage blue plaque above it that read “Joe Meek Lived, Worked And Died Here”. Nick had never heard of Joe Meek but his friend, Alex, launched into a rambling summary of Joe’s life. Some of it entered Nick’s subconscious and fired his imagination.

As he pointed to the sign, his friend said: “Oh yeah, there was this mad, speed-addict record producer who lived over that flat in the 60s, popping pills and staying up all night …

by Rob Bradford
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