MEEK TO INHERIT THE EARTH (NOT)

Your feature on the Joe Meek ‘Tea Chest’ tapes (RC355) was interesting, as was the mention in Most Wanted (RC356). What a surprise that the tapes failed to reach their reserve. The owner, Cliff Cooper, bought them for less than £400 “for the purpose of studying Meek’s methods” back in 1967 ... and has done little with them since except tantalise Meek fans and RGM artists with promises to make them available. Now he wants £300,000 for them and you say he is ‘adamant that the collection should not be split up’.

Could this be the same Cliff Cooper who promised RGM singer Heinz and others during a demo outside his Denmark Street office years ago that the tapes would be handed over to the National Sound Archive? He claimed that was so that they could be accessed ... and then prevaricated for years over the handover. The copyrights in the performances on the tapes surely belong, not to Cooper, but to the artists, thanks to a High Court ruling, but will Cooper allow them access to their recordings? No, he has refused. Heaven forbid the artists might actually make a little money: for many, this would be for the first time, since Joe never paid them.

by John Beecher
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