This is the series where I feature The Guardian’s idea of the 100 best UK #1s ever, and we see what I have to say about them (which usually isn’t much, to be honest).
So, here’s what The Grauniad had to say about the record they placed at #86:
“The product of producer Joe Meek’s twin obsessions – space travel and the recording studio as an instrument in itself – Telstar is otherworldly and breathlessly exciting, piling on layer after layer of sounds so dense with effects it is impossible to work out what instrument is making them. It’s like nothing else, before or since.”
Take a listen for yourselves:
NB: You will note the presence of a rogue ‘e’ in the spelling, a prime example, I believe, of the difference between UK English and US English. I imagine our American friends would have pronounced it Tor-nay-dos (as in Uno! Dos! Tres!) were it not for that addition. I make no comment about this.
Anyway, surprise surprise, I don’t have much to add to The Guardian’s description, other than to concur that when this came out, back in 1962, it must have sounded like nothing else, which was of course precisely what Joe Meek was aiming for.
Some other Telstar/Meek facts for you:
- As well as spending five weeks at #1 in the UK singles chart, Telstar became the first record by a British ‘rock’ group to reach number one in the US Hot 100. The use of the word ‘rock’ there is entirely Wikipedia’s, by the way.
- Meek used to live at 304 Holloway Road in North London, where he built his own studio. It is approximately a five minute drive from where I used to live on Hornsey Road. Yeh, you’re right that’s not the greatest claim to fame, is it? Doesn’t even deserve a CLANG! to mark it.
- Meek and I never bumped into each other, probably due to him having been dead for about 40 years when I moved in to the area.
- He died on 3 February 1967, when, after shooting his landlady, Violet Shenton, with a single-barrelled shotgun after they clashed over a) the noise levels emanating from his studio/room (is this where the term ‘studio flat’ comes from?) and the rent that he owed her. Meek had confiscated the shotgun from former Tornados bassist Heinz Burt, and shot Shenton, as they say in the newspapers, “before turning the gun upon himself.”
- Telstar is the name of a number of communications satellites launched in the early 1960s. Telstar 1 was part of a multi-national agreement between the UK, the USA and France, and it relayed the first television pictures, telephone calls, and telegraph images through space, also providing the first live transatlantic television feed. Both Telstar 1 and Telstar 2 still orbit the Earth, doing nothing, examples of how, not content with covering our own world in crap, we’re doing our darnedest to fill space up with it too.
- The 2009 film Telstar: The Joe Meek Story is very good, despite it being directed by Nick Moran, so I’m told. I have no idea if that’s true or not, as I’ve never seen it. I’m good at this, aren’t I?
- Con O’Neill is in it, which is usually a good sign in my book. He plays Meek.
Finally, not so much a Telstar fact as a Telstar opinion: I’ve always thought that this little beauty contained at the very least a homage to, if not an actual sample, of Telstar, but I can find nothing on t’internet to support my view, so I’m probably wrong as usual:
Saint Etienne – You’re In A Bad Way
Oh, and…
8) Saint Etienne are highly unlikely to feature again in this series, as they’ve never had a UK #1, which they would have done if the British record-buying public had any sense, for they (Saint Etienne, not the British record-buying public) are ace.
That is all.
More soon.
A History of Dubious Taste 