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Joe Meek And The Day The Music Died, Among Other Things

Innovative 50s/60s music producer Joe Meek, and his connection to legendary singer Buddy Holly, as well as some other notable things that happened on February 3rd over the years.

By Arvo ZyloPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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I've been a fan of Joe Meek's work for a long time, but it wasn't until the early 2010s that I really had a feel for his extraordinary sound design. I'd been on tour, and I was sitting alone with my gear in an empty shopping mall in Cleveland, Ohio, prior to it being open for business. People were allowed to inhabit the mall at all hours, due to the fact that there was a 24 hour casino connected to the food court area, but I didn't see a single soul for some time. It is unknown to me why soul music and doo-wop was flooding the mall with intercom fuzz, like a more stylized and intentional elevator music to nowhere, but a bit louder than one would expect. I don't know if one of the employees tuned into an odd radio station, or if this slightly less generic subliminal feel-good method was standard fair.

I was reading a book, sitting alone, and waiting for a friend to meet me, when Telstar, Joe Meek's best selling production, came on. As the swirling, almost kazoo-like instrumentation echoed in pools of reverb against the bare marble and glass of this massive, unoccupied little consumerist palace, I felt entrenched in something mystical. I had a recollection that felt more like an epiphany. I'm not known for my memory, but I recalled that February 3rd was the day that Joe Meek committed suicide. It felt more like a memory that was injected into me than something that just happened to resurface. I must have read it before, but until then, it didn't click.

Meek not only committed suicide with a shotgun on that day in 1967, but he also took his landlady with him. He'd been dealing with ongoing stressors and depression which probably would have largely been absolved had he been paid the royalties that were due to him (they would come shortly after his death). Instead, he had strained relationships with investors, mobsters, and fears of police arresting him for being homosexual. He went into significant debt, all while continuing to produce otherworldly music which employed sound design techniques that superseded anything happening at that time, and would continue to do so for several years.

Despite cobbling together a recording studio from a modest apartment, with drums in the fireplace, singing in the bathroom, other players in the stairwell, and other such mock-ups, Meek's studio produced a number of hits, without a lot of actual musical knowledge on the part of the producer. That said, Meek seems to have been a whirlwind of ideas, having created songs out of his own atonal la-la-las and tapping on plates, but also personas that would stick, such as that of horror rocker Screaming Lord Sutch, and bleach-blonde singer Heinz. Some of the precocious artists that passed through the studio were said to include David Bowie (as a saxophonist), Marc Bolan, The Beatles (then known as "The Silver Beatles"), Tom Jones, Rod Stewart, and more.

What's more, Meek was known as a dabbler in the occult. He'd record in graveyards, and attend séances. One such reading in 1958 is said to have led to the message: "February 3rd, Buddy Holly Dies". Being a huge fan, Meek took this seriously, and, not being terribly famous or connected at the time, went through a good deal of trouble to warn Holly of this premonition. When contacted, the famous young singer ignored it, assuming that the relevant date had just recently passed. Sure enough, Holly died in a plane crash on February 3rd, 1959, following dreams that he and his newly pregnant wife had, such as that of a fireball crashing into a field.

Some other notable happenings on this date include Phil Spector's murder of Lana Clarkson (2003), The birthday of Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton, The beginning of Operation Looking Glass (1961), and it is said that Phillip K. Dick's EXEGESIS began on February 3rd, 1974. This is where Dick began have "religious visions" after getting wisdom teeth removed (he's also known to have been on a good deal of amphetamines). Dick wrote thousands of pages about his communications well into the 80s. These experiences carry over into much of Dick's fiction books, and a small portion of his letters/journals were published in 2011. For several years now, February 3rd has been a sort of odd and morbid holiday for me. Have anything else to share about this date? Feel free to comment.

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About the Creator

Arvo Zylo

A scattered history of writing, experimental music/art, DJing, psychic readings (healer, tarot and palm reader), hypnotherapy, graphology, etc. An occasional outlet for a few of my more accessible interests. https://linktr.ee/nopartofit

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