Creative Music Production:
Joe Meek's Bold Techniques
Legendary British producer and technical innovator Meek—the man behind the hits "Telstar" and "Have I the Right?"—has become a cult figure since his death in 1967, with fan clubs, CD collections, and retrospectives growing in popularity every day. Although much attention has been paid to his unusual life story and tragic passing, Creative Music Production: Joe Meek's Bold Techniques is the first book that gives the details on the methods that led to Meek's influential hits. Also included is a CD containing Meek's I Hear a New World album, not available in its original form since 1960!
Written by veteran music journalist Barry Cleveland, this book takes an industry perspective on Meek's life. It explores his 12-year professional career in great depth, with special attention paid to the equipment he used and the effect that his work had on the people around him.
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TAPE OP | This is the ultimate Joe Meek book, with less emphasis on what an oddball he was, and instead there's immaculate research on the gear and techniques Joe employed to achieve his studio nirvana. Known for his echoing, distorted pop songs (everyone knows his big hit, "Telstar"), he was a pioneer in close-micing, freelance engineering, home studio running, and a million other aspects of recording that we take for granted these days. Author Barry Cleveland (who writes for Mix and other mags) meticulously researched every aspect of Joe's gear and techniques and, thank God, is an engineer like us so he doesn't make stupid technical mistakes like "rock journalists" always do. Barry even went as far as to locate and remaster a new version of Meek's long lost masterpiece, I Hear A New World, which comes with this book. This book really opened my eyes to what an innovator Joe Meek was and even gave me ideas to toy with in future sessions of my own. Everyone reading Tape Op would enjoy this book!
—Larry Crane, Editor
NASHVILLE SCENE | Barry Cleveland's Creative Music Production: Joe Meek's Bold Techniques ($34.95) is likely to have the broadest appeal. The volume profiles the strange and astounding life and career of legendary '50s-'60s British producer/engineer Joe Meek, but its main thrust is analysis of his unusual and groundbreaking studio techniques. Meek's infamous secretiveness about his methods makes it impossible to know exactly what he was doing at any given time, but Cleveland provides good projections about his subject's inventive use of echo, reverb, delay, compression, distortion, tape loops and otherworldly sound effects, in particular as regards Meek's biggest hits, The Tornados' 1962 international phenomenon "Telstar" and The Honeycombs' 1964 British Invasion smash "Have I the Right?"
Detailed discussion of the equipment Meek used, as well as his own homemade electronic innovations, is bolstered by some fascinating archival photos, including those that show Meek in his element. Further anecdotal reportage covers Meek and his peculiar world of independent production, which included his affiliations with then completely unknown musical personages such as Ritchie Blackmore (later of Deep Purple), Steve Howe (later of Yes), Rod Stewart, Tom Jones and others.
Meek was a bit of a freak—an extremist, a paranoiac, an occultist of sorts and a tortured homosexual at a time when the world was less sexually open. Yet his forward-thinking approach to record-making earned him the status of "genius," on a par technologically and creatively with pioneers such as Les Paul and Phil Spector. This volume includes a comprehensive discography of Meek productions and a re-remastered—i.e., restored to "warts and all" original quality—CD of Meek's 1959 concept album, I Hear a New World.
ONLINE READER REVIEW, AMAZON.COM | The British record producer Joe Meek has attained posthumous cult status and rightly so: his innovative work broke the highly conservative mould of studios where engineers sported white coats as though they were in a science laboratory and everything was done "by the book". In Meek's case the circumstances of his life—and more to the point his death— have created a lot of urban myth. After all, Spector may have discharged revolvers at ceilings, but Meek ended his own life—and that of his landlady—with a large shotgun and all on the anniversary of Buddy Holly's death! With those factors in mind, it's refreshing to discover a book which traces Joe Meek's life, not for the sake of cheap scandal, but through the music he made through his innovative recordings and equipment creations/modifications.
Barry Cleveland has achieved the near impossible by delivering a book which is both an enjoyable work for the non-technical reader and highly satisfying for the studio "anorak" who wants to know the fine details of Meek's home studio in London's Holloway Road. Cleveland has tracked down the closest surviving sources who bring to life a picture of the cluttered apartment where Joe Meek took on the mighty forces of EMI, Decca and the like and won—for a while at least—with hits like "Telstar," "Johnny Remember Me," and "Have I The Right." If the words are top class, the layout is every bit the match for them, with many photos I've never seen before (and believe me, I've seen a lot of Meek-related photos!) and a full discography. I can't reccomend this book enough... how about 6 stars out of 5?!
—John Cavanagh, Glasgow Scotland
| Feature Article by Barry Cleveland in the February 2002 issue of Electronic Musician:
.. Production Values: Meek First
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