Fact #78633
When:
Short story:
Telstar by The Tornados, produced by Joe Meek, enters the UK singles chart, where it will peak at No1.
Full article:
Clem Cattini (drummer, The Tornados) : Heinz (bassist, The Tornados) had rung up Billy Fury's manager, Larry Parnes, and offered us as Billy's backing group, which is what we became for some time. I had worked with Billy before on the Larry Parnes shows and he knew my playing and he thought it was a great idea.
We backed him for a summer season at Great Yarmouth in 1961 and, when we came back the following year, that's when Telstar got into the charts. We recorded it while we were booked at Yarmouth.
What happened was, we recorded an old number called The Breeze And I, which a band called The Fentones had recorded. I found out about this and phoned Joe and said, 'Do you know The Fentones are gonna release The Breeze And I? He said, 'Don't worry about it. I've got this new number. I've been watching tv about this new satellite being launched called Telstar and I've written a song to commemorate it. Come back to London, and we'll record the song.'
Roger La Vern (keyboards, The Tornados) : played the keyboards. There is this thing going round that Geoff Goddard played the keyboards on Telstar. What happened was, we recorded the tracks and we had to get back to Great Yarmouth to do the Billy Fury show. We had done all the backing tracks but we didn't have time to put the top line on, which is the melody. So Joe said, 'You'd better leave and I'll get somebody else to play the Clavioline on it.' There is a misconception that Roger wasn't on the record, but he did play on it, although the sound everyone remembers was made by the clavioline.
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We backed him for a summer season at Great Yarmouth in 1961 and, when we came back the following year, that's when Telstar got into the charts. We recorded it while we were booked at Yarmouth.
What happened was, we recorded an old number called The Breeze And I, which a band called The Fentones had recorded. I found out about this and phoned Joe and said, 'Do you know The Fentones are gonna release The Breeze And I? He said, 'Don't worry about it. I've got this new number. I've been watching tv about this new satellite being launched called Telstar and I've written a song to commemorate it. Come back to London, and we'll record the song.'
Roger La Vern (keyboards, The Tornados) : played the keyboards. There is this thing going round that Geoff Goddard played the keyboards on Telstar. What happened was, we recorded the tracks and we had to get back to Great Yarmouth to do the Billy Fury show. We had done all the backing tracks but we didn't have time to put the top line on, which is the melody. So Joe said, 'You'd better leave and I'll get somebody else to play the Clavioline on it.' There is a misconception that Roger wasn't on the record, but he did play on it, although the sound everyone remembers was made by the clavioline.