Fact #106338
When:
Short story:
Top record producer Joe Meek is found dead in his studio in Holloway, London, UK, having turned a shotgun on himself after killing his landlady with the same weapon.Full article:
THE DEATH OF JOE MEEK by Johnny Black
Things might have worked out better for Joe Meek if the tractor driver hadn't found the disembodied limbs in the suitcases. The UK's most successful independent record producer of the era, Meek had been responsible for Telstar, the first British rock group tune to top the American charts. Working from a makeshift studio, nicknamed 'The Bathroom', in his tiny flat at 304 Holloway Road, London he also produced hits for John Leyton, Heinz, The Honeycombs, Mike Berry, Screaming Lord Sutch and more.
Meek, however, had problems that stretched right back to his birth. His mother had wanted a girl. Baby Joe was given dolls to play with, and wore dresses until he started school. As an adult, despite prodigious gifts as a songwriter, arranger and producer, and despite success, he was never happy.
By the start of 1967, the hits had run out. Never an astute businessman, Meek had done several bad deals which left him short of cash. He was being blackmailed and sued for plagiarism. He had been arrested for importuning in a public toilet. One of his major stars, Heinz, was threatening legal action to recover unpaid back royalties. His car had recently been stolen and, the final straw, he was behind on his rent.
His only hope of clawing a way out was to accept a quarter million pound contract offered by EMI who wanted him as their new staff producer, replacing Beatles' producer George Martin, who had recently gone independent. Unfortunately, Meek didn't relish the idea of working for a major company. He felt it could compromise his integrity and, perhaps worse, he was certain that the big companies had been plotting against him.
How much of Meek's paranoia was justified and how much caused by the schizophrenia for which he was being treated was never clear, but Ted Fletcher, a long-time studio associate, remembers "He was increasingly detatched from the real world. He'd be nice as pie one minute, then fly off into a temper the next. But he was being ganged up on by the establishment, no doubt about it. People refused to release his records. Nobody with any power in the business liked him because he was independent and successful."
Another colleague, Geoff Goddard, composer of Johnny Remember Me and Just Like Eddie, had seen evidence of Meek's mental problems several years earlier. "In 1963 he told me he thought something was growing inside his head, but he was already under too much pressure by then. He was like Jeckyll and Hyde. If you criticised him or tried to get in his way, he'd just blow his top."
Meek was planning a break, a holiday to Cairo with a male friend when, on January 16, a tractor driver in the Suffolk village of Tattingstone, spotted two suitcases beside the hedgerow of a field he was ploughing. Subsequent investigations revealed the mutilated contents to have been 17 year old Bernard Oliver, a homosexual boy known to Meek. The police began questioning all homosexual offenders on a list that included Joe Meek. Early in February, as if anticipating his early demise, Meek told his office assistant, Patrick Pink, "I'm not going to be around much longer. I'll be leaving very soon. I must sort a will out." Meek's relationship with his landlady, Violet Shenton, was never
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Things might have worked out better for Joe Meek if the tractor driver hadn't found the disembodied limbs in the suitcases. The UK's most successful independent record producer of the era, Meek had been responsible for Telstar, the first British rock group tune to top the American charts. Working from a makeshift studio, nicknamed 'The Bathroom', in his tiny flat at 304 Holloway Road, London he also produced hits for John Leyton, Heinz, The Honeycombs, Mike Berry, Screaming Lord Sutch and more.
Meek, however, had problems that stretched right back to his birth. His mother had wanted a girl. Baby Joe was given dolls to play with, and wore dresses until he started school. As an adult, despite prodigious gifts as a songwriter, arranger and producer, and despite success, he was never happy.
By the start of 1967, the hits had run out. Never an astute businessman, Meek had done several bad deals which left him short of cash. He was being blackmailed and sued for plagiarism. He had been arrested for importuning in a public toilet. One of his major stars, Heinz, was threatening legal action to recover unpaid back royalties. His car had recently been stolen and, the final straw, he was behind on his rent.
His only hope of clawing a way out was to accept a quarter million pound contract offered by EMI who wanted him as their new staff producer, replacing Beatles' producer George Martin, who had recently gone independent. Unfortunately, Meek didn't relish the idea of working for a major company. He felt it could compromise his integrity and, perhaps worse, he was certain that the big companies had been plotting against him.
How much of Meek's paranoia was justified and how much caused by the schizophrenia for which he was being treated was never clear, but Ted Fletcher, a long-time studio associate, remembers "He was increasingly detatched from the real world. He'd be nice as pie one minute, then fly off into a temper the next. But he was being ganged up on by the establishment, no doubt about it. People refused to release his records. Nobody with any power in the business liked him because he was independent and successful."
Another colleague, Geoff Goddard, composer of Johnny Remember Me and Just Like Eddie, had seen evidence of Meek's mental problems several years earlier. "In 1963 he told me he thought something was growing inside his head, but he was already under too much pressure by then. He was like Jeckyll and Hyde. If you criticised him or tried to get in his way, he'd just blow his top."
Meek was planning a break, a holiday to Cairo with a male friend when, on January 16, a tractor driver in the Suffolk village of Tattingstone, spotted two suitcases beside the hedgerow of a field he was ploughing. Subsequent investigations revealed the mutilated contents to have been 17 year old Bernard Oliver, a homosexual boy known to Meek. The police began questioning all homosexual offenders on a list that included Joe Meek. Early in February, as if anticipating his early demise, Meek told his office assistant, Patrick Pink, "I'm not going to be around much longer. I'll be leaving very soon. I must sort a will out." Meek's relationship with his landlady, Violet Shenton, was never