Next on the agenda was tape-leasing. He now had to set about farming out the Triumph master recordings to major companies. This opportunity was only thanks to an extremely astute, if not downright deceitful, practice in which he had throughout his Triumph days made sure that all artistes signed themselves not to the company but to himself. Apparently William Barrington-Coupe had known nothing about it and says he was shocked to see almost all the assets, i.e. the artistes and recordings on which Triumph depended, disappearing before his very eyes. All this time he had been running a record label with no artistes signed to it! He didn’t do too badly though and was to accept a £1,300 handshake from Major Banks.
However, Joe’s new task of tape-leasing was very risky, and he knew it. As yet it was far from common policy for major companies to accept recordings from independent producers in England, because they expected their own staff to produce the goods. That was after all what they were being paid for. If though, the quality was up to scratch, it was obviously in their interest to take them; the record company was onto a bargain for they were being handed finished product on a plate and only had to deal with pressing, distribution and promotion. And of course, they could take it or leave it. Denis Preston was by far the main exponent of this system in England and the other lesser mortals could be counted on one hand.
The first man to see had to be Dick Rowe, latterly of Decca, but now running the A & R department at Top Rank. Dick was handing out contracts like confetti since all of Top Rank’s product was coming from independent companies, mostly American. And both men were well acquainted through Joe’s engineering works at IBC and Lansdowne. Their meeting at the end of July went like a dream. Dick was so pleased with the recordings offered him that he not only accepted most of them and paid him a few hundred pounds as advance royalties, but also signed him up as an independent producer for Top Rank!’17
One curious fact to arise from all this was that when he handed over his Triumph recordings, he started another new phenomenon: independent producer-engineering. Now that he had broken clean away from Lansdowne and Triumph he was a free agent, able to lease out recordings to anyone who wanted them. Admittedly, it was a freedom which itself depended on people wanting them, but before Joe arrived on the scene no one in Britain had ever leased tapes that he had both produced and engineered.18
One of the Triumph recordings which had not yet been heard was a sorrowful number sung by the Biggles actor, John Leyton. Titled ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’, its release had been postponed because he was singing as a man killed in a racing car accident and this brought to mind a recent spate of British motor racing deaths. However, now that a tactful period of time had elapsed and before the original US hit by Ray Peterson arrived, Top Rank decided to risk putting it out. Then a few days later on August 6 at Baker Street’s Olympic Studios Joe taped his first recording as an independent: the Michael Cox follow-up to ‘Angela Jones’ – ‘Along Came Caroline’ – another pot of syrup as similar to its predecessor as to be easily mistaken for it. Both discs were set to go out very soon, and would have done so but for one minor hiccup: on August 10 Top Rank collapsed! It was sold off to the mighty EMI, already owners of HMV, Parlophone and Columbia.
Michael Cox was shunted over to HMV (his fourth label inside a year), where ‘Along Came Caroline’ provided him with his second hit when it reached No.41 or No.20, depending on whose chart you followed: New Musical Express or Record Mirror. The John Leyton disc did not fare so well. Unfortunately EMI now found themselves with two recordings of ‘Laura’ so John’s was scrapped in favour of the other one, sung by someone on the Columbia label calling himself Ricky Valance (filched from that of the late American singer Ritchie Valens). That actually turned out a wise move, seeing that it was the better version and went on to reach No.1.
But that was the least of Joe’s problems. With the collapse of Top Rank he suddenly found his contract in tatters, as did all the others connected with that firm, and once more had to start seeking new deals for his artistes. Some of them he managed to off-load upon Alan A. Freeman of Pye, and once again Dick Rowe, who was now back at Decca after his eighteen months’ absence.19
Now things were very different. He could find no one prepared to do a generous Top Rank style deal with him. Independent product from British producers was usually viewed down a high held nose and even if accepted, rarely received advance fees. So from here on, he would be paying for all his recordings out of his new company’s funds. And some might never see the light of day.
After spending a month at Lional’s the time was ripe for moving into the new flat. While Dave Adams was busy making changes there, Joe had also been making changes in Lional’s flat. Already during his short stay he had kicked the door off its hinges and smashed various pots, cups and glasses, and with Dave Adams getting on so well at Holloway Road it seemed like an ideal time to move in. But moving was to be a long-winded process. He was not prepared to entrust the safety of his hundreds of records, tapes and other assorted treasures into the hands of some thieving removal firm, so over three days in September everything except the kitchen sink was stuffed in and strapped down on his Sunbeam Rapier and Lional’s Austin A40. On the first trip all went well until the little procession took a short cut through Hyde Park, where the sight of Joe’s bed and armchairs sailing stately across crown land earned them a reprimand from the Parks Police for committing an offence to the Queen and an order to take the longer route next time.
He began practice sessions right away, testing and re-testing the studio’s acoustics and his hotch-potch of equipment. At the same time Dave Adams continued building and decorating around him. When the windows had been blocked in with carpeting and he was sure the studio was safe enough from traffic noise, he could at last revel in a happy satisfaction with the whole set-up. He felt as if he were concealed in a cocoon where he could only be reached via the one door and into which he could retreat deeper and deeper. Now he could entertain people when he liked, and when he didn’t he could climb up the stairs away from them all and the rest of the world. Here he could be alone in his own little universe, oblivious of the one outside and free to turn his sounds upside down and inside out. When enough hits had been made and something better cropped up he would move out, but till then this would do just fine and was where he intended making sounds every bit as good and better than those emanating from the big studios.
The tone of the control room was soon set. Joining the yards of electric cables draping the floor were great strands of reel-to-reel recording tape. Anyone looking in would see a jumble of Heath Robinson-style machinery and a mass of apparently tangled wires with barely space to walk. And yet he could reach down amongst this mess and join two wires together to immediately produce a sound he wanted. If it happened that he made a mistake he would first listen a few times to the new noise and then file it away in his head somewhere for future use.
Some of the equipment was new, some homemade. Much of it had been completely reassembled from old EMI and Saga cast-offs and secondhand stuff from junk shops and army surplus stores. His main tape recorders were a Lyrec twin-track stereo recorder and an EMI TR51 mono recorder.
As for the famous Meek method of recording, compared with modern multi-track techniques it sounds as out of date as whalebone corsets, and even then was generally despised for being slow, complicated and losing clarity. But unless everything was recorded at once, as was traditionally done in the large studios, there was no other way.
His technique was almost exactly the same as the one he had started back at home in 1950 using two tape recorders: overdubbing. By layering one sound on top of another – sometimes up to half a dozen times – it meant in effect that when you listened to a Meek record you were hearing not one but several recordings! He much preferred this way because it allowed him to concentrate on one section of the recording at a time, getting the performance he liked best and giving him the chance to change his mind as he went along. Now though, life was much easier with the aid of the Lyrec twin-track. The finished recording would end up on its two tracks – songs having the backing on one track and the voice on the other – and this gave him much more leeway than ever before.
First of all he would deal with the backing. The rhythm section would go into the studio and play while the singer sang along as a guide, unrecorded behind an old screen. While this performance was going on, he would be recording it onto the one track of the TR51. He might record 20 ‘takes’ before deciding which one he wanted and moving on to the first overdub. This time he might want to add an extra drum sound; so he would simply choose the rhythm ‘take’ he liked best and relay it out into the studio for the drummer to play along to. Thus the two sounds combined would be channelled onto one track of the Lyrec. When he again had a ‘take’ that satisfied him he would perhaps overdub a guitar and do exactly the same again, playing the last recording out and collecting both sounds together on the track of the TR51.
Depending on the sound he was after, he would gradually add more and more instruments, spinning spools back and forth until his backing track was done. And while all that was going on he had other machines running. Apart from feeding sounds through echo units he had to watch out for loss of quality; each time he transferred from one track to the other, a little of the original sound was lost. So he had to use limiters and compressors which gave him a louder signal. They could also give him the sound of pumping. This he would often use to add to the overall excitement, besides which it played an integral part in his unique Joe Meek sound.
When all the backing was happily on one track of the Lyrec, he would have the vocalist sing along to it. The only difference this time was that he liked to keep the singing separate, so would give the singer headphones and play the backing through them instead. Then eventually, probably after more messing around on his own adding sound effects and so on, he had two finished tracks on his Lyrec.
Off he would go with them to one of the outside cutting studios where facilities were better than his own. Surprisingly in the months to come his choice of studio would usually be IBC. Engineers there were still the best and now there was less reason for him and the Studio Manager, Allen Stagg, to be at each other’s throats. There he would supervise having his two tracks mixed down to one – the ‘master tape’. Ten shillings in the engineer’s pocket assured him of an extra good cut and helped make it the “loudest in the juke box”; and preserving his thick, solid bass drum beat meant that some should get through to the kids who were listening on little portable radios. He would also have two or three demo acetates made with varying levels of bass, treble, etc., and the one he judged best he would hawk round the record companies. If he found a taker he would give that record company his ‘master tape’ and help cut the ‘master disc’, so it kept most of its original quality. This practice was not to be ‘on’ at the prudish EMI and only grudgingly permitted at Pye and Decca. After all that it was clean out of his hands when it went off to the factory for the pressing process.
On September 12 the new production company was registered. Aptly titled RGM Sound it gave equal shares to Banks and Meek who roughly put in £5,000 (including £2,000 worth of equipment) and 24 recordings respectively, many of which were destined never to be pressed.
Recording tests were offered to literally anyone off the streets! It was a distinctly dodgy practice for someone like Joe running a one-man-show, since those who failed to measure up were not always agreeable to being bluntly shown the door.
Choosing solo artistes hinged as always on three factors: youth, good looks and an assurance of blind obedience. To anyone calling at the door with these credentials he would always lend an appreciative eye and an attentive ear.
Choosing bands depended more on musicianship, and while good looks in lead singers could sometimes sway him in favour of their shabby backing, it would always brew up stormy sessions.
Soundwise he had to keep up to date on the charts and a watch on the Americans, who still ruled the scene. The original rock’n’roll greats like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were fading fast and via the softer more tuneful approach of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly, they were now being replaced by a new glamorous generation of clean-cut teen idols like Ricky Nelson, Bobby Darin, Paul Anka, Johnny Mathis and Neil Sedaka. Collaring so much of the market these were the ones making rock music respectable; not that a lot of it could really be classed as rock, having by now become so diluted into teenbeat pop as to bear virtually no resemblance to the real thing. Even Elvis had watered down his act.
His choice of material also demanded that he give more thought to his budget than he had of late. So the artistic freedom he enjoyed was a freedom set within rigid limits. Major Banks had learnt enough from William Barrington-Coupe’s mistakes to keep his finger firmly on the till, so that meant 20-piece orchestras were out for a start. Calling round daily with his nose in his wallet, the Major insisted on keeping a strict note of all costs. Of course, such frequent visits were not at all to Joe’s liking and when they began souring the relationship they quickly grew rarer.
Working days were long and tiring. Visiting record companies and publishers, testing and experimenting in the studio would usually take him through to 10 o’clock at night when he would go downstairs for a meal and unwind by listening to the radio or watching TV. Then with relaxation would come inspiration for songwriting. More precisely it was record-writing because usually when he wrote a song he had the whole production at the back of his mind plus the person who would sing it. First he would simply hear a vague overall sound in his head; then grabbing some paper he would start scribbling, and before he had finished eating, would be hurrying back upstairs to get something onto tape. Once he had got part of the melody out he was away; the shred of theme would attract words about it and expand into a basic verse while he doggedly sang it through again and again, honing it into shape. Composing by day he would add his own rhythm accompaniment by stamping his foot and tapping whatever object came to hand. By night the sounds of tapping and stamping do not always bring joy to the hearts of one’s neighbours, so then instead he would sing along to his growing stock of rhythm tracks.
When feeling particularly inspired, songwriting could take him through the night. While A-sides usually took an hour or more, B-sides he would knock off in 10 or 15 minutes; they could not be allowed to distract disc jockeys from the main side. All in all, these were extremely private moments and anyone hearing him composing would have a sense of listening at the keyhole. At these times he was not to be disturbed and, as Dave Adams says, “If someone had interrupted him to say that Elvis Presley was at the door he would have told them to wait.”
Up until this point he had been placing most of his songs with Essex Music. Now he chose to break clear of them and join two others in Tin Pan Alley: Southern Music and Campbell Connelly. These two were to receive the bulk of his songwriting output, the lion’s share going to Campbell Connelly’s newly-formed Ivy Music. They had one carrot to offer that no one else had: Radio Luxembourg.
Apart from Holland’s Radio Hilversum which hardly anyone had heard of, the only popular music stations for British listeners were the BBC’s Light Programme and in the evenings Luxembourg. At the time there was a stark lack of teenage pop music being broadcast from the BBC, for in between the interruptions from programmes like Woman’s Hour, The Archers and twice daily helpings of Mrs. Dale’s Diary, most of it was middle-of-the-road Housewives’ Choice fare. And that was the way it would stay for another seven years before pirate stations forced them to take teenagers more seriously. So, at a time when all the publishers relied on a handful of programmes like Sam Costa’s Record Rendezvous and Jimmy Young’s Twelve O’Clock Spin to put across their up-market stock, as well as on record companies buying time on Luxembourg, Campbell Connelly hit on the bright idea of actually tying up with Luxembourg to form Ivy Music. As Luxembourg would thus be getting half the publishing royalties on any song placed with Ivy it was in their interest to play them.20 So they guaranteed songwriters a quarter-hour programme five days a week called Topical Tunes. Happily in due course it would be RGM records that were given most airtime.
Southern Music had something else to offer. Although he did not realize it at the time, September 1960 held one card that really was to turn up trumps: a 22 year old musician from Reading called Geoff Goddard. He had just graduated from the Royal Academy of Music fully qualified to become a concert pianist but had decided that the competition was too great. So, having left the Academy one Thursday he had got himself a job playing piano in one of the Reading hotels. Seeing himself as another Russ Conway he had then spent the weekend glued to his radio and had composed three Conway-type tunes. On the Monday he had plucked up courage to hawk them around the London publishers. At 5.30 that evening he had crept timidly into Bob Kingston’s Southern office with the three pieces he had written. Like a latterday Beethoven, with his thick, black mop of hair he then sat down at the piano and proceeded to outplay all the popular pianists. Bob, after taking a quick whiff of smelling salts in case he was dreaming, advised him against competing with the likes of Russ Conway and Winifred Atwell and to try songwriting instead. “I’ll have a go,” said Geoff in his broad Berkshire accent and went away leaving Bob fully expecting never to set eyes on him again. But back he crept a few days later with a handful of what Bob described as “brilliant” pieces, and this time as he reached for the smelling salts he had him sign a year’s contract.
Since then five months had passed. Bob, wondering what Joe might make of Geoff, arranged for them to meet at his office so Geoff could play him some of his tunes. At the end of the recital Bob and Geoff turned to Joe and waited for his reaction. After a few moments’ silence he looked at Geoff and solemnly announced, “I shall call you Hollywood.” Geoff, realizing he was now being considered as a performer, quickly piped up, “Well, I quite like the name Hollywood, but I’d prefer the name of Anton.” Thus Anton Hollywood was born and the door opened ajar for an immensely successful songwriting-production partnership.
Then a short while later, with Dave Adams’s three months of renovations to the studio completed, Joe was pleased as Punch to find himself an 18 year old ‘answer’ to Buddy Holly. He had been given a demo disc containing four tracks by a band calling themselves Kenny Lord & the Statesmen. While it was playing he showed no interest at all until the last song: one made famous by Buddy Holly called ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’. When he heard it he couldn’t have been more excited if Peggy Sue had come in to tell him herself. The singer’s voice sounded just like Holly’s and at once Joe started making plans for an LP and single all to be sung in Holly style.
Soon afterwards they all arrived for their session and he swung into action with what he intended as the group’s first single, ‘Set Me Free’, and the first recording to come out of his brand new studio. And it was a big anti-climax! Kenny’s Statesmen were hopeless and would have to go. Fortunately Kenny knew of another band, and these Joe auditioned without their lead singer, who with admirable timing fled off to get married. Then he renamed them the Outlaws to give them a Western image. Kenny found himself renamed too and via his real name, Michael Bourne, and the holly berry Joe came up with Mike Berry.
It was November before Joe got them all together in the studio but this time the session did the trick. Mike’s voice came across well, the Outlaws proved to be a very competent backing band and Joe was absolutely delighted. It seemed like ages that he had been straining at the leash to get the show on the road and now it really looked like the studio was to be christened with a hit. This was how to put Holloway Road on the map: with a bang! This one would show that you don’t need big over-priced studios to get results; as he said himself: “It’s not what you’ve got – it’s the way that you use it.”
As soon as the recording was ready he made a beeline for his old ally at Decca, Dick Rowe, and sat tingling with excitement as he watched him listening to it. But alas, the tingles turned to trembles when Dick said he didn’t like it. The singer was okay, he thought, but not the song. Joe didn’t know whether to burst into tears or fly into a rage, but Dick was quick and promised to take Mike if he sang the right song – the right song being a new American one called ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’. The original version of it, performed by the Shirelles, had just been released in the States but was definitely not coming out over here, so he wanted it covered at once before someone else did, and with the same musical arrangement. If Joe recorded it, Decca would release it. Inwardly seething, he agreed. Copying other people’s records had never interested him but at least he had got a deal, and with the mighty force of Decca behind it, was virtually assured of a hit before he had even recorded it.
The session was to be a difficult one. The arrangement called for violins, heralding a full house at 304 because his little studio would be pretty well crammed to capacity with just the backing band and singer; the orchestra would have to play elsewhere in the house. The session took up most of the day. Simply conducting it with Charles Blackwell was something of a dilemma, with Joe bounding in and out of the studio issuing orders to Mike and the Outlaws and up and down the stairs into the living room where the orchestra (four violinists!) were stationed. Everyone was nicely miked up but he refused to use cue lights or talk-back systems, saying that this way he could get a more homely, relaxed atmosphere. Instead the violinists were wearing headphones and taking their cue from the band, who were in turn taking theirs from Joe popping his head round the door shouting, “Ready”. The biggest headache was getting a good voice out of Mike Berry: “I sang it in this high clef and we did it so many times, in the end I couldn’t get up to the note. If you listen to the record I sing terribly off in several places – it’s really diabolical! On that session, by the time we’d done the 20th take the violinists who were downstairs in another room linked to upstairs were saying, ‘What a singer – Jesus!’ And I didn’t blame them. And Joe heard them over the system and he went mad and nearly threw them out saying, ‘If you don’t f—— well like my singers you can get out!’”
Still, Dick at Decca liked it and said the disc would be on sale in January.
Another actor whose record had been destined for the Triumph label but whom Joe had since off-loaded onto Pye was Ian Gregory. Like John Leyton he was a Robert Stigwood protégé. Stigwood, a young Australian whose empire at the time extended no further than a small casting agency and a ballet group, had cleverly recognized that recording success for his clients could be a means of boosting their chances of acting roles, so regardless of whether they could sing or not they now had to start trying. It was a philosophy for which many a future Meek fan would be enormously grateful, for without it they would have been denied one of the most atrocious singing voices ever to be pressed into vinyl. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that of all the scores of voices Joe released on disc during his career this one bears the distinction of being the worst. Ian Gregory sounded like he had taken lessons from a clapped-out alley cat and gone out and found an alley. For his recording of ‘Time Will Tell’, Joe had the inspired idea of putting Ian in headphones to help him keep a minimum of pitch singing along to the voice of Dave Adams. But that song plus the one on the other side were still painful and could only be recommended to penance-seeking sinners. Even though his voice had some of its inadequacies masked by echo and a bravely cheerful backing, the problem was that you could still hear it, and that meant the record stood about as much chance of reaching the charts as a Russian recital on the 1917 Bolshevik reform laws. But it did! In mid-December it climbed to No.17 on the Record Mirror chart, giving renewed hope to tone-deaf singers everywhere and showing that Russian recitals might be in with a chance after all.
It is to his credit that at the time Ian confessed: “I don’t want to be a singer really. If by some chance I really got ahead through singing I can assure you I’d drop it fast. All I want to be is an actor.” Whether his record sales earned him more acting roles is unknown but he was to carry on playing his part on disc well into 1963.
1960 had been quite a jamboree bag. The year which had seen such events as the wedding of Princess Margaret, the election of Senator John Kennedy as US President, the launch of Britain’s first nuclear submarine, the end of British rule in Cyprus, Nigeria and Somaliland, plus the last of The Goon Show and the good old faithful farthing had also seen the spectacular rise and fall of Triumph and Joe’s latest appearance on the music scene as a freelance producer. Since leaving Denis Preston he had recorded a Top Ten hit plus a handful of minor ones; twenty of his records had been released and though much of his Triumph stuff had been rejected he was super-optimistic, and next year he intended consolidating on 1960’s groundwork. Christmas he spent at Newent in preparation for a busy 1961.
17. It was for a certain number of recordings per year from each artiste, and all those that were accepted would be financed by Top Rank; any productions by new artistes that were not accepted he would be free to take elsewhere.
18. Briefly, in order to avoid getting bogged down in contract gobbledygook, a lease at that time would run about 20 years; it gave the lessor (Joe’s company) about 7% of the retail sale of each record sold (roughly 51/2 d). Out of this he would have to pay the artiste a royalty: usually 2% of sales (11/2 d per record). The lessee (the record company) would, through Joe, sign the artiste to a recording contract for one or more records, any of which they had the option of refusing. After three refusals, the artiste could offer his talents elsewhere.
19. His deal with Dick meant saying goodbye to his singer Mike Preston, whose contract he had to hand over to Decca.
20. Joe’s deal with Ivy was the usual 10-50-50. He would get 10% of the minuscule sale of sheet music (that would be threepence per sheet), 50% of PRS royalties (due from the playing of his compositions, i.e.: on the radio, television and in concert halls, factories, etc.) and 50% of ‘mechanical’ royalties (these were for disc sales, and his share for each of his compositions worked out at 1 9/16% of the record’s retail price).