February 2 1967. Evening. 304 Holloway Road. Meek’s final hours, described by his office assistant, Patrick Pink: “He looked clearly sort of sick. He wasn’t talking – writing things down. In the evening we watched some TV and had something to eat. That would be about 7 o’clock. I think I cooked it. He was writing on bits of paper; he was afraid the place was bugged and that he was being listened in to. He suddenly asked me after dinner, ‘Let’s go up, let’s make your record. You’re more or less up to standards now.’ I’d only recorded demos before but this particular one was promised to come out in March, my own. I have a feeling he had it planned. That was the night. After all those years I’d been with him and I’d stayed sometimes the night – and that particular night: ‘Come on, let’s see if we can get a record out of you now’.
“About 9 o’clock we went up into the studio. He had some tracks already made up: the backing tracks. I just did a couple of old ones he had stored away and I’d learnt the words from the acetates – very quick attempts: about an hour. Then I did another one which I’d learnt. It was a backing that was laid down for Heinz; he had already voiced it and the voice had been taken off of it. Heinz had sung it years ago: “There goes my baby – look at the way she walks”. Joe wrote it. Went on the radio once – Heinz did it ‘live’. Nothing had been put out on record, and Joe said I could have it and get it released.
“Then all of a sudden he went really weird and told me to start miming to my own recording – said, ‘Just stand there and mime – they’re watching us through the walls. They’re watching and listening’. I’ve no idea who these people were. Possibly EMI, because days previously he’d pointed out to me people in cars sitting down the road, possibly with listening devices, had his place bugged, and they were watching him every time he came in and out and following him everywhere. He got worse then and it started to play on his mind. It might well have been true and he wasn’t nuts completely. I genuinely believe, even though he was going off his rocker, that there were people bugging his place. I genuinely believe it now; or whether it was the police watching his place, I’ve no idea. Maybe the police had it bugged; might have been the Drug Squad.
“I was recording the same song over and over and over and over again. I don’t think he knew what he was doing at all. He was putting on a show basically for the benefit of earholes, people listening in. On the bits of paper he was writing: ‘Sing it again’, ‘More coffee’. I had to keep going down to make coffee. The session would have been about three hours. I went to bed at midnight absolutely shagged out.
“I was in bed when he came up to get the gun. It was a single-barrel shotgun. He kept it under the bed for protection. He said, ‘I’m taking this downstairs’. I never gave it a thought.
“At 8 o’clock in the morning he was still working, running tapes and things. I got up. 9 o’clock I made toast for breakfast and called him down from the studio: ‘Breakfast’. He came down, drank the coffee. I don’t think he ate the toast – pretty sure he didn’t eat at all. He wouldn’t talk at all. He wrote little notes, passed them over and burnt them after he’d wrote them. After he’d drunk his coffee he went out in the kitchen and had a burn-up. First of all he was burning a lot of documents, letters and things in the kitchen; it was in a small tin dustbin. He had a bonfire in that. Angry about something – no idea what; he was very angry. The previous day he had just been dazed. Now he’d changed. I think he had his senses – I’m bloody sure he had. He was absolutely paranoid but tense and angry. He wrote two or three messages: ‘They’re not getting this’. ‘They’re not getting these’. He went mad and he wrote: ‘They aren’t going to f—— get this’, and he started to burn that painting on the wall: the one with the little black boys dancing naked round a fire. He put the painting on top of a fire – the two-bar fire – which scorched it all up. I thought it was strange but I didn’t think it was coming to what happened. I thought at the time he was going out of his head and I was going to call Dr. Crispe and he stopped me. He was down for about half an hour. Then he disappeared upstairs to the studio for a little while. I thought, ‘Crikey, I’ll be safer to stay down here.’ So I stayed downstairs. And he came back down to the living room. I think it was about quarter to ten. Give me a little note saying: ‘I’m going now. Goodbye’. And I didn’t know what it meant. I laughed. I thought, ‘Where?’ The note got burnt and upstairs he went. I thought,‘Well everything’s OK then.’ ’Cause he was upstairs playing tapes – my stuff from the night before. That went on for ten to fifteen minutes.
“Then Michael arrives. Michael and Dennis – they’d just left school and they were looking for work, and Joe’d give them a job stacking tapes for a few days for a few quid. There was no set hours with them or whatever; they came and they were told to piss off – they went; that was the arrangement. One came, just Michael. I went up the stairs to tell Joe. Michael stayed at the door. I think he sensed there was something wrong straight away. Whether he’d been there the day before when I’d not been around, I don’t know. Whether he knew there was something going on, I don’t know, but he knew there was something wrong straight away. He said, ‘Is it all right?’ I went up to the landing and said, ‘Michael’s here.’ I didn’t actually see Joe at that point; he was in the control room. He called out: ‘Tell him to f—— off – get rid of him’, but I’d already started coming downstairs having told him that Michael was here. Then he came to the top of the landing and looked down on me, and said, ‘Get Mrs. Shenton up here.’ I in turn said to Michael, ‘Joe don’t want you today. Do us a favour, tell Mrs. Shenton to come up for me’.
“She came up and she came to me. I was in the room before the office, the waiting room, more or less at the bottom of the stairs. She said, ‘What’s up?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. Joe wants you’. I took her two or three steps up. She said, ‘Oh, hold this for me a minute. I don’t like to smoke up there.’ I took her cigarette off her, she went on her way upstairs and I went in the office. I think she said, ‘Hallo Joe, how are you?’ and all the usual rubbish ’cause she did ask me what sort of mood he’s in. I said, ‘He’s in a bad mood again’. I thought everything’s going to be OK now; she’ll calm him down. Within about half a minute there was a lot of shouting. It was after I put the cigarette out. I was walking back in the living room when I heard him say, ‘Have you got the book?’ God knows what it was: probably the rent book or rates book or lease or something. He shouted it very sternly. They weren’t both shouting, just him. I think she said, ‘I haven’t got it with me; I’ll bring it in tomorrow’, and asked him if he’d like to come down for a cup of tea and a chat. The shouting went on for a couple of minutes, I think. It was all him; he was getting frantic. I was trying to eavesdrop on the conversation, being the nosy kind of person that I am, walking to and fro, but I didn’t hear very much.
“I was in the office when I heard a big bang. I didn’t know what it was. It was such a f—— big bang, I was stunned. I rushed out and she was falling downstairs and I sort of grabbed her as she came to the bottom, and felt her. I was sitting on the stairs with her flapped over me. I wondered what it was for a minute. Then I saw the blood pouring out of these little holes in her back. And she died in my arms – I’m bloody positive she went still. I had quite a bit of blood over me. Her back was just smoking. He must have been close range, he must have been right at her back. I held her in my arms; clearly there was nothing I could do. She was dead as far as I was concerned and I sort of pushed her over and I shouted out, ‘She’s dead’. Joe was leaning over the landing banister and I thought I was next. He just had a stony-faced cold look.
“A few moments later I rushed halfway upstairs and looked across the landing and caught sight of Joe outside the control room and I think he was reloading, and before I could get at him he’d pulled the trigger on himself, and there was Joe’s body with his head like a burnt candle. Blood everywhere, including over me as well; I was treading in blood …”