Joe Meek [Joe Meek Society]

PIONEERING record producer Joe Meek made Islington famous for rock music in the 1960s with the ghostly foreboding song, Johnny Remember Me and then with Telstar, celebrating the first worldwide public satellite broadcast.

But a new book about Meek’s short but extraordinary life has extra sadness after the death last year of its author, Darryl W Bullock.

Tributes have been paid to Darryl, who was 60, as publisher Omnibus Press  release his book Love and Fury: The Extraordinary Life, Death and Legacy of Joe Meek.

It’s a thorough analysis of Meek’s life, from when he started out as a teenager happily fixing friends’ broken radios and televisions, and then on to fame and fortune in his makeshift studio in Holloway Road. He was gay at a time when it was against the law.

Recognition of his creative genius has been overshadowed by the manner in which he died on February 3, 1967, at the age of 37. He shot his landlady, Violet Shenton, to death, and then killed himself, using a single-barrelled shotgun that he had confiscated from an artist at the studios.

The plaque in Holloway Road

An inquest jury found Meek deliberately killed Mrs Shenton, who ran a leather shop with her husband on the ground floor of the premises where Meek had his studio.

But let’s go back to Meek’s great days. He scored three No 1 records in Britain and was described in one poll by readers of the New Musical Express as the greatest producer of all time.

When he died, along with his released output he left a legacy of more than 1,860 reels of tape – the legendary Tea Chest tapes – long rumoured  to include unreleased recordings by David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Ray Davies of the Kinks and others.

Meek’s ideas were audacious and original: on April 20, 1956 he engineered a session by jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his band for a new Parlophone single. He worked on Anne Shelton’s No 1 Lay Down Your Arms and Harry Secombe’s version of the Welsh standard We’ll Keep A Welcome.

He worked with husband-and-wife team, early Eurovision hitmakers Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson. But Meek was subject to temperamental moods and angry outbursts.

Author Darryl W Bullock

His first big hit was the “sensationally theatrical” Johnny Remember Me in 1961. The singer was Johnny Leyton, who was not impressed with the song, written by Geoff Goddard, when it was first played to him without backing music on a cheap tape recorder.

But Meek introduced not just a magical backing but also the talents of classical soprano Lissa Gray, who wailed the now-familiar chorus.

Then, a year later in 1962, he had a huge No 1 hit with the Tornado’s Telstar. The hit sold five million records but it was difficult to believe it was made in a makeshift bustling Holloway Road studio above a leather shop.

“We make records on a shoestring,” he told the NME at the time. “But now there is firm proof that you don’t have to record in a plush ultra-modern studio to get the biggest hits.”

Not everyone got on with Meek. Among the many acts who turned up on the doorstep were The Raiders, a five-piece band from Hornsey, fronted by a 16-year-old vocalist and harmonica player called Rod Stewart. The Raiders duly auditioned, but Meek was none too keen.

Another of Meek’s great hits, Just Like Eddie, was again written by Goddard and sung
by the glamorous German singer Heinz Burt (famous for his blond hair).

It was written in tribute to American singer, Eddie Cochran, who died in a car crash near Bath in 1960. He was just 21.

Cochran’s bereaved mother was so moved by the tribute that she wrote to Heinz to thank him.

‘‘Just Like Eddie was a fabulous thing,” Heinz himself said. But sadly he suffered from motor neurone disease and died of a stroke in 2000 aged 57.

Other popular artists produced by Meek included Frankie Vaughan, Lonnie Donegan, Emile Ford, and Marty Wilde.

• Love and Fury: The Extraordinary Life, Death and Legacy of Joe Meek. By Darryl W Bullock, Omnibus Press £25