Joe Meek - Meek's Legacy

Meek's Legacy

Despite not being able to play a musical instrument or write notation, Meek displayed a remarkable facility for writing and producing successful commercial recordings. In writing songs he was reliant on musicians such as Dave Adams, Geoff Goddard or Charles Blackwell to transcribe melodies from his vocal "demos". He worked on 245 singles, of which 45 were major hits (top fifty).

He pioneered studio tools such as multiple over-dubbing on one- and two-track machines, close miking, direct input of bass guitars, the compressor, and effects like echo and reverb, as well as sampling. Unlike other producers, his search was for the 'right' sound rather than for a catchy musical tune, and throughout his brief career he single-mindedly followed his quest to create a unique "sonic signature" for every record he produced.

At a time when many studio engineers were still wearing white coats and assiduously trying to maintain clarity and fidelity, Meek, the maverick, was producing everything on the three floors of his "home" studio and was never afraid to distort or manipulate the sound if it created the effect he was seeking.

Meek was one of the first producers to grasp and fully exploit the possibilities of the modern recording studio. His innovative techniques—physically separating instruments, treating instruments and voices with echo and reverb, processing the sound through his fabled home-made electronic devices, the combining of separately-recorded performances and segments into a painstakingly constructed composite recording—comprised a major breakthrough in sound production. Up to that time, the standard technique for pop recording was to record all the performers in one studio, playing together in real time.

Meek's style was also substantially different from that of his contemporary Phil Spector, who typically created his "Wall of sound" productions by making live recordings of large ensembles that used multiples of major instruments like bass, guitar, and piano to create the complex sonic backgrounds for his singers.

In 1993, ex-Joe Meek session singer Ted Fletcher introduced a line of audio equipment named after Joe Meek, due to his influence in the early stages of audio compression. The name and product line were sold to the American company PMI Audio Group in 2003. This product line includes a microphone series called "Telstar", named after Joe Meek’s biggest hit.

Meek's reputation for experiments in recording music was acknowledged by the Music Producers Guild who created The Joe Meek Award for Innovation in Production in 2009. MPG chairman Mike Howlett said the award was "paying homage to this remarkable producer’s pioneering spirit". The winner of the inaugural award in 2009 was producer and musician Brian Eno.