Music Reissues Weekly: Joe Meek - A Curious Mind

A curious mind, indeed. Outer space, and what may be there. Communicating with those in the hereafter. Spooks, vampires and other horror film perennials. The wild west. Deceased rock ’n’ rollers Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly.

Joe Meek’s preoccupations weren’t hidden. The records he produced and the songs he wrote reflected them. Much of his output was a form of musical autoportrait: auditory reportage expressing personal fixations. When he was at his commercial and creative peak in the early to mid Sixties, anyone could latch onto Meek’s obsessions via, say, a hit single like John Leyton’s “Johnny Remember me”: an evocation of the narrator’s experience hearing “the voice of my darlin', The girl I loved and lost a year ago.” Or “Tribute to Eddie,” a musical homage to Eddie Cochran; who had died in 1960. Then there’s Dream Of The West, the Outlaws' 1961 wild west-themed album. There are many, many more instances.

Accordingly, the three-CD clamshell box set A Curious Mind, as its booklet puts it, addresses “certain topics that particularly fascinated him, and sent his mind whirling with creativity. He had always been interested in outer space and was a huge horror and western movie fan, who also believed in the spirit world (which he famously tried to capture on tape). The macabre gripped him, and his late-night Ouija board sessions are well known. This collection brings all those interests and explorations together, taking a deep look into the Meek mind.”

Beyond the chosen theme, an additional incentive to collect the box set’s 82 tracks – 57 of them previously unreleased – is the access gained to what are dubbed “the tea chest tapes,” the crates containing Meek’s master and working tapes which first became a source for new archive releases in 2022. After buying them in sale of Meek’s assets their owner had held onto them since the late 1960s, following which they sat in storage.

Once access was gained to the tapes a string of definitive Meek and Meek-related releases has followed, all with previously unheard-of sound quality. The volume of what’s so far come out – close-to 10 CD collections (one of which was a daunting five-CD Heinz set) and four 10-inch albums – tends to diminish the impact of the next one, but each of them shuts down anything from the pre-tea chest era.

With A Curious Mind, the prime interest lies in Disc Three, a nitty gritty look at the I Hear A New World EP – in shops in March 1960 – and its attendant shelved counterparts. On the disc are 20 separate tracks from the sessions – including three takes of “Glob Waterfall.” There are studio rehearsals, session extracts, full recordings without the sound effects added by Meek and alternate versions (including a reverse-tape segment of “Dribcots Space Boat”). Also on the disc are versions of I Heard A New World instrumentals as recorded later by The Jaybirds (with a pre-Ten Years After Alvin Lee) and the Richie Blackmore-featuring The Outlaws. I Hear A New World was the subject of one of the 10-inch albums, but this disc tells the story in unsurpassed depth. As other I Heard A New World-related tracks appear on the other two discs, it’s hard not to think a dedicated two-disc stand-alone release would have been valid. Perhaps potential sales may have been too low to justify this, hence the inclusion of this material on A Curious Mind.

Elsewhere, A Curious Mind roams though other examples of this aspect of Meek’s musical spectrum. There’s Geoff Goddard's unusual “Sky Men” single, Screaming Lord Sutch’s “Jack the Ripper,” The Moontrekkers’ ever-compelling “Night of the Vampire,” an alternate version of John Leyton's “Johnny Remember me,” as well as Mike Berry & The Outlaws' “Tribute to Buddy Holly” and Heinz's “Tribute to Eddie.” Meek's sound effects recordings (for adding to finished recordings to bring a taste of otherness) are really interesting, as are a couple of hitherto lost solo demos, titled “You Make me Feel Evil” and “Have You Ever Tried Living on the Moon?"

A Curious Mind is a lot to take in, and is made more byzantine by teaming the familiar with the previously unknown. Also, the amount of I Hear A New World material tends to swamp the rest of what's here. Nonetheless, this box is essential for anyone with an interest in Meek – whether that’s passing, or one that’s staunch.

Dwelling on Meek’s yen to represent the impalpable through his creative endeavours makes sense. But, as has been well documented, Meek was unstable, prone to rages and affected by paranoia. Amongst the potential aggravating factors were frustrations about his path through the music industry, his ingestion of pep pills and an associated sleep deprivation, a permeating anxiety about his (then-illegal) homosexuality. He was arrested in November 1963 for importuning in a public lavatory. It was most likely a set up. There was a battle about the songwriting royalties for his biggest hit, 1962’s “Telstar.” There's more, but being Joe Meek was a strain. In February 1967, he took his own life with a shotgun. Seconds earlier, he had used it to murder his landlady.

Any appreciation of his work, therefore, has to be meshed with a complex backdrop; its interweaving, often troubling, aspects. While the undoubtedly fabulous A Curious Mind can be heard in a vacuum – as an account of Meek’s fascinations with outer space, horror, the spirit world and so on – it exists within the wider context of who he was, and how he lived – often under the duress of the norms of the day – his life. The music – or any chosen aspect of it – does not tell the full story.

• Next week: Hawkwind's landmark 1974 album Hall Of The Mountain Grill becomes a nine-disc box set
• More reissue reviews on theartsdesk
• Kieron Tyler’s website

@kierontyler.bsky.social