Start your journey outside Holloway Road Tube station and walk north. Listen out for the music and look out for these 10 plaques.

HOLLOWAY MALL

TOLLINGTON ROAD

HOLLOWAY ROAD

CAMDEN ROAD

LORAINE ROAD

“THE FRONT PAGE MAN” “THE When ‘Telstar’ became the GHOST-IN-THE-  rst British record to reach #1 in the US, Joe Meek hit the big MACHINE MAN” time and became a member Joe Meek was a sonic of the recording industry alchemist with a unique and “THE GREEN elite. This was in spite of the distinctive sound. Master song being recorded in a  at discs were sometimes sent DOOR MAN” above a leather goods shop back by the vinyl pressing ISLINGTON MUSEUM on the Holloway Road. factory because they were Joe Meek’s signature sound The success came with a assumed to be faulty, but they developed while working price: additional scrutiny of were exactly as he intended on hits such as ‘Green Door’ his private life. Homosexual them to be. JACKSON ROAD at major label IBC. He often acts were against the law and The bass was so massive conducted his own exper- when Meek was convicted on some of his productions BIDDESTONE iments during o ce hours in 1963 for ‘persistently that the arm of the record and he was soon looking for importuning for an immoral player would sometimes be PARK ways to ditch the white coat purpose’, the story was front- catapulted out of the groove and start a recording studio page news. – a pop music poltergeist, of his own. The cruising conviction chiming with his interest in ‘Green Door’ was a #2 hit in marked a moment of sig- the occult. the UK charts and is a song ni cant deterioration in his Meek recognised that most that re ects his experience mental health, a worsening teenagers were listening to as a gay man living a secret of his drug addiction and his songs on low-quality audio life in a straight world. Look general sense of isolation equipment, so he made songs through the peephole and and persecution. No one that would connect in spite of you see Gina, proprietor of knows why Meek killed his the crude mono frequencies “THE RADAR MAN” The Gateways gay nightclub landlady Violet Shenton, but of AM radio and the dansette Joe Meek’s youthful en- in Chelsea, where Joe Meek the decision to take his own record player, a method that thusiasm for electronics led was a regular visitor, and life arrived in a context of would ensure the recordings him to create the  rst TV set which was entered through a turmoil that was private but still retain impact in the in his home town of Newent real-life green door. also very public. digital age. (before there were actually any televisual transmissions to the area). “THE REVERB MAN” When his call-up papers Musicians, ampli ers, mag- came, he would have been netic tape and microphones entitled to exemption by HOLLOWAY “The Green Door Man” installation were scattered across the doing farmwork but instead three  oors of Joe Meek’s sat an exam to serve in the ROAD can be found at Islington Museum apartment at 304 Holloway RAF and spent 18 months as STATION as part of the current exhibition Road. This was mostly due to a radar mechanic. His own lack of space but was also a recording equipment at RGM ‘Up Against It: Islington 1967’ way of gathering new sounds. bene tted from army surplus London’s top session mu- and demobbed military gear. HORNSEY ROAD which explores the lives of well- sicians were often bemused He daringly used his known Islington gay men, including at the conditions they found independent status to broad- at RGM (Robert George Meek) cast to the world the  rst Joe Meek. The exhibition is part of records. To achieve the glo- openly gay pop record, rious celestial reverb e ect ‘Do You Come Here Often?’, Islington Heritage’s Islington’s Pride of a heavenly choir of female featuring a conversation project and runs until October 21st. backing vocalists featured in between two men. The song many of his records, singers passed unremarked by press Islington Museum would perform in the tiled and mainstream audiences at 245 St. John Street, EC1V 4NB bathroom of his  at. the time. “THE FOLEY MAN” “THE LEATHER “THE Joe Meek created sound GOODS MAN” SUNGLASSES MAN” e ects for amateur dramatics 304 Holloway Road was After his conviction for productions in his youth and remains a residential  at cruising, Joe Meek did not like in Gloucestershire. In his above a shop. To kit it out to leave the house without recording career, this de- as a studio involved various sunglasses. Fearful of being veloped into a collaboration soundproo ng installations recognised and wishing with the singer Screaming – egg boxes, cork tiles, peg- to maintain his privacy, Lord Sutch (later the founder board, cardboard packaging, sunglasses and suit became of the Monster Raving Loony pieces of carpet – which were his iconic look. Party), who shared Meek’s not 100 per cent e ective. Over the course of the 70s love of horror  lms. Noise complaints were fre- and 80s, his in uence was Their recordings featured quent and a constant source explicitly acknowledged a range of spooky and at- of frustration to the artist at by artists including Marc mospheric cinematic sound work. The shouts, bangings Almond, and the reissue e ects, and the accompanying and remonstrances from of his work in the 1990s, stage show garnered huge neighbours and passersby particularly his ‘outer space publicity and in uenced glam, were often recorded on tape music fantasy’, the early punk, goth and shock rock. and were often played back electronica concept album I to the complainant at twice Hear a New World, con rmed the volume or incorporated his status as a legend in pop “THE TEA into the recording in an music history. CHEST MAN” altered form. When 304 Holloway Road On a typical day in the was cleared out after the leather goods shop down- “CAUGHT strange and tragic deaths at stairs something other than BETWEEN WORLDS” the famous Meek sound the property, an abundance Only 20 copies of I Hear could be heard. The raw of quarter-inch magnetic tape A New World were printed materials of Meek’s re- reels were removed – enough in Joe Meek’s lifetime. This cordings were audible among to  ll 67 tea chests. was a cause of great dis- the bags and suitcases from These contained sound appointment: the critical foot stamps on the stairs to © 1966 Clive Bubley experiments and unused response was warm but the drum sounds that escaped sessions from years of re- record-buying public did between the  oorboards as cording activity and include not know what to make of a well as the slow recordings saxophone playing by David concept album depicting life intended for speeding up Bowie in his  rst band The on the moon. It remains a and tuned down recordings Konrads, sessions by Jimmy mystery how Meek achieved intended for pitch shifting. Page and Ritchie Blackmore, stereophonic sound on this and arguably an early re- recording with the equipment cording by Marc Bolan. available at this time. The tapes were catalogued The album was recorded in in the 1980s but remain secret at Lansdowne Studios undigitised and in a private and his West London  at, collection. but a few years later at 304 Holloway Road Meek would record its heir – ‘Telstar’, his greatest hit – using the same sounds, instruments and techniques.

JACKSON ROAD

LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY PERFORMERS Heavenly Choir – Essa Flett, Mengting Zhuo Recording Technicians – Beth Rafferty, Emily Gosling The Outlaws – Pery Sodeira, Philip Contos, James Smith, Iain Wakal National Serviceman – Adam Paroussos Globbots – Florencia Nannetti, Julia Pond Saroos – Tasha Vieira, Eliza Soroga, Rachel Snider With special guests: Bamboo Mustard, Femme Ferale and Figs in Wigs

CREATIVE TEAM Lead Artist / Director – Julie Rose Bower LONDON Set Designers – Nina Gerada / Nick Wood Sound Designer – Rob Hart HORNSEY ROAD METROPOLITAN Projectionist – Joshua Pharo Graphic Designer – Dani Mayes UNIVERSITY Costume – Ameena Creative Producer – Amanda Roberts HOLLOWAY Production Manager – Dominic Warwick ROAD THANKS TO Annie Reilly Cutler and Gross STATION Holloway Express Holloway Road News Kiosk Islington’s Pride Joe Meek Society Jon Savage Mike Prior Ramsay Scouts Roz Currie The Coronet The Evening Standard HORNSEY ROAD Wetherspoons

ISLINGTON MUSUEM Joe Meek died 50 years ago in 1967, the same year that homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England and Wales.

His life story is strange and turbulent; an eternal outsider, an independent record pro- ducer, he was stratospherically successful against the odds, and then died in circumstances of controversy and violence. He charted his own emotional state by creating extraordinary music that was not to every- one’s taste but nonetheless changed the world. The artworks in this trail of installations do not pass over the controversy surrounding his memory, but portray his highly in uential ideas and music – interpreting them as the authentic expression of his life, both emotionally and intellectually, as a gay man in the 1950s and 60s.

Right: Cover artwork for I Hear A New World Part 1, an EP written and produced by Joe Meek with the Blue Men and released on Meek’s Triumph label in 1960

These 12 lines were on the front page of the London newspaper The Evening News e Man Who and Star on 12 November 1963. The Wrote ‘Telstar’ Song writer and recording criminal conviction it reports, and the manager Joe Meek, aged 33, was ned £15 at Clerkenwell to-day appearance of this article, changed the a er pleading guilty to persist- ently importuning for an im- course of Joe Meek’s life. oral purpose yesterday at Madras-place, Holloway. Meek, of Holloway-road, Hol- loway, composed the tune “Tel- star,” which sold more than two million copies and was the top-selling record of 1962.

Julie Rose Bower presents ‘JOE MEEK – 304 HOLLOWAY ROAD’. Commissioned by Heritage Open Days, September 2017.