A Life In The Death Of Joe Meek

Several years ago I was interviewed by a visiting film crew, who were (and still are) making a documentary about the life and death of musician Joe Meek.

In fact the film crew approached me after learning about my friendship and involvement with Joe, in the mid 1960s; a period when the late composer and producer approached me to pursue a personal interest he had in Wicca and spiritualism. He told me he had visited London’s Highgate Cemetery only a year or so before this and played me some recordings on an old cassette player, of spirit voices which he had captured there on one of his nightly excursions. The sounds did indeed seem to contain the ‘unearthly voices’ of discarnate entities, which Joe was convinced were trying to communicate a message to him.

We met on about three occasions after this, and had long discussions in my Highgate flat and at a local café which basically involved him wanting to become involved in my group. Sadly this never happened, as Joe also had other ongoing problems at the time, mainly involving personal disputes with other songwriters and singers involved in the record industry. I was also concerned that Joe’s desire to become involved in occult matters would have been somewhat dangerous to encourage due his fragile emotional state at the time; a state which, I understand, eventually led to his untimely suicide on 3^rd February 1967 – coincidentally the same date on which Buddy Holly died in a tragic plane crash.

Although the film project is not yet complete, the team behind the documentary – ‘A Life In The Death Of Joe Meek’ – will be screening a 30 minute preview at the Ugly Things magazine 30th anniversary celebrations from (May 24-26, 2013) in San Diego.

The team have been campaigning and fundraising devotedly and with great energy since 2003, and it seems that they are now in the final stages of production. Any fans of Joe Meek who would like to help the film get to the distribution stage can keep an eye on this page which tells the public how they can support the project: [Link no longer active – Ed.]

But I will keep you all updated on the progress of the film.

For the moment,

David