CityLife

Telstar

IMPRESSIVE: Con O'Neill as Joe Meek

IN 1995, under-employed actors Nick Moran (soon to achieve fame in Lock, Stock... and similar fare) and James Hicks found themselves staggering, a little over-refreshed, into a taxi on London’s Holloway Road.

They picked up said cab outside an old shop which bore a blue plaque above it, indicating that someone of historical significance had lived there at some point.

It read ‘Joe Meek lived, worked and died here.’ Intrigued, the pair investigated further and found themselves exploring one of the greatest stranger-than-fiction stories of pop, if not of the whole Sixties.

Basically, Joe Meek was a maverick musical genius and, as one of the very first independent record producers, an acknowledged inspiration for George Martin and Phil Spector and a major influence on the likes of The White Stripes, Morrissey and Nick Cave.

He enjoyed phenomenal early success with Telstar, which became a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic even though it had been recorded on temperamental, cobbled-together equipment by the tone-deaf producer in a flat above a bag shop on the Holloway Road.

Many years later, bizarrely, Margaret Thatcher professed that it was her favourite pop record!

But the gay producer was troubled by paranoia and depression, exacerbated by a ferocious intake of drugs, and his career ended in a bloodbath, with Meek shooting his landlady and then himself dead in that Holloway Road flat.

Having stumbled upon what Moran confidently justifiably calls ‘the greatest story never told’, he spent the next year putting together a play based on Meek’s story, which was first read-through at a disused South London pub, with roles played by, amongst others, Jude Law, Kathy Burke and Samantha Morton.

Mark Ravenhill and John Mortimer then became involved but Moran’s filming commitments moved the play on to the back boiler until another reading was staged at the turn of the Millennium, which in turn led to an Arts Council-funded tour.

At our very own Opera House, the play was seen by entrepreneur and Crystal Palace football club owner Simon Jordan, whose enthusiasm and cash led to a run in the West End.

Woody Allen

This was enormously successful – high-profile audience members included the likes of Tom Hanks, Sean Penn and Woody Allen – with particular praise going to Con O’Neill, who played Meek, and now reprises the role in this riveting film version.

“I love him as a character but I find him a very difficult man to like,” admits O’Neill.

“I love what he stands for and I love the passion that he had and his choice to be direct with people. I do admire that.

“He was so utterly in love with what he did and so utterly driven by the creative side of his psyche and it’s rare to be given the opportunity to play somebody who is so free with that.”

This is a fascinating story, well-told. Even music fans might well be amazed to find out that Meek’s long-suffering core band included not only Chas Hodges (as in ‘none more Cockney’ Chas ’n’ Dave and played here by Oldham-born Ralf Little) and session drummer par excellence Clem Cattini (who has played on more number one records than any other musician), but also a youthful Ritchie Blackmore and, briefly until he had a shotgun held to his head, Mitch Mitchell, who, a few weeks later, auditioned for an unknown American guitarist going by the name of Jimi Hendrix.

Famously, Meek turned down a group called The Beatles no less than four times and once got into a brawl with another young chap eager to sign up with him – one Tom Jones.

It’s in keeping with the spirit of the film that the real Clem Cattini and Chas Hodges show up in cameo roles while the cast also includes the likes of Justin Hawkins as Screaming Lord Sutch and former Libertine Carl Barat as Gene Vincent, while the real Jess Conrad crops up playing gay impresario Larry Parnes.

This is a film full of passion, from its director – who admits he verged perilously close to nerd-dom in his quest to find out all he could about Meek and then pass that on to his cast – to its main character, a fascinating and crucial character in the history of popular music.

You can see, too, that the cast – including not only Little and James Corden as Clem Cattini, but Kevin Spacey as the financier Major Banks and Pam Ferris as Meek’s landlady Violet Shenton – were caught up in that passion.

O’Neill’s performance as the mercurial Meek is truly outstanding, while JJ Field as Meeks’ fairly hopeless protégé (and love interest) Heinz also impresses.

This terrific British film strikes barely a bum note and comes highly recommended.