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She knows me too well stereo master3/20/2023 ![]() It was a tragic ending – yet there's no denying Meek's wildly innovative experiments in music. He killed himself at his flat/studio on London's Holloway Road in February 1967, after fatally shooting his landlady, Violet Shenton. His life was complex, unnerving and ultimately brutal his serious mental health issues were worsened by debt and the threat of persecution for being gay (homosexual acts were then still illegal in the UK). Meek himself was an undeniably controversial and volatile figure, occasionally likened to US producer and murderer Phil Spector (who Meek reportedly regarded as a foe). "Cliff kept these things for half a century, and now our job is to go through them methodically, and work out how we bring them blinking into the light." "This cult netherworld of mythical Tea Chest Tapes had been talked about in hushed tones for decades," says Cherry Red's Catalogue Director and former Record Collector magazine journalist John Reed. Following Meek's 1967 suicide, the Tea Chest Tapes were bought and carefully stored by young musician/businessman Cliff Cooper (whose band The Millionaires had been produced by Meek) a few months ago, the tapes were acquired by much-loved independent label Cherry Red Records. Still, few lost tape hauls evince the vastness and intrigue of late English producer Joe Meek's Tea Chest Tapes: 67 crates containing nearly 2000 reels of previously unheard tracks by 1960s acts including David Bowie's first band The Konrads, Tom Jones, Ray Davies, Billy Fury, Gene Vincent, Georgie Fame, youthful singer-songwriter Mark Feld (later to become glam rock idol Marc Bolan), Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, John Leyton, The Tornados (whose 1962 global smash hit Telstar, written and produced by Meek, summoned the space age), and an early incarnation of British rockers Status Quo, to name a few. They might have been literally salvaged from the trash – as with the Louis Armstrong & His All Stars master reels almost scrapped in a Columbia Records clear-out (but rescued by reissues producer Michael Brooks in 1980), or a clutch of (still unreleased) tapes by Factory label acts including Joy Division, saved from a skip outside Stockport's seminal (now defunct) Strawberry Studios. Lost tapes might emerge in various guises across countless genres: as unofficial rough-cut bootlegs or carefully curated collections from hours of forgotten recordings. ![]() Before digital recording became standard in the 1990s, artists would rely on relatively bulky (and expensive) analogue tape the irreplaceable "master tape" would be the definitive version, from which all copies were derived. There's a near-mystical power to the prospect of uncovering unheard tracks or early demos by musical heroes, and even a fascination in the format itself. ![]() "Lost tapes" are the ultimate mystery prize in the music world.
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