December 3, 1962 (2 weeks)
Considering what the Fab Four would soon become, revisionism was perhaps inevitable. Its eventual Top 20 peak was promising but I am very skeptical that such a minor hit really "blew a stimulating autumn breeze through an enervated pop scene," as Ian MacDonald put it in Revolution in the Head, doing for UK music, he argues, what the first James Bond film, Dr. No, did for their film industry. As much of a breath of fresh air "Love Me Do" may have been, there was a far more adventurous and forward-thinking single that had been lodged at the top of the British hit parade. The Beatles wouldn't be capable of matching the astounding creativity of "Telstar" for another three or four years.
One of the chief adjectives that gets thrown around when it comes to "Telstar" is that it's futuristic — and with good reason. It would have been amazing to have heard this groundbreaking single back in 1962. To have been ten or eleven years old in the midst of the space race and there was this pop song that signaled a future of space exploration must have been thrilling. But what comes across now is combination of it remaining futuristic while also being a time capsule of how the future was once envisioned — the future as a relic of the past. There is an optimism to it but it now feels both "inspiring and bittersweet", as Tom Ewing observed in his review. The hope brought on by the launch of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin orbiting the Earth ended up being dashed by the cosmonaut's later demise as well as the horrific death of his friend Vladimir Komarov. The Apollo 11 Moon landing would have raised hopes once more but subsequent setbacks in the space program further damaged the wonder of space travel. Man setting foot on Mars once seemed like an inevitability but now it seems as far away from reality as ever, regardless of what a certain billionaire charlatan would have you believe. (Outside of the realm of space exploration, there have been similar ups and downs; had "Telstar" landed a year later following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, it likely wouldn't have been as impactful)
The credit tends to go to producer and songwriter Joe Meek, a boffin with a mix of genius and madness to rival Phil Spector but who operated in bare bones British studio conditions. Like Geoff Emerick and Alan Parsons later on, Meek started off as an engineer which gave him the tools to work out how to manipulate both a recording and its setting. We can listen to "Telstar" and marvel at the technical wizardry going on but it's as much a triumph due to being a patchwork job. (The song often brings to mind the image of a tin foil ship hurling its way though a construction paper backdrop decorated in childlike drawings of stars and planets and I can practically see the bit of string holding it up; in a way, "Telstar" is not unlike Plan 9 from Outer Space only Meek had oodles more talent than the notorious film maker Ed Wood) Studios in Los Angeles offered state-of-the-art equipment for producers like Spector and Brian Wilson to operate but this meant less room for the kind of experimentation that Meek thrived on.
Meek's houseband on earlier hits like Johnny Leyton's "Johnny Remember Me" and Mike Berry's "Tribute to Buddy Holly" was The Tornados. They are frequently on the sidelines in the story of "Telstar" but, just as I recently said about Spector and his long suffering acts, they deserve to share in the acclaim as well. As instrumental groups of the day go, they were as tight as The Shadows or The Ventures with perhaps a larger repertoire. In a way, this proved to be a hindrance to them as they might have been better off sticking to space rock — at least for a little while, if for no other reason than to milk it. The B side to "Telstar" is the naff "Jungle Fever", a brave if rather sad attempt at proto-world music which would sound like a problematic bit of cultural appropriation if not for the fact that it sucks so much that it isn't worth the effort of getting upset over it. Yet, they are the best thing about earlier Meek production efforts — for whatever reason, vocalists never seemed well-served by his vision — and with instrumental rock at something of a peak, it seemed like the perfect time to let them do their thing.
Producer and band come together to deliver a truly magical single. While it's easy to get caught up in Meek's production masterclass, it's also just a hell of a pop song. There are hooks upon hooks, guitarist Clem Cattini's solos are precise little beauties and that clavioline gives it that spacey vibe even without the involvement of all that studio trickery. (The instrument is present and correct on the group's 1975 re-recording which probably gives a fair idea of what it would've been like had their eccentric producer not been involved; it isn't terrible but it doesn't approach the original) There are tunes that always sound better in my mind than they do when I sit down to listen to them but "Telstar" manages to work just as well in either setting possibly because my limited imagination could never conjure up anything that even comes close.
I have been trying to find out what The Beatles thought about "Telstar" but to no avail. (For his part, Cattini had nothing but good things to say about the upstarts) Surely, though, they must've been deeply impressed. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were only just getting the hang of this songwriting lark but it's easy to imagine them hearing The Tornados and wondering among themselves if they could better it someday. Future works such as "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Rain", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "A Day in the Life", "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite", "Baby You're a Rich Man" and "I Am the Walrus" suggest that Meek and The Tornados may not necessarily have been an influence as such but that they had raised the bar. Fortunately for the Fab Four, in George Martin they had a producer who was just as much of a visionary Joe Meek — minus all the baggage.
Score: 10
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