For instance, another group beat The Beatles to the first U.S. #1 by a British band…
“Telstar” (composed in honor of the historic telecom satellite) was written by Joe Meek.
His name is unfamiliar to most Americans, but in England, Meek is a legend, a kind of combination Alan Turing, Phil Spector and Brian Epstein.
A necessarily closeted gay man who’d been raised as a girl until age four, Joe Meek was a distinctly English type: a garden shed tinkerer and crank who claimed to be on speaking terms with Buddy Holly’s ghost. (…)
Increasingly paranoid and pilled up, his peculiar brand of eerie, insipid music having fallen out of fashion, Meek shot his long suffering landlady then turned the gun on himself in 1967, on the anniversary of his hero Holly’s demise.
Three weeks after his own death, a groundless yet costly plagiarism suit over “Telstar” was settled in Meek’s favor. During his lifetime, he’d never been able to collect any royalties earned by the multi-million selling record.
