THE TORNADOS – “Telstar”
“Telstar” leads the instrumental beat boom to the wonderful land, packs it on a rocket and sends it to the stars – its all-or-nothing optimism is inspiring and bittersweet. Inspiring because Joe Meek wrote a hymn for a better future than he or we got, and the world heard it. Bittersweet because the valves and echo chambers, the clockwork, spit and blu-tack that Meek built his future out of were already beginning to creak and decay. “Telstar” – a beautiful modernist shock to the charts – still sounds thrilling now but also seems ancient and time-lost, as proud and sad as old Dan Dare comics.
But the thing with satellites is how many of them never come back to Earth. They just stay up there, blinking silently in the dark – the professionals forget about their signals and move on, leaving amateurs and enthusiasts to pick up the traces briefly through the static. Telstar itself went dead less than a year after launch; but “Telstar” was a sort of satellite too, opening channels back to America and rising up that country’s charts while its namesake beamed live into British living rooms. And after Joe Meek faded and died his satellite kept on transmitting, telling anyone who could pick it up (an Italian songwriter in Munich, a floppy-haired Sheffield fop, a Cornish mentalist) that here was a different way to make pop music. “Telstar” promised music which would walk forward hand in hand with technology, using it to do what pop does best – amplify the buzz of being alive. Here comes tomorrow!
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Tom in Popular • 4,459 views • Share/Save
A good record forever tainted by Margaret Thatcher mentioning that she liked it. Evil bitch.
Over 40 years on, Telstar still stops me when ever I hear it, as then just a teenager, it sparkled to me with such promise , which as has been said, never materialised. Maggie did her job as was needed. Look at Europe now to see where we would have become without her!
So the Cornish mentalist is Richard James, I assume the Sheffield-based fop is Philip Oakey, but who’s the Italian-in-Germany? Giorgio Moroder?
Look at it this way: it’s a song so good that even Thatcher can like it. Kind of a clock-stopped-is-right-two-times-a-day thing.
And wow, this was #1 when Plath was writing all her great Ariel poems – here comes the future indeed…
I first heard this absolutely fabulous tune played on a car radio on the way to Manchester Airport following my Wedding on 1 September 1962. We were on our way to fly to the Isle of Man (UK) which was quite an experience in those quite early days of flying. The tune was scintillating and stopped me talking in the car. It was “our tune” until the early demise of my husband in 1994.
I’m sorry to hear that, Doreen.
Certainly I think “Telstar” still my favourite of all the number ones. It sort of wordlessly says everything.
There was an interesting three-part documentary on Meek on Radio 2 recently, during which Dave Stewart demonstrated exactly how “Telstar” was built up. Made me wonder how someone so lucid and knowledgeable could come up with such rubbish music (Dave Stewart, that is).
Oh, and it’s worth missing a meal or two to buy the Joe Meek Story box set if only to hear Meek singing the demo of “Telstar” with his, er, unique sense of pitching…
Makes you wonder if this sort of musical backdrop might have inspired the son of Tornados’ guitarist, George Bellamy, to become hailed as the greatest guitarist since Hendrix. Matt Bellamy’s band, Muse, already the biggest act in Europe and now ruthlessly conquering the States, is said to be one of the greatest live acts around. Go to Youtube.com, listen to Knights Of Cydonia and tell me that Telstar didn’t inspire the opening sequence to this fine song.
Who is the Cornish mentalist?
Aphex Twin.
You can hear the Tornados perform Telstar live at the Joe Meek festival weekend on 27/28th October at Newent, Gloucestershire (Joe’s birthplace). See Newent web pages for detail of events.
As a point of interest I write and record Joe Meek inspired instrumentals under the guise of the Space Babes. I have released two 21 track instrumental cd albums. Full reviews in JMS Thunderbolt magazine and Tom Hammonds Tornado’s web site. All details and a jukebox page on my web site at http://www.chestnutbankproductions.co.uk
Relive the Telstar era.
Even it was released 12 years before I was born, Telstar has a strange affection on me. It leads me to distant images of my beloved, when they were young and full of life. I would love to live in 1962…
This is the first record, from years before I was born, that Popular has encouraged me to archaeologise that brings tears to my eyes with how amazing it is. Thank you.
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør, re: the Yes/Meek connection:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syndicats
oo thanx mark! (apologies i wz so monosyllabic this eve, i was quite tired)
one thing the meek film does not really get across was HOW MANY RECORDS HE MADE — i have been reacquainting myself with that fact
this tune plays at the end of the latest Mad Men episode (season 2, episode 10) as the golden glow of the morning sun fills the airplane window while Don Draper lights up another cigarette and heads west to a ’space age’ aeronautics convention in California 1962 – giving some sense of it’s thrilling modernity at the time.
Pub Quiz time!
Who was the first ever British pop group to reach No 1 on the American billboard charts?
Answer – The Tornados, with “Telstar”
19th June of course saw the release of “Telstar” the film, which centres around the comings and goings in Joe Meek’s ramshackle studio where they pour black goo down the floorboards to damp vibration, blank off windows with that perforated hardboard stuff and drop marbles down toilets to create sound effects (“It’s your turn to fish ‘em out again….”), along the way creating some major (and a few minor) pop phenomena. The film concentrates at least as much on Meek’s mental health issues as it does on his achievements, and ends with his inevitable unpleasant demise. The performances of Con O’Neill (Meek) and J.J. Feild (Heinz Burt) are commendable, and in many ways the best part of the film. The same can’t be said for the period reconstruction, which had the odd glitch which smacked of carelessness. The whole thing left me feeling harrowed and disturbed rather than entertained. Most reviewers gave it three stars out of five, which is generous though not excessively so.
Tom, you review of this tune was spot on – this was just one of those flashes of brilliance that pop comes up with from time to time, and for me it’s probably the best single of that particular year and also better than a lot of the thumping that was to come in ’63-’64. It has a “Song of Joy” quality about it and maybe, just maybe, people will be humming it centuries from now, perhaps wondering about the context and the circumstances of its creation.
One further point about “Telstar”: When Radio 1 decided to feature the 100 best-selling singles of the previous ten years in 1972, “Telstar” just made it into the chronology, being ten years old at the time. It made something like number twelve on the list.