The satellite that launched the sixties


Producer Joe Meek had huge success with Telstar Producer Joe Meek had huge success with Telstar []


Although Telstar was an incredibly complex piece of equipment the principle behind it was very simple. Signals would be beamed from ground stations, which the solar-powered satellite would then magnify 10 billion times and retransmit to stations in other countries.

The backdrop to the launch of Telstar was the “space race” between the world’s two superpowers: the US and the Soviet Union. The Soviets had been the first to launch a satellite into space, Sputnik in 1957, and the first to send a man into space, Yuri Gagarin in 1961. But in February 1962 Americans celebrated when they sent their first man to orbit Earth, John Glenn, and now they had another important success. “It is another milestone in the age of scientific miracles,” a US newsreel proudly declared.

Next week marks the 50th anniversary of Telstar being blasted into space – transforming the lives of all of us and making the name of the doomed music genius who turned it into a chart hit

The very first image which Telstar relayed was that of an American flag flying in the wind at the ground station at Andover in Maine. The launch of Telstar caused enormous excitement worldwide. Britain, like many other countries, experienced “Telstar mania”. Although it was primarily an American project there was British involvement as its General Post Office was part of the multinational agreement to develop transatlantic satellite communications. And what really fixed the satellite’s name and place in history was a space-age instrumental pop record.

Telstar by The Tornados, featuring a picture of the satellite on its cover, became a huge hit, staying at No1 for five weeks and also became the first record by a British group to get to No1 in the US.

The track, which featured a clavioline – an unusual electronic keyboard instrument – sold more than five million copies worldwide and had famous admirers. It was later listed by prime minister Margaret Thatcher as her favourite pop record. “Telstar was just the right title for a time when people were becoming conscious of sudden scientific advances,” pop historian Tony Jasper writes.

The man behind the zeitgeist hit of 1962 was maverick producer and songwriter Joe Meek.

He was fascinated by the space race and its exciting possibilities. “He was the aural equivalent of a visionary. It was the beginning of space travel. It was a fantastical world with new sound landscapes and he could hear things in it that other people couldn’t hear,” says film director Marc Evans, a long-standing Meek fan.

Meek had been interested in electronics and outer space from an early age but his interest was enhanced when he worked as a radar technician in the RAF during National Service.

He worked for various recording companies before setting up his own production company in his three floor flat above a leather goods shop in Islington. He was very much the man of the moment in 1962 and greatly in demand.

The satellite he had written about was still making news. Less than two weeks after the launch there was another first as Telstar relayed the first publicly available live transatlantic tele vision signals. The historic broadcast included remarks from President Kennedy and featured US presenters Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley in New York and the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby in Brussels. Later Telstar relayed the first phone call transmitted through space.

Telstar 1 was followed by the launch of Telstar 2 less than a year later. In 1964, thanks to satellite technology, people across the world were able to watch the Olympics, taking place in Tokyo, live for the very first time.

But for Joe Meek, the man who gave the space race its musical soundtrack, things had started to take a dramatic downturn. Beatlemania was supplanting synthesiser space rock in the public’s affections and his hits dried up after his song Have I The Right? recorded by The Honeycombs reached No1 in 1964.

As his career waned Meek became increasingly interested in the occult. He set up tape recorders in graveyards in an attempt to record the voices of those “on the other side”. Once he captured the miaows of a cat and claimed it was half-speaking in human tones asking for help.

Personal problems were driving him to despair too. Meek was gay at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offence. In 1963 he had been convicted for “importuning for immoral purposes” and was then subject to blackmail. He took solace in drugs.

The final straw came in January 1967 when the dissected body of a missing 17-year-old from London, Bernard Oliver, was found in two suitcases in Suffolk. Oliver had been sexually assaulted. Meek had known Oliver but had nothing to do with the killing. However he feared he would be implicated when police announced they would question all known homosexual men in London.

On February 3, 1967, the eighth anniversary of the death of his great idol Buddy Holly, Meek shot his landlady dead then turned the gun on himself. He was 37. It was a bleak end for a man who less than five years earlier had been riding high with the success of Telstar.

If he had lived just a few months longer to June 1967 the space rock pioneer would have seen another first: the first live, international, satellite television production: the show One World in which artists from 19 countries performed. It was on this extravaganza The Beatles first sang their specially composed song All You Need Is Love.



Paul Cerruzi, chair of the Space History Division of the Nasa Museum, says: “The philosopher Marshall McLuhan prophesied in the Sixties that the ‘cool’ medium of television would make us all inhabitants of a ‘global village’.

That did not happen right away, which led people to dismiss his predictions as mere fancy. But with the combination of satellite telecommunications, the internet and Facebook, who would say he was wrong? And it all began with Telstar.”


Today there are more than 2,400 satellites orbiting Earth including Telstar 1 and 2, though they no longer work. Satellites affect our lives in many ways.

WEATHER FORECASTS: As many as 200 weather satellites have been launched since the Sixties. Solar-powered satellites now play key roles in weather observation and forecasting.

SATNAVS IN OUR CARS: The first use of satellite navigation was for military purposes but now it helps us get from A to B. There are two global satnav systems, the US GPS (global positioning system) and the Russian GLONASS. Each relies on a constellation of around 20-30 satellites orbiting Earth.

MOBILE PHONES: Equipped with GPS receivers, they can pinpoint their location using data from satellites. Satellite phones still operate when terrestrial cell antennas and networks are damaged due to natural disasters such as earthquakes, as they rely on signals from space.

TELEVISION: Even if we don’t pay for satellite TV thanks to the technology we can still watch important live events from all over the world. The Live Aid concert in 1985 was watched by a global audience of 1.9 billion while the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 reached an estimated 2.5 billion. It wouldn’t have been possible without Telstar.