[6][7] Meek pioneered space age and experimental pop music, and assisted in the development of recording practices like overdubbing, sampling and reverberation.

[8] Charting singles Meek produced for other artists include "Johnny Remember Me" (John Leyton, 1961), "Just Like Eddie" (Heinz, 1963), "Angela Jones" (Michael Cox, 1960), "Have I the Right?"

The Tornados' instrumental "Telstar" (1962), written and produced by Meek, became the first record by a British rock group to reach number one in the US Hot 100.

[9] It also spent five weeks at number one in the UK singles chart, with Meek receiving an Ivor Novello Award for this production as the "Best-Selling A-Side" of 1962.

On 3 February 1967, using a shotgun owned by musician Heinz Burt, Meek killed his landlady, Violet Shenton, with whom he had argued over the loudness of his studio, which he rented from her, and then shot himself.

During his national service in the Royal Air Force,[13] he worked as a radar technician which increased his interest in electronics and outer space.

He used the resources of the company to develop his interest in electronics and music production, including acquiring a disc cutter and producing his first record.

He also engineered many jazz and calypso records including vocalist and percussionist Frank Holder and band leader Kenny Graham.

After being initially released by Eddie Silver and later by Tommy Steele, the Duke composition "Put A Ring On My Finger" was recorded by Les Paul & Mary Ford in 1958, and reached #32 on the US charts.

Cox was one of the featured singers on Jack Good's TV music show Boy Meets Girls and the song was given massive promotion.

That year Meek conceived, wrote and produced an "Outer Space Music Fantasy" album titled I Hear a New World with a band called Rod Freeman & the Blue Men.

Stigwood was able to gain Leyton a booking to perform the song several times in an episode of Harpers West One, a short-lived ITV soap opera[21] in which he was making a guest appearance.

He pioneered signal processing by using direct input units on bass guitars, and treating instruments and voices with echo, reverb and compression, or his fabled home-made electronic devices.

At a time when studio engineers limited themselves to maintaining clarity and fidelity, Meek was never afraid to distort or manipulate the sound if it created the effect he was seeking.

He would set up tape machines in graveyards in an attempt to record voices from beyond the grave, in one instance capturing the meows of a cat he believed was speaking in human tones, asking for help.

[27][28] By the end of his career, Meek's fascination with these topics had taken over his life following the deterioration in his mental health, and he started to believe that his flat contained poltergeists, that aliens were substituting his speech by controlling his mind, and that photographs in his studio were trying to communicate with him.

[32] His professional efforts were often hindered by his paranoia (Meek was convinced that Decca Records would put hidden microphones behind his wallpaper to steal his ideas), depression, and extreme mood swings.

[30][34] In addition, his heavy consumption of amphetamines caused him to fly into volatile rages with little or no provocation,[29][35][36] at one point leading him to hold a gun to the head of drummer Mitch Mitchell to 'inspire' a high-quality performance.

[41][42] On 3 February 1967 (the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly's death), Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then himself, at his Holloway Road residence.

For songwriting, he was reliant on musicians such as Dave Adams, Geoff Goddard or Charles Blackwell to transcribe melodies from his vocal demos.

[54] They contained over 4,000 hours of music on approximately 1,850 tapes, including recordings by David Bowie as singer and sax player with the Konrads, Gene Vincent, Denny Laine, Billy Fury, Tom Jones, Jimmy Page, Mike Berry, John Leyton, Ritchie Blackmore, Jess Conrad, Mitch Mitchell and Screaming Lord Sutch.

[55] On 2 September 2020, Cherry Red Records announced that they had purchased the tapes from Cooper and would begin the process of digitising the archive with a view to releasing the material, subject to rights clearance.