(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please refer to the "Poor Little Fool" post.)
The Tornados - "Telstar"
Hit Number 1: December 22, 1962
Stay at Number 1: 3 Weeks
Earlier on in the charts, we've seen all kinds of instrumentals. We've seen some smooth jazzy sounding songs, some fun rock and roll bangers, and even a strip tease. None of those instrumentals thought outside of the box though. There's definitely been some good ones in the past, but even some of the better ones don't leave a real impression on you, and they just make you feel good during the time of you listening to them. A few minutes later, you might even forget you listened to the damn thing. Then there's songs like "Telstar".
"Telstar" was named after the Telstar communications satellite, which had been launched earlier in 1962. The instruments on the track include a clavioline, which if you're not familiar with that, is basically just an electronic keyboard that can make unique sounds. The Jennings clavioline is also used on the track. All of this creates a very strange and mysterious sound, and that gives "Telstar" qualities that a lot of other songs, let alone instrumentals, lack. I might even go as far as to say that there is so much going on in "Telstar", that you don't even realize that you're listening to a song with no words. That sounds really stupid, but you might have to listen to the song to understand where I'm coming from with that.
This is another one of those songs where if you're in the right place at the right time, it can make you "feel" something. I can see "Telstar" giving people a sense of peace, comfort, exuberance, or even isolation. The best setting is a night lying on the ground in your backyard, staring up at the sky, just thinking about the other world that is outer space, and what might be up there that we still have no idea about on Earth. With all of the daily stress and overwhelming times on Earth that we experience, it's always fascinating to wonder what might be going on in our universe, that no one has any idea about. "Telstar" almost reveals what's going on in the vastness of space, and it makes you realize that Earth isn't quite so big. It's a song that says a million words, without even saying one.
However, there's always something sort of haunting to me about "Telstar". Songwriter Joe Meek was always into the whole "sci-fi" sound with his music, and always seemed to enjoy experimenting with it. His genre of music is classified as "space age music". He made a nice career out of this, and he yielded a #1 hit in both the U.S. and the U.K. with today's song. As fate would have it though, he developed a massive depression, and struggled to just make ends meet. A big source of his financial problems came from a claim against him from Jean Ledrut that he plagiarized the melody of "Telstar" from a piece that Ledrut wrote called "La Marche d'Austerlitz". As a result, he made no royalties from the record. He essentially lost his mind later on, and he confiscated a gun from Tornados member Heinz Burt after he grew angry with him cause Burt told him he used the gun to shoot birds while on tour. Meek would later use the gun to kill his landlady Violet Shenton, and then turned the gun on himself. 3 weeks after Meek's suicide, the plagiarism claim against him was resolved in his favor. Despite the sad fate that the songwriter would face, he is still known to be a key figure in sound engineering, and will always have "Telstar" in his name.
GRADE: 10/10
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