Sunday, April 14, 2013

The Tornados: Telstar



Telstar is known to be Margaret Thatcher's favourite pop record, though I cannot find where she said this. It was not during her appearance on Desert Island Discs.

When choosing The Shadows' Wonderful Land I suggested that tune shared a quality of "innocent optimism" with Telstar. That is not a quality one easily associates with Margaret Thatcher.

If you have seen Telstar: The Joe Meek Story you will know Telstar reached number one in the UK and America, but that the money from these sales was held up by a law suit brought by a French composer. claimed that Telstar owed too much to his music for the film "Austerlitx".

The webpages for True Blue: A musical about Margaret Thatcher draws a political lesson from this:
In a nutshell there is the Thatcher ethos at home and abroad; British ingenuity and small business chutzpah is appreciated in America but strangled by the envious French. The whole of her foreign policy was guided by such instincts and the memory of Joe Meek.

1 comment:

Lang Rabbie said...

Margaret Thatcher apparently mentioned Telstar in an unlikely 1987 interview with Smash Hits that was republished last week in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-smash-hits-interview