The Church Of Me:

"And then there is 'Telstar.'

Poor misbegotten bastards, the Tornados. Yes it's Thatcher's favourite pop record (which would have no doubt horrified Meek), yes it's been played to death, but ERASE all of that. Imagine you are listening to this for the first time. It is heartbreaking. The audacious intro (20 seconds of electronic crackle, interference and bleeps) which leads into a rapid ascent of a strange processed organ/guitar line (over the same 'Johnny Remember Me' galloping rhythm) which sounded like nothing else which had ever made the charts, or indeed like nothing anyone had ever heard (Sun Ra's records didn't start becoming available in the UK until 1965/6, and even then only as expensive imports). It imparts some awesome idea of hope, welcomes the future yet simultaneously realises its own redundancy. It is a future desired but transitory and unlikely to happen, underlined by the strange processed vocal which adds itself to the final refrain, and its ultimate disappearance into the electronic void (another 20-second fade-out). It was, as the sleevenotes state, already Joe Meek's epitaph. It was simultaneously #1 in Britain and America in October 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, and could quite easily have been the last song you ever heard. Think about that when you listen to this for the first time."