John Peel: RIP

[Jay]

Steve Lamaq is playing a tribute show, playing the records Peel piloted over the years. Also there are three peel sessions from Siouxie Sioux, Robert Smith and someone else I can't remember. I am recording all on Streambox now

[Janos]

Steve Lamaq is playing a tribute show, playing the records Peel piloted over the years. Also there are three peel sessions from Siouxie Sioux, Robert Smith and someone else I can't remember. I am recording all on Streambox now

Shame I missed that - I was asleep. I have the sessions on vinyl. For me it was the sheer wierdness of some of the stuff Peely'd play. Who else would play someone like Ivor Cutler live on National Radio?

Laters,
Janos

[Gavin Yates]

Who else would play someone like Ivor Cutler live on National Radio?

Shoplifters - lift up your shops :-)

[Mr T.]

John Peel
(Filed: 27/10/2004)

John Peel, the disc jockey who died on Monday aged 65, promoted the more esoteric and extreme fringes of contemporary popular music for more than 30 years, becoming a national institution in the process.

Peel did not conform to the clichés of the rock 'n' roll fast life: balding, paunchy, badly dressed, he had more the air of an anoraked trainspotter. That was his attraction for generations of listeners, for by eschewing the foibles of pop, and by resolutely championing music that few other DJs would touch, he engendered trust among his angst-ridden and suspicious teenage listeners, retaining their loyalty as they grew up.

Always insisting that he had never sought the fame which attached itself to him, he lived in Suffolk, at "Peel Acres", with his wife and children, avoiding any of the glitter normally associated with the music business.

Peel somehow managed to appear both enduringly adolescent and old before his time. Relentlessly professional, his trademark was a slightly weary but amused, deadpan style of presentation; he had a dry, self-effacing wit and the ability to broadcast as if he were speaking to just one person. Clearly not on the payroll of any record company, his recommendations carried weight. Time and again, music that seemed marginal when Peel first enthused about it came to be accepted as being at the heart of the history of pop.

The appeal of his late-night show on Radio One lay partly in his lack of hyperbole, in his ability to surprise the listener, and in the fact that he clearly cared genuinely about music.

In the late 1960s he played Captain Beefheart, T-Rex, and the Velvet Underground; he was an advocate for punk, reggae, hip hop, noise, thrash, and hardcore. He always admired innovation. He could claim to have broken the Smiths, Pulp, the Fall and the Undertones - the last of whom, in 1978, were signed by Sire Records the day after Peel played their home-produced EP on his show. Peel's all-time favourite record, he liked to say, was the Undertones's Teenage Kicks.

His one regret was that he could not sing, although he admitted that this did not stop half of the people he featured on his radio show from making records. "I'd like to be able to sing. Making a noise like a dolphin is a very poor substitute."

Peel said that, as a general principle, he would always be more interested in a record that he had never heard before than in one he had. Ninety per cent of the records he played had never been played on radio before.

He expected to be sacked every week, and always regarded his future employment prospects with paranoia. On one occasion, according to lore, he was ordered to take a holiday; instead of doing so, he chose to turn up at the radio station every night to stare out his stand-in.

One of two sons of a cotton merchant, John Peel was born John Robert Parker Ravenscroft at Heswall, near Liverpool, on August 31 1939, and was brought up on the Wirral. A solitary child, he had little contact with his parents. He was six before he met his father, who spent the war in North Africa, for the first time; his mother, Peel later recalled, "was frightened of me from the moment I was born", explaining that "she told me that she was never sure what I was for".

After prep school, he went to Shrewsbury, where he was two years below Peter Cook, Richard Ingrams and Paul Foot. Peel was a shy boy who tended towards obstinate non-conformity, for which he paid in regular thrashings; the school authorities, he recalled, "practically had to wake (me) up during the night in order to administer the required number of sound beatings".

Peel estimated the flagellation rate in his first term at "once every three days . . . when I was 13 I was rather lovely, and much sought-after by older boys who, if they developed an appetite for you, could have you beaten on a number of pretexts. Several of them have gone on to achieve positions of some eminence in the financial world. I'm sometimes tempted to turn up with a little rouge on my cheeks and say, `I'm ready for you now, my angel', to some ageing captain of industry."

After school he worked briefly in Liverpool in the family business, then at a Rochdale cotton mill owned by a friend of his father. From 1957 to 1959 he did his National Service as a radar operator in the Royal Artillery. He recalled: "The Army said afterwards, `At no time has he shown any sign of adapting to the military way of life.' I took it as a compliment."

In 1960 Peel left for America, landing up at Dallas, Texas, where he worked for three years in crop insurance. He was present, as a self-appointed stringer for the Liverpool Echo, at the press conference for Lee Harvey Oswald, when the alleged assassin of President Kennedy was shot and killed by Jack Ruby.

Then, after a telephone conversation with Russ Knight, a disc jockey known as "the Weird Beard", Peel managed to secure employment as a DJ on the station WRR. He soon discovered that in America, with the onslaught of Beatlemania, a vague approximation of a Liverpool accent accorded the speaker a certain cachet - especially among younger female pop fans, who regarded the nasal pronunciation and short vowel sounds as powerfully exotic.

Adopting a Scouse twang, Peel offered himself on WRR as an expert on all things Beatles-related - more than once he interviewed George Harrison, as played by himself - and almost overnight found himself a celebrity. "I was suddenly confronted by this succession of teenage girls who didn't want to know anything about me at all. All they wanted me to do was to abuse them, sexually, which of course I was only too happy to do."

After a run-in with the Dallas police over a girl who turned out to be younger than she claimed, he was expediently head-hunted by a radio station in Oklahoma City. In 1967 he returned to London.

The mere fact that Peel had been in America soon procured him a job with Pirate Radio London, anchored in the North Sea just off Felixstowe. Six months later, when the station was closed down, he was recruited by the BBC for the new Radio One.

His Perfumed Garden evening programme, which featured such performers as the 12-piece Principal Edward's Magical Theatre, the Third Ear Band and stories about mice, soon attracted a cult following.

Like the columns which he occasionally wrote for such magazines as Gandalf's Garden and International Times, in which he advised readers to "Touch the bark of a thousand trees, shoeless. . . then go to the children's playground in Kensington Gardens and stare at the elves on the trees there", Peel's show had more than a whiff of joss-sticks about it. It also showed the influence of Marc Bolan, a close friend of Peel before the musician enjoyed mainstream success.

Despite the hallucinogenic overtones, Peel himself refrained from indulging ("I never even saw him smoke a joint," recalled Germaine Greer), and his affinities with hippie culture stemmed mostly from a strong idealistic streak in his character; he was well known as an easy touch for aspiring bands looking to fund the purchase of an amplifier, instruments or even a van.

From the start, Peel's approach as a DJ - to play music which he saw as innovative and of high quality, irrespective of its commercial potential - struck a chord with listeners. He was repeatedly voted DJ of the year by readers of Melody Maker and New Musical Express. And somehow, over more than three decades, he managed to remain on the cusp of what was new without ever appearing merely modish. Almost alone among BBC DJs, Peel was given free rein by his employers to play whatever he wanted.

In his later years at Radio One, Peel forged an increasingly formidable partnership with the producer John Walters, who defended Peel's broadcasts against powerful but less articulate superiors at the station, many of whom were out of sympathy with the broadcaster throughout his period with the BBC. Peel described his relationship with Walters (who died in 2001) as being that of "the organ-grinder and the monkey. With each one believing the other to be the monkey".

In 1998 Peel found unexpected success on Radio 4 with Home Truths, a domestically-oriented show based around interviews with perfectly "normal" families. Even Peel's friend and protégé Andy Kershaw, the Radio One DJ, admitted the show was "cloying, sentimental and indulgent"; but it drew more than one and a half million listeners, no small feat at 9 am on a Saturday morning.

During the 1990s Peel's voice was also frequently to be heard narrating television documentaries on such quintessentially British subjects as the Lancaster bomber, or on The Sound of the Suburbs, a series in which Peel travelled round Britain examining pockets of the country and the music that comes out of them.

In 1999 the BBC marked his 60th birthday by scheduling a "John Peel Night" in his honour. He had appeared on Desert Island Discs 10 years previously and was appointed OBE in 1998. In 2003 he was offered £1.5 million to write his autobiography. He was devoted to Liverpool FC.

John Peel's first marriage was to a 15-year-old Texan girl who had lied about her age; the marriage was dissolved soon after they returned to Britain. He married secondly, in 1974, Sheila Mary Gilhooly; they had two sons and two daughters. He became a grandparent for the first time last year and announced that he enjoyed "vigorously grandparenting".

[tiewrapdiver]

very upsetting for me even if i am one of the younger generation. he was a legend in music, and my generation have a lot to thank him for, he opened up a lot of new music and bands, which have gone on to be extremely famous. A few of my favourites, Nirvana & The Smiths.

Certainly a man to be remembered, teenage kicks!

Tim

[aclivity]

A sad day. I remember my Thursday nights, listening to the John Peel show, 5 or 6 records in a row and JP would say things like 'that was, in no particular order ...'.

Favourite line by John Peel was when he was sent a demo by Welsh band the Alarm, who at the time were called 'Alarm Alarm'. Peel drily mentioned that there were so many bands with repeated names (Duran Duran and now Alarm Alarm) that he was considering calling himself "John Peel John Peel".

And I grew up with him too, I think - discovering Home Truths a couple of years ago; that used to mark the start of my weekend.

Rest in Peace.

Andy

[Mr T.]

Public funeral for John Peel

The funeral of John Peel, the veteran Radio One DJ and broadcaster, is to be held next week and will be open to the public. The service will take place at St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds, near his home in Suffolk, on Nov 12.

It will be followed by a private family ceremony.

Peel died last week aged 65 while on holiday in Peru with his wife Sheila.

[Woz]

Usually on the way back from diving training on Thu nights I catch John Peel on the radio as I wander in for my late night bag 'o chips on the way home. Driving last night, I switched on the radio and was just a bit sad. I've often popped it on and thought "cor that's a good tune" and it's John Peel playing it. Not always to my taste but he was great at broadening horizins, playing stuff that surprised me from banging dance tunes to weird African stuff. Will be sorely missed. Along with Douglas Adams.

[Mr T.]

Tonight, Saturday, 06th November, at 22.00 hrs on BBC2

[Mr T.]

Perhaps one of you hip-groovy-Radio-1-listening youngsters might let me know who this, ahem, 'Rob Da Bank' is?


BBC unveils Peel's successor
(filed 09th Nov 2004)

A former club DJ who helped launch the dance acts Groove Armada and Lemon Jelly is to take over John Peel's Radio 1 programme, the BBC announced yesterday.

Rob Da Bank, who established himself running the London club night Sunday Best, is to host Peel's weeknight show for the "foreseeable future".

Peel died last month while on holiday in Peru. His funeral takes place in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on Friday.