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John Peel

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John Peel

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft OBE (30 August, 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was a British disc jockey and radio presenter. He was one of the original DJs of BBC Radio 1 in 1967 and the only one remaining on Radio 1 at the time of his death. Known for the extraordinary range of his taste in music and the not infrequent blunders (for example playing records at the wrong speed) which marked his shows, John Peel was one of the most popular and respected DJs in the United Kingdom. His influence on alternative rock and pop music is widely acknowledged to be incalculable.

Early life

Peel was born in Heswall in the Wirral, near Liverpool, the son of an upper middle class cotton merchant, and educated as a boarder at Shrewsbury School. After finishing his National Service in 1962 he went to the United States and initially worked for WRR Radio in Dallas, Texas and he was present at the arraignment of Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before his assassination. He later worked for KOMA in Oklahoma City and KMEN in San Bernardino, California. He returned to England in 1967 to work for the offshore pirate radio station Radio London ("Big L") where he first adopted the name John Peel; his programme was known as The Perfumed Garden. Radio London closed in August 1967 when new legislation made the offshore broadcasters illegal, and Peel joined the BBC's new pop music station.

DJ career

John Peel opened the portal of the sixties to a generation of young Londoners via his 'Perfumed Garden' on Radio London, gently introducing groundbreaking artists like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Captain Beefheart, esoteric performers like Byron Gysin and John Fahey, breaking British bands like Family, Fairport Convention, alongside classic blues and folk: his brilliant ear fire-started an astonishing number of rock musical genres. When 'pirate' radio stations like Radio London were legally closed in 1967, he moved to the BBC, and from the start in his show Top Gear, produced by John Walters, John Peel displayed his eclectic and cutting-edge taste in music. He was largely responsible for introducing BBC listeners to punk rock, reggae and hip-hop. He was the first English DJ to play a record twice in a row – Teenage Kicks by The Undertones (which was famously his favourite record), and he was an unapologetic champion of long running Manchester band The Fall. His avant-garde musical taste brought him into conflict with other more conservative DJs at the BBC such as Tony Blackburn and Simon Bates, and he remained a major force in independent music until his death, both in the UK and across Europe. His radio show was latterly sometimes broadcast from his home, named Peel Acres, in Suffolk and had a somewhat homely feel with his wife, Sheila, whom he affectionately referred to as The Pig and his daughter, Flossie, often being involved or at least mentioned.

John Peel's show featured the famous John Peel sessions. Bands were invited to record exclusive tracks for the programme in a BBC studio, a relic of the days when agreements with the Musicians' Union restricted the amount of music the BBC could play from records. Sessions were usually four tracks recorded and mixed in a single day; as such they often had a rough and ready, demo-like feel, somewhere between a live performance and a finished recording. Many classic Peel sessions have been released on record, particularly by the Strange Fruit label. Latterly the show also regularly featured live performances, mostly from Maida Vale in London, but occasionally in the Peel Acres living room.

Peel also played many older records on his show, specifically in two sections he introduced:

  • The Pig's Big 78 - as the name suggests, his wife chose a 78rpm record, which he played.
  • The Peelennium - broadcast over his last 100 shows of 1999, this covered the music of the 20th century. Each show covered a different year in turn - four records from the year would be played and main news stories covered.

An annual tradition of the show was the Festive Fifty - a countdown of the best tracks of the year as voted for by the listeners. Despite Peel's eclectic playlist, the Festive Fifty tended to be composed largely of Indie rock. This frustrated Peel somewhat, and in 1991 he went so far as to cancel the rundown. Topped inevitably by Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, this Phantom Fifty was eventually broadcast at the rate of one track per programme, some years later. The 1997 chart was, unusually, a Festive Thirty-One.

In addition to his Radio One show, he also broadcast as a disc jockey on the BBC World Service, VPRO Radio3 in the Netherlands and on Radio Eins in Germany. His audience also broadened to include listeners around the world listening to Internet audio broadcasts.

There is a Happy Hardcore track entitled John Peel is not Enough by the artist CLSM. John Peel was so impressed by it that not only did he play it on his show several times, but dedicated an entire show to happy hardcore, in hopes that it could spawn its own show.

Many bands and artists of many different musical styles from different decades credit Peel as a major boost to their careers, the list includes The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Undertones, The Cure, Joy Division, Pulp and The White Stripes. Peel's reputation as the most important DJ breaking unsigned acts into the mainstream was such that in 1983 unsigned artist Billy Bragg drove to the Radio 1 studios with a mushroom biryani and a copy of his record after hearing Peel mention that he was hungry, the subsequent airplay launching his career.

John Peel, as the most senior and well known "alternative" DJ often presented the BBC's television coverage of music events, notably Glastonbury Festival.

Peel remained on Radio 1 for 37 years, until his death in 2004.

Later years

In his later years Peel appeared to mellow somewhat, being asked in 1998 to host a magazine style, documentary show, Home Truths, on BBC Radio 4. When he took on the job presenting the programme, which is about everyday life in British families, Peel requested that it be free from celebrities, as he found real life stories more entertaining. John Walters, who was an occasional stand-in for Peel on Home Truths, described it as being "about people who had fridges called Renfrewshire". He also made regular contributions to BBC TWO's humorous look at the irritations of modern life Grumpy Old Men.

In the 1970s John and his wife Sheila moved to a thatched cottage in a small village near Stowmarket in Suffolk, starting a family of four children. In the eight acre garden, refered to on the radio as "Peel Acres", he housed his record collection, estimated by then to be in the hundreds-of-thousands, in a number of barns and stables. In his later years Peel hosted many of his radio shows from his own studio at Peel Acres.

He was also in demand as a voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC ONE's A Life of Grime, and advertisements, though he reportedly refused to work on adverts for products that he didn't use himself.

Peel was 11 times Melody Maker’s DJ of the year, Sony Broadcaster of the Year in 1993, Godlike Genius Award from the NME in 1994, Sony Gold Award winner in 2002 and is a member of the Radio Academy Hall of Fame. He gained several honorary degrees including two doctorates and an honorary fellowship of Liverpool John Moores University. He was appointed an OBE in 1998, for his services to British music.

In April 2003 the publishers Transworld agreed to a total package worth up to £1.6 million for his autobiography. The planned release date was in 2005.

Two weeks before his death Peel told friend and collegue Andy Kershaw that the move of his show, in Summer 2004, back an hour from a 10 p.m. start to an 11 p.m. start, caused him a lot of stress and that he felt marginalised and unappreciated. He had also been suffering from diabetes since 2001.

Peel died at the age of 65 from a heart attack on October 25, 2004, on a working holiday in the Inca city of Cuzco in Peru. Shortly after the announcement of his death, tributes began to arrive from fans and supporters both in and out of public life. Among the first to pay their respects were such such seminal British artists as Blur, Oasis and New Order. Prime Minister Tony Blair also paid tribute to the veteran DJ.

On October 26 Radio 1 cleared its schedules to broadcast a day of tributes, while BBC THREE added a small and discreet caption to its logo: "Dedicated to John Peel".

Trivia

Interviews:

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