John Peel – RIP…

John Peel was someone who changed my life. In the late eighties I used to listen to his show in bed every weeknight. Through his show I discovered music I would otherwise never have known existed. Among these strange and wonderful sounds were bands like Napalm Death, Carcass and Bolt Thrower – bands that lead me to discover the Extreme Metal scene.

In 1988 I wrote to John and asked him if I could interview him for my school magazine. To my astonishment I received my letter back through the post with the words ‘give us a ring’ followed by his number scribbled on the bottom. The next Sunday I rang him with great trepidation and the great man happily agreed for me to come to his office and talk to him. The hour or so I spent with him was amongst the most unforgettable of my life. I was a pretentious know-it-all 16 year old from a pushy public school, but he treated me without condescension or impatience. He even offered to play something for me on that night’s show. The interview printed below reflects my naivety and arrogance but I also think that despite everything John’s modesty and good humor come across. John wasn’t just a great DJ, he was my role model of what it was to be a good, decent person.

Bless you John, I will miss you.

John Peel : Odd man out

JOHN PEEL is the odd one out at Radio One. Not for him the brash cliche-packed delivery, the jingles, the competitions, or Rick Astley. For John Peel is the guru of the "alternative" music scene. At ten o'clock each night he plays everything from the brain-cell corrosion of Napalm Death to Yousou n'Dour. His approach is fiercely independent, he plays what HE wants and not what the Controller wants.

But what sort of person is he? A mohecan- wearing yob? A bespectacled academic-type? No, he is a balding 48 year old, with four kids. ..

I met John Peel at his office in the bowels of Radio One. He was sitting at his desk with his feet up, preparing for the night's show. An agreeable person, he was happy to talk at length. I first asked him how he started out. ...

"My grandparents would buy me records for my birthday but they would buy just 'a record', almost any record, without having any idea what it was: so I got all kinds of strange things. The first record I ever bought was 'Blue Tango' by Ray Martin and his concert orchestra. I thought I would quite like to have a job on the radio playing records, but at that time there was no real expectation of being able to do so because Radio One did not exist and the BBC was divided up into the Light programme, the Home Service and the Third Programme. Then I started listening to the American Forces' Network and to Radio Luxembourg as well, where they had a new and wider range of interesting records. When Rock and Roll started, that was when my interest took off. I was about 15 or 16."

After National Service and a spell in a cotton mill, John Peel began his career at a radio station in Dallas as a part-time R&B expert. He then worked full-time for three years at radio stations in Oklahoma and California. "1 became like a surrogate Beatle for a while, because the Beatles were totally inaccessible but I wasn't. It was a strange period in my life."

In 1967 he returned to work on pirate radio in the North Sea. "I rather enjoyed it. I married a 15 year-old girl in Dallas which didn't work out at all. On Radio London I had two weeks on, and one week off. The week off was usually spent in a sordid basement in Fulham having flaming rows, so the two weeks on the ship were quite a welcome relief."

He then joined Radio One -as it started. At first, he was restricted by his brief: "The producer and I wanted to change the nature of the programme which was supposed to be a kind of pure pop programme, to cover what was at the time thought of as being 'hippy' music and this meant people like Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe and the Fish, from America. In England it meant people like Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the like". He describes the late sixties as an exciting period, but there was less going on, so contact was mainly through hanging around record shops.

I asked him how he plans his programmes: "1 just go through all the records and find the things that I want to play and just play them. It's nothing more complicated than that. It is just the records 1 would play if people came round to my house."

But isn't it odd that a 48 year old bloke is into Napalm Death (a rather noisy thrash band)?

"People think it is rather odd, but there are no other areas of human appreciation, like the theatre or cinema, where you are supposed at a certain age to stop liking them. It rather puzzles me why all of my contemporaries have stopped at one time or another. I am more interested in the new records I have not heard yet than in the ones I played last night."

After seeing so many styles come and go, are there any he wished had continued, such as Punk?

"Not really because I am not a sort of nostalgic bloke. I don't like the idea of bands going on for ever.

"I feel as I get older I want to see more things that I have not seen before rather than fewer. But most people seem to be satisfied to say 'Well, I don't want any new experiences now'."

But isn't it wrong that so many fads, such as sampling, are blown up by the media?

"They are bound to because they've got to get people to read their papers, so there is no point in them writing about stuff that no one wants to know about. There is, nothing wrong in being obscure for obscures sake -it is something I am often accused of -but I don't see my programmes as being an alternative to the daytime program- me, I see them as a supplement to them. Unfortunately, the other DJs tend not to see the programme in the same enlightened way."

Do you cite yourself as a major influence on the alternative scene? "I have never been hoodwinked by the idea of' John Peel taste maker' or anything like that. All you can do is to make people vaguely aware of what is going on, but if it is any good they are going to find out about it anyway, whether or not I am there."

How does he get on with other DJs? "I occasionally see them in the corridor or in the lift but that's it. I don't socialise with them. The same is true if you are a bus driver, being a bus driver doesn't mean you spend your whole life with other bus drivers. But this doesn't imply disapproval."

What sort of music do your kids like? "Well my children like top 40 things. A lot of us are very keen on Madonna and my son William, who is 12, is very keen on House and Hip Hop and things like that. They, by and large, do not share my tastes at all, which is how it should be." For all his championing of the unknowns of the music business, John Peel harbours no resentment against top 40 pap-merchants. I found this out by asking him if a group such as "Stump" could be hyped to success on Radio One:

"They don't fit into the broader pattern of what people like. If you put a Stump record into a whole bunch of Stock, Aitken and Waterman records a lot of people would find it rather alienating. But I would like to see it being done more often, I must admit. "

So John doesn't mind what is going on in the music business. He is totally cocooned in his three nightime radio slots a week. There is no crazed talk of "sellouts" or "Ghettoes" from him. John Peel is solely interested in what he likes.

To finish the interview, I ask him about his interest in African music. He first started buying African records when he started at Radio One, from an electrical shop off Tottenham Court Road that had a rack of African records in the back. Since then he has developed a strong affection for African music, especially the Bhundu Boys from Zimbabwe. But will it ever become successful?

"There is quite often a surge of interest and obviously the Bhundu Boys have gone further to popularising it than anyone else but in terms of alerting Stock, Aitken and Waterman fans, they haven't even begun to start. It is never going to be chart music and it is ridiculous to imagine it will ever be. That is what people want I'm afraid."

At the end of the day it is this maxim that John Peel adheres to: "I am perfectly happy for other people to get on with what they want, as long as it doesn't affect me, or damage or hurt other people -perhaps I am just too tolerant."

Keith Harris
[From ‘Skylark’ 1988]