Teenage Kicks

27 October 2004


John Peel, OBE, Dies on Holiday in Peru

A disc jockey is a guy who plays records on the radio. John Peel was a disc jockey the same way that King Kong was a monkey. He was much bigger and more important than the job could ever have been had he not reinvented it. He discovered more bands than anyone in the history of pop music, and with a taste that led rather than followed the crowd, he stayed relevant for the almost 40 years of his career. When he died on holiday in Peru earlier this week, Britain has lost a national treasure, and the music world has lost a leading citizen.

Born John Robert Parker Ravenscoft in Heswall, near Liverpool, in 1939, it’s not immediately apparent how he became John Peel, OBE, DJ on Radio 1. Dad owned a cotton mill, Mum wasn’t around him much, and his nanny did the work of mothering. He hated Shrewsbury public school. But when he heard Elvis sing “Heartbreak Hotel,” John Peel discovered a passion. “Everything changed when I heard Elvis," the BBC quoted him as saying. "Where there had been nothing there was suddenly something." For how many more teenagers did music put the something where the nothing had been?

Being British at the age he was, Mr. Peel did his National Service from 1957 to 1959, when he moved to America. When four other young men from the Liverpool area conquered the US, Liverpool-mania got him a job in Dallas on WRR radio. He went back to England in 1967, first on pirate station Radio London, and then as one of the founding DJs on the BBC’s popular music station Radio One. He was the first DJ anywhere to air the Beatles' "I Am the Walrus."

Mr. Peel’s success was in never trying to be the star of his own show. He’d play the songs all the way through – which made taping songs off the radio easier. He started off as champion of Jimi Hendrix, Marc Boland and David Bowie. He even went so far as to let bands play live in the studio, the famous and brilliant “Peel Sessions.” He was the cooler older kid who took one seriously and treated his listeners like pals.

In the mid-1970s, the dreadful era of pre-packaged crap posing as music, he latched onto the punk sound and played The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Damned, and the rest. Later, he kept ahead putting Joy Division on the air along with The Fall and The Smiths. Earlier this year when Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer’s version of the Bob Marley classic “Redemption Songs” came out, Mr. Peel played it before the CD had cooled. In America, imagine if Dick Clark had taken the same interest in underground music in 1976. That was John Peel's career, and that was the effect he had on his nation's music.

As a government-funded employee, his work was, in effect, a national subsidy to pop music. Money well spent. The tributes to Mr. Peel on the BBC website say more than this journal can. Thanks to the internet, Mr. Peel’s work is still available for those who haven’t heard him, or for those who are having trouble saying “farewell.” Go here and then click on “Listen to Radio One.” A new window will open, and for as long as the BBC thinks it worthwhile, John Peel’s programs are there.

© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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