JOHN PEEL: 1939 - 2004
I assume that
the name John Peel
will be unknown to all but the most dedicated followers of British popular
culture. Here the man was seen by
millions as a national treasure. It is fair to say that without his direct and
active influence during 35 years as the first and foremost ‘alternative’ DJ,
much of what has enriched British and European rock music during that time and
beyond would have withered at source.
Within the
penumbra of the all-accommodating BBC, John Peel created a second and parallel
career as a whimsical, idiosyncratic, sometimes grumpy but always wise and
witty broadcaster. His roaming brief carried him along many highways and byways
far removed from the testosteronal world of rock and he gathered around him a
new cultural constituency.
So when five
years ago today John Peel died of a heart attack, there was national mourning. Wasted
and whey-faced supporters of Peel’s favourite band The Fall shared an
overwhelming sense of loss with elderly devotees of his Saturday morning Radio
Four digest of just about everything, Home
Truths.
I hope that the
passing of these five years without John Peel’s sardonic drawl will be noted.
On August 30th he would have reached the decidedly un-rock’n’roll
age of 70. Those making our way in that general direction would have drawn such
comfort from his enduring hipness, had he been spared.
…
I knew John a
little. We met first in 1968 in the throbbing semi-darkness of premier
underground club Middle
Earth, tucked beneath the busy stalls and warehouses of Covent Garden. My
band was booked in for the first of a series of gigs and John was the resident
DJ. We were utterly unknown and, although his voice was familiar to all who
proudly wore the tangled locks of hippiedom and who had stumbled into his Perfumed Garden
on pirate station Radio London, no one
had a clue what he looked like.
So the two of us
stood amidst gyrating dancers and swirling lights like a pair of diffident new
bugs at prep school, discussing, as I recall, the feasibility of knitting an
enormous sweater into which several people might fit. We developed the theme in the cold night air over a pair of
cheese rolls by a Covent Garden tea stall at 2.00 AM, speculating the progress
of the occupied sweater moving down Oxford Street. We were surrounded by
bemused market traders shipping in the early morning produce. I think that in most respects we both
felt more comfortable amongst these long-term residents of Covent Garden than
in the company of the assorted star children and elfin waifs below.
Over the years
we made occasional contact – a postcard from me, a brief note on a BBC memo
slip from him. Always the currency was humour, generally with some attempt at
parody as the motif – ‘50s war films, public school novels, schoolgirl
romances. There was the odd ‘phone call, a few meetings (once with his producer
the late John Walters in tow, relating tales the matter of which if related now
might still bring down noble families). And when in 1975 I checked in at the
Head’s office on the first day of the first term at my new school, a letter
awaited me addressed to ‘Dick (trading as Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Boy) Jones’. When I jumped
ship in ‘78, leaving the pomp and circumstance of progressive rock behind for a
feisty little R&B band, John (also on the run from the bloated excesses of
post-‘60s rock) gave us airtime and, as a direct result, we enjoyed brief (and
very parochial) glory in the prestigious listings magazineTime Out’s ‘Alternative Top Ten’.
Later, in the
mid ‘80s, John and I bumped into each other at an Oxford University college May
Ball. My band was supporting Jimmy Cliff & Wet Wet Wet and John was presenting and spinning
the discs. Once again in the small hours, as we wandered the perimeter of the
grounds, picking our way around the writhing or inert bodies of the country’s
future leaders, John remarked drily, “There are times when I don’t greatly
regret having been denied a university education”.
Our encounters
over the years were spasmodic and fleeting, but – as so many have observed – at
his death I felt as though a close friend has gone. When a politician, a church leader, a captain of industry
dies, the black smoke goes up and, through the plaudits of their fellow pundits
and leaders and the news media that serve them, the nation mourns. When someone
whose eminence arises from a synthesis of passionate commitment and
down-to-earth humanity, the people mourn.
John’s fame arose from personal qualities that, in the normal course of
events, would ensure instant extinction in the feral world of mass
entertainment – honesty, personal integrity, humility, humour, sincerity. However much John Peel would have
abhorred the notion, his passing left a gap that, five years on, still can’t be
filled.
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