John Peel

Really saddened by the news of John Peel’s death today. Most of the music that I like today can be traced back to his radio show and the attitude that he brought to music. He didn’t over analyse it in musical terms, but looked for and played the music that, interested and excited him and was preferably new…and preferably the B-side. And when there were records from his past or those that gave him an emotional response, then he’d tell the listener. Music is massively important and needs sharing, and people use it to reflect and make sense of their lives.

My musical education really started with his show. I was 13 in 1977 and I used to tape it on an old reel-to-reel tape, with a mic against the radio. I can remember hearing The Ramones Sheena is a Punk Rocker and the Clash Capitol radio for the first time on it and a Stranglers session with Hanging Around. My friends and I used to laugh when he played records at the wrong speed/wrong side or twice in a row. I stopped laughing eventually but he still did it.

When we released Electric Ladland, I sent a copy to him with a chatty letter about the Gang of Four, Blue Orchids and The Fall. One night in the Onionhead house Jules summoned me with the words “Sammy …it’s John Peel for you”. He’d phoned to say that he’d already got a copy of Ladland, didn’t think he liked it but he would listen to it again. Class. But the main reason for the call was to relay the information that the (superior) session versions of Fall songs that later turned up on Grotesque were not being released on Strange Fruit because Mark E Smith wasn’t happy with the recordings

A few days later he sent me a Peter Powell postcard (autographed by the Powellster) with the topical news that Sid James daughter had been one of the women on the cover of Hendrix’s original Electric Ladyland.

He also phoned Nick before he was Onionhead manager, and was in fact a celeb-pestering schoolboy on a day trip to London. Nick and his mates found Peelie sheltering from the rain in Covent Garden and told him they were in a band and on the up. A year later Peel phoned Nick to check their progress. As there had been neither band nor progress they talked about football instead.

You had to love him for making the effort really. Apparently he kept all the numbers he was given.

So many of the thing’s he played ended up as being amongst my favourites, Undertones, The Fall, (for me only up to mid 80’s) and even though I thought I’d found Country Soul for myself, he played it too.

I liked his phrasing and descriptions too. He described his love of Liverpool FC as being so intense that he’d “Take in washing for the club.”

I was listening to Nick Cave talking to Mark Lamarr last night and he was saying that with the passing of Joe Strummer, Nina Simone and Johnny Cash, the world was not only a poorer place but was it a place that could produce their like again?

Peel’s contribution had been to play awkward music and to challenge the listener. The sessions especially in the years before cheap recording technology were often the only way many bands would get in the studio.

I grew up with his show and musically…he made me.