Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies

The BBC is reporting that legendary DJ John Peel has died of a heart-attack while on a working holiday in Peru. He was 65.

A tireless champion of the new, obscure, irreverent and often discordant, Peel's 30-year-plus tenure at the BBC saw him championing everything from prog and punk to grindcore and the indefinable Ivor Cutler.

He created a little bit of Irish rock history in 1977 when he famously played The Undertones' 'Teenage Kicks' single twice in a row on his late night programme – a stunt he repeated last year when the band released their first single in two decades, 'Get What You Need'. His Peel Sessions album series constitute a priceless document of a whole series of cult acts from The Only Ones to The Birthday Party.

From music fans to the artists themselves, John Peel's reputation was peerless within the broadcasting and music industries. For The White Stripes - whom Peel described as "the most exciting thing since Hendrix" - his word was considered as good as gospel.

In an interview with Hot Press in 2001, Jack White made the following comments: "John Peel has been really nice in the way that he has supported us. I've always respected him and I've always respected his word. He usually knows what he is talking about so for him to praise us is probably the best thing because you just know he isn't lying. He meant it. He not fake. You're very lucky that you can get to hear his show in Europe because we haven't got anything that America, or at least around Detroit were you don't have any college radio."

Speaking today to Hot Press, Thin Lizzy's Eric Bell talked of his first meeting with John Peel ...
"We met him first about 1970 on the boat to Holyhead. We were on the way over to London to record our the first record for Decca - the record company didn't have the money to fly us over so we were doing it the long way round. We were really excited about the whole thing and we were sitting in the lounge and Philip [Lynott] spotted John Peel standing on his own up at the bar. Phil said to me "look there's John Peel the Radio One DJ - I'm going over to talk to him and tell him about the band". So he went over and was with him for about ten minutes. He came back and said he was a really nice man. I think he had asked him could we get in touch when we made our album and he said "yeah sure." He gave us a few plugs in the early days which was helpful in us getting established. I never met him after that but I always listened to his show whenever I could. I loved the sound of his voice and I remember he was very into Captain Beefheart who I was into myself. "