The Death Of John Peel

The tributes have been pouring in to John Peel who died last week of a heart-attack while on a working holiday in Peru. He was 65.
“John was one of the most hopeful, optimistic people I have met,” said Polly Harvey. “He had a joy of life, a wonderful sense of humour and perspective, rooted in his passion for music.”
Echoing those sentiments, Peter Hook added, “He was the only support Joy Division had in the beginning – they were very cold and lonely days, and I’ve an awful feeling that there’ll be a lot of very lonely, cold days without him.”
The plaudits from rock royalty have been just as warm with Rod Stewart noting that, “He was one of the first DJs that I listened to and respected and was instrumental in getting The Faces out to a bigger audience”, and Ozzy Osbourne continuing: “If it wasn’t for John Peel, Black Sabbath wouldn’t have got played on the radio. He was a good guy.”
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’ 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’.
He also invited the band to record a fresh session for his radio show, and fulfilled a lifelong ambition by journeying to Derry where he interviewed Sean, Billy, Mickey and Damian for the Teenage Kicks documentary film they’d also asked him to narrate.
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.
“John Peel has been really nice in the way that he’s supported us,” Jack White told hotpress in 2001. “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’s not fake. You’re very lucky that you can get to hear his show in Europe because we haven’t got anything like that in America, or at least around Detroit were you don’t have any college radio.”
31 years prior to his championing of The White Stripes, the staunch Liverpool FC supporter had been enjoying a quiet pint when he was pounced on by a pushy young Dubliner.
“We met him first about 1970 on the boat to Holyhead,” Lizzy founder member Eric Bell recalls. “We were on the way over to London to record our first record for Decca - the 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.”
hotpress’ first encounter with the great man came in 1978 when Ross Fitzsimons collared him for an interview at the BBC in Belfast. Peely was buzzing after taking in the previous night’s Good Vibrations label show in the Ulster Hall. The main topic of conversation, natch, was The Undertones.
“I think they are as memorable as a lot of the songs that Lennon and McCartney wrote,” he enthused. “I don’t like the music business, I like hardly any aspect of it apart from the end product. What I’ve always looked for, in my romantic heart, is a band that don’t behave like a band, and The Undertones don’t. They’re just like members of the youth club my missus and I used to run in our little village. That’s how I feel about them.”
Talk about writing your own epitaph.