“John Peel is dead”:http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1336385,00.html at only 65. I can’t believe it. He’s been a part of my life since I was a teenager and used to listen to his late-night show. He’s been responsible for introducing so much music to a British audience (he did much for punk and reggae), he’s been consistently funny in his distinctive dry way, and, of course, he was just about the world’s no. 1 Liverpool fan. Terrible news. “More from the BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3955369.stm .
{ 20 comments }
Kieran Healy 10.26.04 at 3:12 pm
D’you ken John Peel
With his voice so grey
He sounds as if he’s far, far away
He sends us to sleep at the end of the day
Till we’re woken up by Tony Blackburn
In the Morning.
Paul 10.26.04 at 3:19 pm
As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are very well hung.
–W.H. Auden.
lth 10.26.04 at 4:12 pm
Alas!
John Peel was, simply, the man.
I propose John Peel’s birthday (Aug 29) to be a) a national holiday and b) the day everyone should really try and expand their musical tastes by listening to different stuff.
harry 10.26.04 at 5:00 pm
Bugger. Bugger, Bugger, Bugger.
harry 10.26.04 at 5:08 pm
I’ve recovered some of my composure. Sorry for being so inarticulate. There was a radio play recently in which a woman chided her husband for not seeming to care about the people he talked to. ‘You know, like John Peel, if he doesn’t care about the people he talks to he pretends so well that it doesn’t matter’.
But he obviously did — what he seemed incapable of doing was faking interest. You wanted to know him, and felt that you did.
Tom 10.26.04 at 7:05 pm
Crap. So sorry. The man primarily responsible for keeping UK rock & pop on the cutting edge. If you wanted to hear something that wasn’t like anything you’d heard before, he was the man to listen to.
Bugger. Peel, Cash, Ray Charles. Why are they dead while George Michael still lives?
Another Damned Medievalist 10.26.04 at 7:11 pm
Er … because they were all relatively old and George Michael’s not?
But what Harry said. It renews my commitment to listen to Bob Harris all the more. Not the same, but he does also find some gems.
Keven Lofty 10.26.04 at 7:24 pm
Irreplaceable
joel turnipseed 10.26.04 at 7:48 pm
Checked to make sure Ira Robbins , Paul Westerberg and Bob Mould were still alive: whew! Even here in Minnesota, where you could only get the Peel Sessions on LP, I acquired a fondness for Peel that was inordinate in scope to any actual influence. Later, over the years, I would stir with joy when hearing him on BBC World Service during insomniac nights–and no more. Sad, sad — and yet more cause for early-onset S.A.D.
Cryptic Ned 10.26.04 at 10:23 pm
This is the first obituary that I’ve been both surprised and saddened by since…Kurt Cobain, I guess. And I was born in 1982 and have never been to the UK.
He just inspired so much respect with his openmindedness and refusal to stick with what must have been the comforting music that he first discovered or grew up with.
Craig 10.26.04 at 11:18 pm
John Peel was the soundtrack to my youth. Finding the obituary on guardian.co.uk was very shocking indeed.
You will be missed John, both by ‘the youth’ for your music and the middle classes for Home Truths.
spacetoast 10.27.04 at 5:20 am
The Stiff Little Fingers’ Strange Fruit/Peel Sessions set is one of the best early UK punk records of all time, imo. It’s all about the barbed-wire love, man.
dave heasman 10.27.04 at 9:44 am
In 1968, on a Saturday afternoon Top Gear, Tim Hardin did a “live” “Hang on to a Dream” that was unforgettable. In 1967 in the summer Peel had Love’s “The Castle” and the Misunderstood’s “I Can Take You To The Sun” on constant play.
It’s astonishing that people across multiple generations have similar memories of life-changing songs he introduced us to.
Jimmy Doyle 10.27.04 at 11:12 am
I remember him playing out his show with Joy Division’s “Decades,” unannounced, on the first anniversary of Ian Curtis’s death. That was real eloquence, of a sort.
ian 10.27.04 at 11:33 am
I heard the news last night as I switched on the radio in the car to hear Led Zeppelin ‘Communication Breakdown’ on Radio 2. As I was thinking how things have changed since the Light Programme, on came the news of his death. His open mindedness and dogged persistence in searching out the new will I am sure be impossible to replace.
Sandriana 10.27.04 at 12:37 pm
For those of us of a certain age, John Peel has always been there, first on Radio 1 and latterly on Radio 4’s Home Truths programme on a Saturday morning. He was a lovely lovely man who openly adored his wife and children and had an amazing empathy with people.
I can’t imagine not hearing his voice anymore: I hope the BBC will do what they did for Alistair Cooke and rerun the best of his programmes. I never thought I’d cry for a DJ, but I feel as though I’ve lost my favourite uncle, the cool one who always made you laugh.
RIP.
Miranda 10.28.04 at 1:46 am
A legend has been lost in this world but there is a new star shining brightly in the Heavens tonight. Rest in peace John Peel.
Gillian Russell 10.28.04 at 3:23 am
I remember when they switched Peel’s programme from after the Evening Session to, well, Saturday afternoon or something wierd. His voice came on the air the first time and he said “Now that we have a new timeslot, regular listeners might notice a change in programming…and then he played Simply Red. I felt like…well, like…I had NO IDEA…it just didn’t make any sense. He let it go 30 seconds and then he said, “Bugger that, here’s Pulp.” Bastard. Rest in Peace, John Peel.
Jonathan Vincent 10.29.04 at 2:09 pm
Apart from being a clever, witty, thoughtful, kind and thoroughly decent human being, John Peel’s legacy is towering. So many artists, so much diversity and such good music may never had reached the charts but for him and his Radio 1 show. Only through listening to him (almost at accident at first when revising for my exams in 1976) did I discover punk, reggae & dub, gothic, trance and other cutting edge music, largely ignored at the time by both commercial radio and the Beeb with their mind-numbing “playlists”. Please, all you radio stations out take note: We don’t all want commercial record company, exploited, mainstream pap or golden oldies!
urban_terrier 10.30.04 at 11:20 pm
Peel and Cooke both gone in the same year. We have lost some truly legendary broadcasters in the past few months.
Shows what a treasure trove the Beeb, and Radio 4 especially, is.
Comments on this entry are closed.