Memories from South East Asia

[Ivan]

Fantastic memoir from Trevor Dann! Brings back all those great 
memories of 21 years ago when I discovered Peelie through the 
wonderful BBC World Service. At the time, I was absolutely bored to 
death with having to listen to the only local radio station in good 
old "Surprising Singapore" whose programming ranged from moldy oldies 
like Matt Munro to Top 40 fare like fishnet-era Madonna and the 
occasional ray-of-sunshine of a Police track! So, imagine my great 
surprise and excitement one day when I chanced upon a daytime 
broadcast of John Peel's World Service programme while twiddling the 
tuning knob in search of something interesting one fateful day in 
1983! I was absolutely thrilled to bits hearing all these strange and 
wonderful noises being played by bands with equally strange and 
wonderful names like the Inca Babies, Microdisney, The Wolfgang 
Press, The Bomb Party, Half Man Half Biscuit... and who can forget 
the Frank Chickens! In just one half-hour, Peelie had saved me from 
teenage hell! I was hooked and my life was never the same again. For 
the next ten years or so, I became a regular devotee to all of his 
World Service slots, even the repeat broadcasts!

John was THE MAN who introduced me to such greats as Joy Division, 
Buzzcocks, the Smiths and of course, the mighty Fall! My interest in 
his show reached such feverish heights that for every show I caught, 
I would make sure to scribble down the names of every band or artist 
(as well as their respective song and album titles) that John would 
introduce!

For me, one of the best things about John, was that occasionally he 
would take the trouble to actually read out some of the letters I 
wrote him on the air! I was so ecstatic at the thought of my name 
being spoken to thousands (if not millions) of people around the 
world as John read out my letters! The highest point of my listening 
experience with John was circa 1991 or '92 when I heard John play my 
request for Magazine's "Shot By Both Sides" as a dedication to the 
then emerging -- though already fast fragmenting -- alternative music 
scene in Singapore. It really made feel on top of the world when some 
of my mates in the scene told me they heard it at the time, too!

But as with all teenage kicks, my religious dedication to John's show 
soon waned with the advent of the duties and responsibilities of my 
burgeoning young adulthood. I stopped being a regular listener when I 
was about 23 years old when I became bogged down by the drudgery and 
demands of the grown up working world. By then, it was becoming very 
hard to keep tuning in to his WS show, as it was either being 
broadcast during the times I was working (4.30pm Singapore time) or 
during the the wee hours of the morning (1.30am!)

But my love for Peelie and his inimitable dry humour and incredible 
choice of music never really waned. From time to time during the last 
few years, I would chance upon one of his broadcasts and I must say 
that it seemed and sounded like the man had never really aged in all 
these past 20 years or since that one fateful afternoon for me in 
1983. It was truly amazing that after all these years, the man still 
found the time and energy to continue discovering and promoting new 
bands and artists with such indefatiguable passion! 

And so it was with great irony and personal devastation when I 
learned one morning in November 2004 through the latest incarnation 
of that dreadfully mediocre Singapore radio station  that John Peel 
had died! Just imagine the news of the death of your all-time 
favourite Radio DJ being revealed as the subject of a radio call-in 
contest on the very radio station that was so dire back in 1983 and 
was and still dire now in 2004! 

I was stunned at the news and my heart sank. The first thoughts 
running through my mind then were, "Who's going to point the way 
where pop music is heading now?" and "Will we ever get to hear other 
DJs spouting such wonderful gems of wit as only Peelie could?" Of 
course, and alas, my answers to these questions were, "Nevermore!"

Be that as it may, all I really want to say is, "Thank you very much 
John for saving my life from mediocrity and helping to instil in me a 
broadminded approach not only in my appreciation of music, but also 
in all other aspects of life like art, social issues and politics. 
You may be gone in the flesh, but your spirit lives on in my heart. 
Goodbye and thanks for all lovely nights spent in the 80's with my 
head held close to the tinny speaker of my dinky clock radio, hanging 
on to every word you said."

- Ivan Thomasz
Telok Blangah Crescent
Singapore

--- In peel@yahoogroups.com, "Nigel U" <npu65@b...> wrote:
> Memories of a free spirit
> John Peel was a broadcasting legend. But his colleague Trevor Dann 
remembers him as a friend, a family man and a lifelong Liverpool 
supporter
> 29 October 2004 
> 
> 
> It was like meeting the Pope, or at least the Maharishi. There we 
were, my friend Alan and I, two 15-year-olds queuing up to greet the 
great man, our hero, our mentor, our spiritual guide. As fervent 
listeners to the pirate Radio London, we'd learnt everything from 
John Peel.
> 
> We recorded The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album when he played it 
all the way through without speaking. We'd gazed at the stars when he 
told us to, and thought good thoughts so we could change the world. 
He'd introduced us to Captain Beefheart, Jefferson Airplane and The 
Doors.
> 
> And yet here was the apotheosis of counterculture opening a summer 
garden-party at a girls' school in rural Derbyshire. He was in late 
Sixties uniform - the tie-dye T-shirt, cotton loons and plimsolls - 
while the school governors and the parents buzzed around in their 
suits and twinsets, clucking disapprovingly. Years later, he blinked 
in that beguiling way he had and told me why he'd gone there. "Well, 
Trevor, when you're on board a ship with nothing but blokes for 
company, an invitation to visit a girls' school is, er, quite 
irresistible."
> 
> He signed my copy of the programme for the fête that day - "Love & 
peace, John Peel". I treasured it, and still do. But he was 
dismissive when I took it into Radio 1 a decade or so later. By then, 
I was a new radio producer and he was the venerable BBC institution 
who'd renounced hippiedom and embraced the energy and attitude of 
punk. "I used to talk a lot of bollocks in those days," he said.
> 
> John and I didn't get off to the best start at Radio 1. In my first 
week, I went up to the Broadcasting House continuity suite where he 
presented his late-night show and asked if I could watch. I didn't 
know that he hated what he called "broadcasting in a zoo". To make 
amends I got him a coffee and placed it on the desk as he leant to 
one side to cue up a record. As he straightened up his elbow knocked 
the coffee all over the faders, necessitating a rapid switch to the 
next studio.
> 
> Minutes later, his wife arrived. Cue another howler. "You must be 
Shirley," I ventured. They both laughed. I felt very 
uncomfortable. "No, this is Sheila," Peel said. But why had my simple 
mistake had such an effect? Some days later, he explained that 
Shirley was the name of his first wife, an American woman who Peel 
always claimed had beaten him up and then pursued him to Britain, 
where he was taking refuge with Sheila.
> 
> One of the few consolations of the tragic news from Peru this week 
was that Sheila was there with him. He was devoted to the Pig, as he 
always called her, and he wore a silver ring with a pig on it. In 
fact, I think John defined himself more as parent and husband than a 
broadcaster. In spite of his acid tongue, he was a sentimental man 
who'd blub at the drop of a hat, especially at family successes.
> 
> It was one of the many contradictions in Peel's life that the man 
who sought out angry, urban music in some of the seedier inner-city 
clubs lived an idyllic rural life in an isolated Suffolk cottage. 
>From the splendidly named Nan Trues Hole - truly John's bolt hole - 
no other building is visible. In recent years, the BBC allowed him to 
broadcast his show via an ISDN line from home. He began to sound like 
the religious leader he was to so many of us, letting fall his pearls 
of wisdom from a musical Eden.
> 
> In 1983, I produced "the Peel show", as it was always called, for a 
few months before leaving for television. I made one change. John 
Walters and Chris Lycett, my predecessors, had allowed Peel to choose 
all his own music, but they had retained the right to assemble the 
tracks into a running order. In some cases, this amounted to no more 
than finding two songs with the same word in the title and putting 
them together so John could do a DJ-style link. Which, of course, he 
never did. So I suggested that he should do the running order in 
future. He looked at me with the grateful eyes of a kid meeting Santa 
and thanked me as effusively as if I'd given him a new toy.
> 
> I loved the opening to his show in those days. In would come the 
low dum-da-dum of Grinderswitch's "Picking the Blues", and after the 
slide guitar figure we'd be treated to the usual litany of awkward 
and unpronounceable band names. Regular listeners may have noticed 
that, for pure devilment, John would sometimes trail a band who 
didn't exist - "... and the Flying Creamshots in session". He'd seen 
the phrase in a Dutch porno mag.
> 
> He loved Holland, and regularly hosted the Pink Pop Festival. He 
claimed that the Dutch liked him because his name translates as John 
Prick. Like many of John's anecdotes it may not have been strictly 
true, but somehow details like that never mattered. It was just a joy 
to listen to his fund of stories. Life had a knack of happening to 
John. He always cast himself as the unworldly ingénue at large in a 
cruel and unforgiving world.
> 
> Also in 1983, Radio 1 was staging a week's programming from 
Liverpool and someone suggested that Peel and I should make an 
introductory show about his home city. Persuading him to depart from 
the safety of the studio was a nightmare, but once he'd agreed (with 
the condition that his daughter and her teenage Goth friend could 
accompany us), he created a magical programme.
> 
> From the passenger seat of our hired car, he guided the two girls 
and me around the streets of Liverpool, pointing out the key 
landmarks of his early life. "That's where I saw my first gig. Eddie 
Cochran wasn't it, oh no, it was the Obernkirchen Children's Choir 
singing 'Val deri, val dera'!" And: "There's the Royal Insurance 
where brother Frank works." And: "That's the train that takes the 
rich people to Heswall."
> 
> And thence to Anfield, home of his beloved Liverpool FC. He took me 
on the Kop - all standing and swaying in those days - and I recorded 
his thoughts and reactions to an FA Cup tie against unfancied 
Brighton. Liverpool famously lost that day, so I got nothing at all 
out of John except a few grunts, and nothing from the Kop characters 
apart from a wet trouser-leg thanks to the inebriated Scouser behind 
me who couldn't be bothered to fight his way to the gents.
> 
> The following morning we met Kenny Dalglish, Peel's absolute hero, 
for a pre-arranged interview. Dalglish gave the usual pat 
footballer's answers to some questions about the game, and Peel was 
still so depressed about the match that he couldn't bring himself to 
conduct a proper interview. In the end I had to ask the questions, 
and we dubbed in some commentary later.
> 
> That Merseyside expedition was also notable for the teenage scally 
John had found to talk to us about being young in Liverpool in the 
Eighties. We met on an estate in a pub that I thought was called The 
Chester, but turned out be The Jester. And we listened to tales of 
burglary, football violence and routine drug-use from a thoroughly 
engaging lad I thought no more of until I saw The Farm singing "All 
Together Now" on Top of the Pops. It was Peter Hooton, their lead 
singer. Once again, Peel the talent-spotter had been ahead of his 
time.
> 
> He liked to use a football metaphor when talking about his appetite 
for new music. Of course he was proud of Liverpool FC's championships 
and European Cups, but "I'm much more interested in what happens on 
Saturday". He found something life-affirming in the quest for novelty 
and the refusal to look back.
> 
> When I was producing his Radio 1 show, I asked him to play the 
occasional old record to help to introduce his young audience to some 
of the acts he had championed in the past. I argued that Smiths fans 
might be interested in Van Morrison or Tim Buckley if they were 
introduced to them by John Peel. But he would have none of it. The 
two hours of airtime he had every day were too precious to devote to 
anything other than the latest sounds from the streets, pubs and 
bedrooms, and from teenage Britain.
> 
> In the Eighties, I was asked to write a profile of John for a 
newspaper. He was a reluctant interviewee, but I managed to cobble 
together what I thought was a reasonable piece. When it appeared, 
though, he was cross with me for drawing attention to his love of 
driving. He didn't think it was a big part of his life, even though 
he spent hours at the wheel and refused to fly until only a few years 
ago.
> 
> I'd spent hours debating with him the fastest way to London from 
Suffolk. I was an advocate of the A10; he preferred the A505 right 
round Royston to the A1. For weeks, he would keep me informed of 
various time trials he'd done using different routes, all proving 
that he was right in the first place. How silly that we should waste 
so much time on something so trivial, but that was John; once the bee 
was in the bonnet, it just kept buzzing.
> 
> The Peel/Walters office at Egton House, the old home of Radio 1, 
was a shambles, hung with Christmas cards from decades earlier and 
packed to the ceiling with tapes and vinyl. Walters was the untidiest 
man in the BBC, and would never have survived in the era of open-plan 
offices. Peel and their faithful secretary Sue (known as Brian, in a 
spiffing chaps' wheeze kind of way) kept on at him, but nothing 
changed.
> 
> So John had to sit on his record case or the floor because there 
was no room for a chair. This became even more ludicrous when John 
had one of his famous early evening naps. The door would closegently, 
and the greatest living DJ would snore through two hours, wrapped 
around a desk leg, a bin and a pile of NMEs.
> 
> When I arrived back at Radio 1 in 1995 as the head of production, 
with a brief to overhaul the music policy and the on-air sound of the 
station, Peel was as comfortable as I'd ever seen him with the BBC 
management. The pop'n'prattlers were on their way out, and the new 
controller, Matthew Bannister, had endeared himself to Peel by making 
all sorts of public statements about his support for new music. I 
remember Peel and Andy Kershaw talking about Bannister on the radio 
and saying: "Well, we're safe - one day Radio 1 will sound like our 
shows all day long."
> 
> But John's unease with management resurfaced when the axe started 
to fall on people he liked. He got quite angry with me about the 
departure of one producer he was particularly fond of, and he took on 
the mantle of a stubborn trade-union leader arguing, in effect, that 
all change at Radio 1 was a bad thing. Underneath that friendly 
grumpy-old-man exterior lurked a genuine grumpy old man.
> 
> When asked about his favourite record in the 1970s, he used to talk 
about Link Wray's dirty and foreboding guitar solo "Rumble" and T 
Rex's "Ride a White Swan". He delighted in the story that when Marc 
Bolan made No 1 for the first time, Peel had been driving in his car 
and had to pull over on to the hard shoulder as his eyes filled with 
tears.
> 
> But for many years his choice of best record ever was "Teenage 
Kicks" by The Undertones, I think because it reminded him of what 
music is there for. Once he'd kicked the somnambulism of the acid and 
dope years and rediscovered beer (he always credited The Faces for re-
energising him in the early Seventies), he espoused music that 
celebrated youth and vigour.
> 
> John Peel won hundreds of awards. But he was a genuinely reluctant 
celebrity; he hated what fame did to people and he had no truck with 
the insincerity of showbiz hangers-on. In fact, I've no doubt that if 
he knew that I, or indeed anyone outside a close circle of family and 
friends, was writing about him, he'd be coming after me with a meat 
cleaver. I can hear him saying so.
> 
> I was in Berlin when I heard the shocking news of John's death. 
Even the teletext in my hotel room put the news on their front page, 
which gives some indication of his worldwide reputation. Since 
Tuesday morning when the news broke (although it had been embargoed 
until 2pm), I've received dozens of texts and e-mails from friends 
who've been touched by the great man. One came from an old friend I 
haven't seen in more than 20 years. "You told me so many funny, warm 
stories about John," she wrote, "that I felt I knew him a bit, too, 
and I was thrilled when he gave me a big smile and a good morning in 
Diss last April." John had that effect on people. He made you feel 
better.
> 
> He became a broadcasting icon because he had no artifice, no style, 
no shtick. What you got the across the table at an Indian restaurant 
was what you got on the radio: passion, honesty and an understated 
facility for language. Younger broadcasters described as the new John 
Peel have come and gone for 40 years, but the original was always the 
best.
> 
> Trevor Dann was a producer, and later head of production, at Radio 1