John Peel, the disc jockey who died on Monday aged 65,
promoted the more esoteric and extreme fringes of contemporary
popular music for more than 30 years, becoming a national
institution in the process.

Peel did not conform to the cliches of the rock 'n' roll fast life:
balding, paunchy, badly dressed, he had more the air of an anoraked
trainspotter. That was his attraction for generations of listeners,
for by eschewing the foibles of pop, and by resolutely championing
music that few other DJs would touch, he engendered trust among his
angst-ridden and suspicious teenage listeners, retaining their
loyalty as they grew up.
Always insisting that he had never sought the fame that attached
itself to him, he lived in Suffolk, at "Peel Acres," with his wife
and children, avoiding any of the glitter normally associated with
the music business.

Obituary of John Peel.

The appeal of his late-night show on the BBC's Radio One station
lay partly in his lack of hyperbole, in his ability to surprise the
listener, and that he clearly cared genuinely about music.

In the late 1960s he played Captain Beefheart, T-Rex, and the
Velvet Underground; he was an advocate for punk, reggae, hip hop,
noise, thrash and hardcore. He always admired innovation. He could
claim to have broken the Smiths, Pulp, the Fall and the Undertones
-- the last of whom, in 1978, were signed by Sire Records the day
after Peel played their home-produced EP on his show.

Peel said that, as a general principle, he would always be more
interested in a record that he had never heard before than in one he
had. Ninety per cent of the records he played had never been played
on radio before.

One of two sons of a cotton merchant, John Peel was born John
Robert Parker Ravenscroft at Heswall, near Liverpool, on August 31,
1939, and was brought up on the Wirral. A solitary child, he had
little contact with his parents. After prep school, he went to
Shrewsbury. Peel was a shy boy who tended toward obstinate
non-conformity, for that he paid in regular thrashings; the school
authorities, he recalled, "practically had to wake (me) up during
the night in order to administer the required number of sound
beatings."

After school he worked briefly in Liverpool in the family business,
then at a Rochdale cotton mill. From 1957 to 1959 he did his
National Service as a radar operator in the Royal Artillery. He
recalled: "The Army said afterward, 'At no time has he shown any
sign of adapting to the military way of life.' I took it as a
compliment."

In 1960 Peel left for the United States, landing in Dallas, Tex.,
where he worked for three years in crop insurance. He was present,
as a self-appointed stringer for the Liverpool Echo, at the press
conference for Lee Harvey Oswald, when the alleged assassin of
president Kennedy was shot and killed by Jack Ruby.

Then, after a telephone conversation with Russ Knight, a disc
jockey known as "the Weird Beard," Peel managed to secure employment
as a DJ on the station WRR. He soon discovered that in the U.S.,
with the onslaught of Beatlemania, a vague approximation of a
Liverpool accent accorded the speaker a certain cachet -- especially
among younger female pop fans, who regarded the nasal pronunciation
and short vowel sounds as powerfully exotic.

Adopting a Scouse twang, Peel offered himself on WRR as an expert
on all things Beatles-related -- more than once he interviewed
George Harrison, as played by himself -- and almost overnight found
himself a celebrity. "I was suddenly confronted by this succession
of teenage girls who didn't want to know anything about me at all.
All they wanted me to do was to abuse them, sexually, which of
course I was only too happy to do."

In 1967, he returned to London. The mere fact that Peel had been in
the U.S. soon procured him a job with Pirate Radio London, anchored
in the North Sea just off Felixstowe. Six months later, when the
station was closed down, he was recruited by the BBC for the new
Radio One.

His Perfumed Garden evening program, which featured such performers
as the 12-piece Principal Edward's Magical Theatre, the Third Ear
Band and stories about mice, soon attracted a cult following.

Peel's show had more than a whiff of joss-sticks about it. It also
showed the influence of Marc Bolan, a close friend of Peel before
the musician enjoyed mainstream success.

Despite the hallucinogenic overtones, Peel himself refrained from
indulging ("I never even saw him smoke a joint," recalled Germaine
Greer), and his affinity with hippie culture stemmed mostly from a
strong idealistic streak in his character; he was well known as an
easy touch for aspiring bands looking to fund the purchase of an
amplifier, instruments or even a van.

From the start, Peel's approach as a DJ -- to play music he saw as
innovative and of high quality, irrespective of its commercial
potential -- struck a chord with listeners. He was repeatedly voted
DJ of the year by readers of Melody Maker and New Musical Express.
And somehow, over more than three decades, he managed to remain on
the cusp of what was new without ever appearing merely modish.
Almost alone among BBC DJs, Peel was given free rein by his
employers to play whatever he wanted.

In his later years at Radio One, Peel forged an increasingly
formidable partnership with the producer John Walters, who defended
Peel's broadcasts against powerful but less articulate superiors at
the station, many of whom were out of sympathy with the broadcaster
throughout his period with the BBC. Peel described his relationship
with Walters (who died in 2001) as being that of "the organ-grinder
and the monkey. With each one believing the other to be the monkey."

In 1998, Peel found unexpected success on Radio 4 with Home Truths,
a domestically-oriented show based around interviews with perfectly
"normal" families. Even Peel's friend and protege Andy Kershaw, the
Radio One DJ, admitted the show was "cloying, sentimental and
indulgent;" but it drew more than 1.5 million listeners, no small
feat at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

In 1999 the BBC marked his 60th birthday by scheduling a "John Peel
Night" in his honour. He had appeared on Desert Island Discs 10
years previously and was appointed OBE in 1998. In 2003 he was
offered (ps)1.5-million to write his autobiography. John Peel's first marriage was to a 15-year-old Texan girl who had
lied about her age; the marriage was dissolved soon after they
returned to Britain. He married secondly, in 1974, Sheila Mary
Gilhooly; they had two sons and two daughters. He became a
grandparent for the first time last year and announced that he
enjoyed "vigorously grandparenting."

Peel somehow managed to appear both enduringly adolescent and old
before his time. Relentlessly professional, his trademark was a
slightly weary but amused, deadpan style of presentation; he had a
dry, self-effacing wit and the ability to broadcast as if he were
speaking to just one person. Clearly not on the payroll of any
record company, his recommendations carried weight. Time and again,
music that seemed marginal when Peel first enthused about it came to
be accepted as being at the heart of the history of pop.

Peel's all-time favourite record, he liked to say, was the
Undertones's Teenage Kicks.

He expected to be sacked every week, and always regarded his future
employment prospects with paranoia. On one occasion, according to
lore, he was ordered to take a holiday; instead of doing so, he
chose to turn up at the radio station every night to stare out his
stand-in.

He was six before he met his father, who spent the war in North
Africa, for the first time; his mother, Peel later recalled, "was
frightened of me from the moment I was born", explaining that "she
told me that she was never sure what I was for".

Peel estimated the flagellation rate in his first term at "once
every three days... when I was 13 I was rather lovely, and much
sought-after by older boys who, if they developed an appetite for
you, could have you beaten on a number of pretexts. Several of them
have gone on to achieve positions of some eminence in the financial
world. I'm sometimes tempted to turn up with a little rouge on my
cheeks and say, 'I'm ready for you now, my angel,' to some ageing
captain of industry."

His one regret was that he could not sing, although he admitted
that this did not stop half of the people he featured on his radio
show from making records. "I'd like to be able to sing. Making a
noise like a dolphin is a very poor substitute."

During the 1990s Peel's voice was also frequently to be heard
narrating television documentaries on such quintessentially British
subjects as the Lancaster bomber, or on The Sound of the Suburbs, a
series in which Peel travelled round Britain examining pockets of
the country and the music that comes out of them.

Black & White Photo: Sean Cook, Getty Images / British
rock's best friend.

Copyright National Post 2004