John Peel: 1939-2004
by Louis Cooke

John Peel is dead, and the radio and music are poorer for it.

After BBC Radio 1 interrupted its programming Tuesday and announced that its long-serving DJ had died of a heart attack while on holiday in Peru, it played "Teenage Kicks," by the Undertones.

It was an obvious choice.

The Undertones are just one of several bands that Peel broke in his career, but he always said that "Teenage Kicks" was his favorite single. He loved it so much he couldn't listen to it without being reduced to tears. In 2001, he told the Guardian he wanted the opening lyric on his tombstone: "Teenage dreams, so hard to beat."

"What more do you need?" he said.

Not much. Because Peel always had something of the teenager in him. His delivery was laid-back, laconic, rising and falling with slow Liverpudlian cadences, but it masked a relentless passion for music, and new music in particular.

His zest was unequalled on British radio, and in the music industry as a whole. Thousands of bands sent him demo tapes because they knew he would listen, and they knew that he cared. Peel's dedication to music was itself inspiration for starting a band. Peter Hook, the bassist of New Order said in a TV interview after Peel's death: "If you made good music, John Peel played it."

Peel gave hope to new artists. Name any important band of the past 30 years and there is a decent chance they will say they owe part of their success to John Peel, or in the least, have some connection with him. He introduced Britain to Captain Beefheart, Jimi Hendrix, the Velvet Underground. He boosted Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd and the Smiths. More recently, he played no small part in the success of the White Stripes. And anyone worth their riffs and hooks or electrobleeps has done a Peel Session, from Led Zeppelin to Aphex Twin and the Flaming Lips.

He was the champion of punk in the '70s. He embraced dub-reggae and New York hip-hop; over the years he played house music, techno music, garage rock, African and Asian music, alt-country, anything that interested him. Listening to his late-evening show was infuriating sometimes — there is only so much cricket-drone-pyschedelia or Japanese-metal-beatbox a human can take — but it was never dull. In the words of Billy Bragg, he "defined independent music."

"Although he became an institution at the BBC," said Bragg, whose career Peel helped to launch in the early 1980s, "he was, in effect, running his own pirate radio station from within the corporation."

His unique approach included an eclectic selection (no playlist), a wry, warm and welcoming style and the occasional odd gaffe — he was known to introduce the record of an unheard-of band or bedroom artist, let 10, 20, or 30 seconds of garbled noise play, then stop it and announce along these lines: "I'm terribly sorry, I seem to have been playing that at the wrong speed. Let me try again."

Often, the song was just as difficult to listen to at the correct RPM.

It's difficult to contemplate Radio 1 without John Peel, because for as long as it has existed, he has been there. Generations have grown up knowing that tuning in to Radio 1 between 10 p.m. and midnight meant hearing something different, and possibly weird, and then Peel's familiar voice. (Before his death the show was moved back an hour, which Peel is reported to have said was "killing" him.) After working on pirate radio stations and, earlier, on a station in Texas — a job he got because his employers figured his Liverpudlian connections meant he must know the Beatles — he became part of the original line-up to launch Radio 1 in 1967, and never left.

He did work elsewhere, but not far away. In 1998 he began to present Radio 4's "Home Truths," a series on family life that was perfectly suited to his fantastic knack for telling stories. The show went on to win many awards. He also presented and appeared frequently on TV shows, some about music, others not.

But it is music that drove Peel's life, and that's what he will be remembered for. An enduring image is of Peel somewhere around 60 years old: tubby, bearded, in long shorts and wellies presenting TV coverage of the Glastonbury festival (whose organizers have announced that their new bands tent will now be known as the John Peel Stage). For anyone else, it might have come across as embarrassing, but you cannot cringe at John Peel; there is too much respect to pay.

E-mail Louis Cooke at louis at mintcake dot com.