At the (wrong) speed of sound: John Peel remembered

For a man who was part of Radio 1’s original line-up back in 1967, it’s hard to imagine where John Peel would fit in at the station today, with its “woo-yeah!” dayglo mentality and presenters who sound like they've been promised McDonald’s on the way home if they behave at the supermarket.

Whereas most of today’s Radio 1 hosts seem to have landed their jobs because programmers thought they were ‘pretty good’ on T4 and various kids’ shows, Peel earned his place as a national institution through his encyclopedic musical knowledge and undying passion for sniffing out and sharing new sounds.

Rather than whoop and shout like today’s presenters (seriously, listening to Gemma Cairney is every bit as unpleasant as standing in a freshly laid dog turd whilst barefoot), Peel was relatively reserved, but still had plenty to say (even if it was a long-winded anecdote about how he was once given a demo tape encased in goat’s cheese by a Bulgarian acid skiffle band, or something).

First and foremost, Peel understood that it was all about the music – he wasn't averse to scrapping the planned schedule to play an album in its entirety just because he liked it and thought we should too. He wasn’t concerned with what was ‘cool’ or what other DJs were playing. He championed hip hop at a time when black music was still viewed with considerable suspicion by the higher echelons at a painfully white, rock-orientated Radio 1 (he was also one of the first people to bring grime to a mainstream audience) and was also an enthusiastic supporter of happy hardcore – the only DJ to give it any real airtime outside of the pirate stations (Kiss FM aside), a move which would inspire the hardcore track ‘John Peel Is Not Enough’ by CLSM in 2003.

The sheer range of music played during one show was astounding. In the space of 20 minutes, you might hear jingle-jangle indie-pop, hypnotic West African rhythms, industrial strength gabba and the spoken-word eccentricity of Ivor Cutler, interspersed with Peel’s inimitable bashful charm. There’s a good chance at least one of those records would have been played at the wrong speed too.

This diversity is what appealed to me. It’s no exaggeration to say that I probably owe about half of my record collection to Mr Peel. While I can’t pretend to like everything he played, he was certainly a major influence on my musical upbringing. I liked the element of the unknown that came with his shows: you never knew what was coming next but there was a good chance it would be something you’d still be listening to in 10, 20, even 30 years’ time, compared to the throwaway landfill pop pushed by the daytime presenters.

Towards the end, it seemed like Radio 1 didn’t really know what to do with Peel. He himself felt increasingly marginalised, as his show was pushed further back to some ungodly hour.

I like to think that, were he still with us today, he would have ended up with a weekday evening or weekend afternoon slot on 6 Music, leaving Radio 1 to the hyperactive children’s TV presenters and candyfloss EDM.

It’s interesting to note that after he died, it took THREE different presenters – Rob Da Bank, Huw Stephens and Ras Kwame – to fill the slot he vacated. And not ONE of them came anywhere close to carrying on his legacy. And how could they?

Ten years on and there’s still a vast, Peel-shaped void in the airwaves.