Teenage Dreams, So Hard To Beat

So many people have paid tribute to John Peel over the past few days that yet another personalised eulogy to this remarkable man might seem somewhat unnecessary. If you've been interested in music and had any access to British popular culture over the past four decades, you already know precisely who he was, what he did and why he was so special.

And yet, how could I not write something? The marshalling of thoughts, the structuring and communication of creativity, the act of faith involved in flinging the results into the void for a loosely-defined number of people to enjoy: these were processes to which he devoted much of his life. It is only fitting that he should be celebrated in the obscure nooks and crannies of weblog oblivion, as well as in the mainstream whose rocky waters he so deftly navigated throughout his career.

John Peel cut a self-effacing, self-deprecating, avuncular figure: wry of mind, dry of humour and occasionally sharp of tongue. He successfully combined the attributes of bumbling amateur and consummate professional; superficially it looked easy to do what he did, but his unique talent lay in a love of music and an ear for originality & potential that was second to none. He operated at the opposite end of the scale to the crafted zaniness of Kenny Everett or the smooth, ego-lite of Tony Blackburn and, as a budding pirate radio DJ in my mid-teens, I wanted to be him.

His egalitarian mission was to draw attention to the new, the strange, the marginalised and the gifted. Frequently marginalised himself throughout Radio 1's history (and apparently feeling particularly so after his two-hour show was rescheduled to an 11pm slot earlier this year), he has the last laugh: for the past few years, the station has branded itself the BBC's "new music" station. (I remember a Peel interview years ago where he said that last year's music was as uninteresting to him as last week's newspaper.)

For me, Peel was an inspirational figure, the epitome of determined individualism, demonstrating that it was possible to pursue your own path despite conventional notions of how you "should" be. I've titled this tribute with the Undertones lyric that he wanted on his tombstone, but I don't subscribe to the popular notion that Peel was the teenager who never grew up. He's always been a role model for exactly how I wanted to grow up: articulate, witty, passionate, driven and contented in equal measures.

No, Peel wasn't eternally young, he was just ageless, which is a different thing entirely. At the time of his death, he was the longest-serving DJ at Radio 1, pursuing the same ethos with which he had commenced his BBC career thirty-seven years earlier. His was a fine balancing act, the bedrock of his personality maintaining a solid, deadpan continuity whilst the shifting sands of his musical taste mocked those who sought to chart his territory. He was a constant in a world of change - woven into the very fabric of the nation - and his longevity bred our complacence as we assumed that he'd be around forever.

I wish I'd met him. Normally tongue-tied when presented with those whose artistic or creative endeavours I've respected, I think I'd have found him more of a kindred spirit. He was the audience rather than the performer, the fan rather than the star. The adoring rather than the adored, maybe. His role was to seek out, to encourage and to facilitate; he connected those who made music with those who wanted to hear it. Fundamentally, his was a supporting role - a position that I've happily occupied myself on many occasions.

As a teenager, I did have a small moment of contact with him. I must have written him a letter, because he sent me a postcard in reply. Even at the time of receiving it in the mid-1980s, I couldn't remember what I had originally written to him, but he apologised for the delay in responding with a wry remark about "too much partying with Melvyn Bragg". This postcard has occupied a curious place in my life over the years: it crops up whenever I'm not looking for it, but the moment I seek it out, it is nowhere to be found.

At the time, I was bowled over. The Great Man had taken the time to write to me. By that time I was a huge admirer, listening to his programme every night, recording it with an almost religious fervour and editing my favourite tracks onto a whole bank of compilation tapes on a daily basis. The compilations always, without question, included his preamble to the track and his following comments. How could they be excluded, when they were an integral part of the experience?

Thus I learnt to love lithe reggae, taut German experimental punk, scratchy Welsh guitar combos, the unique genius of mavericks like Ivor Cutler and Glenn Branca, the occasional golden oldie (Lindisfarne's Fog On The Tyne springs to mind), the indescribable strangeness of the Frank Chickens, the clinical, proto-electroclash electronica of Hard Corps, the madcap funk of Rip Rig & Panic and the enthusiastic percussive skills of Tools You Can Trust. I found out what Frankie Goes To Hollywood had sounded like before Trevor Horn got his hands on them (surprisingly good), absorbed the intricacies of African guitar playing via King Sunny Ade and marvelled at Robert Wyatt's Biko (described by Peel as having "just about everything you could require of a record").

To a teenager with an enquiring mind and a voracious appetite for new sounds, Peel was a gateway to music. As a direct result of his programme I spent most of my spare time and money buying and playing albums by artists as diverse as The Red Guitars, Eek-A-Mouse, Test Department and Dissidenten & Lem Chaheb. Part of the appeal of his programme was the checklist observation of the daily sessions and the annual Festive Fifties, but mostly it was just about the sheer joy of appreciating his impeccable taste. The only sounds with which I struggled were the crackly old blues records. It frustrated me that, try as I might, I could never hear in them what so obviously appealed to him.

Throughout the nineties, as the practicalities of a nine-to-five job kicked in, I found less time to listen to him. Establishing a career was time-consuming and draining; in retrospect I probably pushed aside way too many things that I had previously enjoyed, until 9/11 reminded me that there was more to life than work. However, I still remembered to tape his show in fits and starts and listened to it on my Walkman while commuting. It never felt quite right: it was the wrong time of the day, there were too many distractions. I had moved on to the next stage of my life and the luxury of uninterrupted concentration was a thing of the past. To this day, I still miss it.

In his later years Peel straddled both Radio 1 and Radio 4, pretty much the opposite ends of the scale as far as BBC radio is concerned. His transition from music to speech seemed almost effortless, highlighting his under-rated articulacy and revealing a hitherto unseen capacity for empathy during interviews for his award-winning Home Truths programme. Recently, I didn't keep in touch with his output as frequently as I should have done. My relationship with him felt so much like one of those close, ongoing friendships that survives extended periods of non-contact, picking up after months or even years as though only a few days had passed. I was always going to get back into listening to him "when I had more time".

Now he is gone. Like so many millions of his admirers, I am simply distraught. His passing leaves an aching void in the broadcasting world and an aching feeling somewhere inbetween my lungs, my guts and my heart. Yet beyond this temporary, self-indulgent pining for the irretrievable lies a long-term respect and fierce admiration for what he represented and what he achieved. He was unique and he will be irreplaceable, but I keep reminding myself that these are reasons for celebration rather than sorrow. Farewell, dear mentor: the man whose head expanded my horizons. Thank you for the music.

One of the many thousands of fantastic tracks to which John Peel introduced me is Dissidenten & Lem Chaheb's Sahara Elektrik. Its heady, uplifting fusion of rock 'n' rai encapsulates everything that was so great about the man. I hope you enjoy it too.

Posted by Hg on Friday 29 October 2004 at 19:43.
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