JOHN PEEL:

Without question my favourite music teacher & therefore the one
who had the greatest influence on me was John Peel. Listening 
to his late night radio shows on BBC Radio 1, hiding in bed , 
a tiny transistor radio under the covers hoping Mom & Dad wouldn’t 
hear, the thing turned down so low I had to press an ear against 
the speaker, no stereo, no bass, but still bliss. Every night his
show was a door flung open onto worlds I never knew existed, 
tuning in excited, knowing something new was about to happen, not 
knowing which direction it would come from. 
There were times in every one of his broadcasts when I loved what 
he played & many more nights when I thought it was noise & yet, 
most of that ‘noise’ became music I loved & changed how I thought
about music. 
Sweating under the sheets I imagined John in the basement of 
Broadcasting House, a tatty studio, an old mixing desk, low lights, 
a stack of records shiny at his side, like Wolfman Jack in American 
Graffiti, just getting off on sharing his love of music with a nation 
of teenagers hungry to hear anything new. I’d listened to Luxembourg, 
frustrated by the intermittent curve of the signal which would always 
fade out at the best bit. I’d got exited, hairs standing up on the back 
of my neck, listening to pirate broadcasts from channel light ships & 
even remember hearing that one get boarded & shut down by police, but 
those signals didn’t reach far enough inland for us to receive their 
messages of hope & groove & new stuff.
For years we’d had ‘The Light Program’ with it’s smattering of popular 
music, now we had Radio 1 which had enlisted some of the pirate DJs 
bringing with them a desperately needed knowledge of contemporary sounds. 
Amongst them was John Peel, who for many of us growing up as teenagers in 
cities & remote little towns & villages, desperate to hear something new 
& to find like minded tribes we could identify through our mutual love of 
a particular band, he was arguably the most contemporary radio DJ of 
them all.

(K)