John Peel

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

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My castaway this week is a broadcaster. He's the only disc jockey to have stayed the course on Radio One. He was there when it started twenty two years ago. Since when he's enjoyed an uninterrupted reign as the perceptive voice of Pop.

Presenter0:43

His enthusiasm for the new and the extreme has made him the champion of several generations of rebel, from flower power through punk to hip-hop and hardcore thrash. The eccentric public schoolboy who conquered his shyness by taking to the airwaves is these days a cult figure upon whom age, he's fifty, has conferred unwanted respectability. He's the man of the lugubrious voice, John Peel. John, is it unwanted the respectability? It is really, yes. I mean one of the problems that I've had since becoming fifty is that because of the amount of media attention that this rather unremarkable event garnered, I find that the people who listen to the programme don't write to me in quite such an intimate way as they did previously, which is rather sad, I think. So I'm hoping that obviously I'm only going to be fifty once and this won't happen again unless I survive to being to be a hundred. So hopefully that'll all die down and they'll start to write to me again in the same way they did previously. But why are you still there? Why is it you who are the stayer as against all those Dave Cash, Simon D., Terry Wogan, Ed Stewart sort of people? You were the original non-conformist but you're the one who's still there.

John Peel1:39

To b

Presenter1:49

People do find it curious that a chap of my age likes the things that I like, but I do honestly feel that it's one of those situations where everyone's out of step except our John, because in any other area of human activity, theatre, literature or something like that, you're not supposed to live uh eternally in the past, you know, you're supposed to take an interest in what's happening now and what's going to happen next. And this is really all that I do, and it seems to me to be a perfectly normal and natural human thing to do. Now, not only are you fifty, but you're happily married with four children. Is it they who ask you to turn the pop music down?

Presenter2:21

Indeed it is actually. It was only a couple of years ago that the uh two older ones, Alexandra and William, sort of came to my room in the form of a deputation because they were watching television elsewhere and they said, Dad, do you mind turning the records down a bit? Which I thought was terrific. It was roll reversal. But have you taught them are you teaching them good taste in pop, or don't you bother? Well I don't think it's something that you can teach. I think it's

John Peel2:39

Boom.

Presenter2:42

Uh it's important really, if it's important at all, in that for most people it's the first taste or appetite they have that's wholly theirs. You know, it's not something that's instilled in them by their parents or by uh school teachers. So what's the first record you want to play on your desert island? Well it would be Zadok the Priest as recorded at the coronation of George VI. Somebody uh in my study at school and you were moved around as a junior boy, you were moved around from study to study each term and obviously hoped that you didn't fall in with some of the more disagreeable people in the house. And one chap had the complete recording of the of the coronation of George VI. There was a man that I'd much admired really, mainly because of his uh with the way he overcame his uh stammer and his uh shyness and so forth. And his speech to I think it was in 1941 uh Manstood at the Gate of the Year, I regard as being you know one of the great recordings of all time. But this uh seldom fails to move me to tears.

Presenter4:36

Handel Zadok the Priest recorded at the coronation of King George the Sixth in Westminster Abbey.

Presenter4:41

Why do you think it does make you cry, John?

Presenter4:43

Uh I'm not quite sure, to be honest. It's um I honestly can't answer that. I always feel that with all of the things that uh I like, and I think all of the things that are done well anywhere on earth, there's something that's like when people ask me, as they often do, you know, what criteria do you do you apply to choosing records for the programme? And I've never known the answer to that, nor would I wish to know the answer uh to it, because I feel that at the core of everything that's worth doing, everything that's good, there must be remain a kind of kernel, you know, something which is unidentifiable and indescribable and uh

Presenter5:13

Uh so that's probably what it is that affects me about that. But can pop music make you cry?

John Peel5:16

Uh

Presenter5:18

Uh it can, yes, and has done many times in the past, yes.

John Peel5:21

Yeah.

Presenter5:23

I simply have no idea at all. I mean, there there was uh I don't remember music ever being played at home at all in any form. Uh my father had a considerable collection of dance band records from the nineteen thirties which he passed on to me and which I already destroyed because they were all on seventy eight obviously. Um and I think

Presenter5:41

I mean, I used to be given records, I think, by despairing relatives. What should we give the boy? People would give me records, and I just liked them as objects. I still do. I shall never come to terms with compact discs. I d'cause I they're not kind of I know people say sexy, which is obviously a ludicrous word to use in this context, but they're unpleasant objects. But records I really like. What old big black 70s? Well, and just anything, really. I there's something about records which is enormously satisfying, and I again I can't describe what it is. Did you spend your youth then in the back of those kinds of shops that used to sell them? They had them in those stand-up buckets, didn't they, with brown wra wrappings on? That's right, yes, and of course in those days too, the the charts were determined by sheet music, so you'd just go in and ask for a a copy of something like The Little Shoemaker, and there'd be sort of twenty or twenty-four, twenty-five different versions of it, and they'd just give you whichever one.

John Peel5:59

Big what?

John Peel6:00

Well and

Presenter6:27

came to hand and I quite liked that. It was rather a random way of buying things. So he'd come up with all kinds of treasures. Where was home then? Was it in Liverpool? No, no, it wasn't. I've always I s I only said Liverpool to people uh at a later date because it was sort of easier to say Liverpool than Burton, which is a small village on the edge of the River Dee, which is where I lived until I was about seventeen. Where's that? In the Wirral? Yes, yeah. And what did your father do? He was a cotton broker, a family business, which my grandfather had been involved in and other people probably before that, but it was very much of a a dying business in the in the nineteen fifties. A lot of people had kept going during the war, but uh he'd gone off and uh you know he'd gone off and fought in North Africa and so forth. So the family business had been in suspension for about five years. So when he came back it was quite difficult to get it. It lasted his lifetime, but it wouldn't be the sort of business that he could have passed on to us. And it it meant that you didn't see a lot of him when you were small, presumably, because you were born just at the outbreak of war. That's right, yes, four days before it began. Yes, I can I mean I must have seen him as a baby because there are pictures of him holding me as a baby, but I don't remember seeing him until I was six.

John Peel7:20

That's right.

Presenter7:30

Do you think that's affected you in any way?

Presenter7:32

Well, very possibly. I think it it it makes me sad. I mean he died about fifteen years ago and I miss him now more than I did actually when he died because there are so many things which have happened, you know, which I'd like him to have known about. I mean doing this programme being one of them. But I mean you know things like honorary degrees and so forth. He would have been because he used to when I started on Radio One he'd go into his club, the Old Hall Club in in Liverpool and a lot of stories that would start you'll never guess what that damn fool boy of mine has done now. But he used to tell people and I was quite pleased with that because he obviously saw me as a bad lot at one stage. Let's have your second record there.

Presenter8:07

Well, about three or four weeks ago I was standing in the fog on Stowmarket station and there was nobody else on the platform waiting for the train into London and uh the only light was very diffused light through the fog and I was standing at the end of the platform and behind the station there's an industrial estate and very, very faintly and very tinnily from the industrial estate I could hear Roy Orbison's It's Over and it was a magical moment.

John Peel8:30

Uh

Presenter8:31

Tender nights before they f

Presenter8:36

Sin falling stars that seem to cry

John Peel8:40

Uh

John Peel8:42

Your baby just doesn't want you any

John Peel8:50

Here's

Presenter8:51

Oh my

Presenter8:54

Roy Orbison, and it's over. You were sent off to to boarding school, John, to Shrewsbury School, with contemporaries um there like Paul Foote and Michael Palin. Did you love it or loathe it?

Presenter9:04

Um I was sort of indifferent to it. It seemed i inevitable, you know. Um you you're obliged to observe all kinds of ludicrous rules and regulations and privileges. And I'm almost astonished now when I look back at it that nobody ever, ever, ever questioned any of this stuff. Because I don't think you could possibly get away with doing the things that used to be done then. And when I try and describe it to my own children, they just they think I'm making it up. And when you talk about it, it does sound as though you were describing something that happened at least a hundred years ago. I mean it's very uh very brutal. Um I mean I got beaten something like

Presenter9:35

Over thirty times in my first term. And these were not for offences, deliberate offences, but just for having forgotten to do things. As a rather forgetful chap, I was constantly in trouble. One of the masters has since, I don't know where these quotes come from, and I mean you would know whether it's true or not, but I read that he said you were an utterly beastly little boy. Yes, well, this was a fairly common observation, one of the more generous ones, actually. My mother gave me my reports five or six years ago, which she'd kept in a trunk in the attic in a traditional style, and they were quite horrifying. I mean, I was really appalled reading them at how ghastly I must have been. But it was all just stupidity and forgetfulness. I mean, none of it was, I was never malevolent in any way at all. I wish I had been. I'd love to have been a rebel. I'd love to have said, I'm not going to do that, or if touch me again and I'll belt you. But I was lucky in having an extraordinary housemaster, a man called R. H. J. Brooke, who later became the Reverend R. H. J. Brooke. I regard as being the greatest man I ever met. And he, uniquely, because nobody else in the school would have done it at all, realised that I was a fairly hopeless case, sort of academically and so forth, but encouraged me in some of my more wayward pursuits. I mean, he encouraged me, for example. He put me in the study next to the house library where they used to sit and listen to classical music in rather solemn circumstances. And he encouraged me to play very noisy records in my own study next door to it. He quite liked the idea of having sort of vaguely disruptive influence in the house. So he used to play him, is he?

Speaker 310:56

Yeah.

Presenter10:57

He probably is the man who is ultimately to blame, yes.

Presenter11:01

So what did you think at that stage you were going to do with your life?

Presenter11:04

Well, I simply had no idea at all. I mean, I wanted from a very early age to get into radio. I listened to Radio Luxembourg and to the American Forces Network in Europe, naively assumed that the DJs that I heard on there chose the records themselves. And because I was accumulating records at quite a rate, thought and living in the country where there was nobody that I could play them to except for my brother, and he wasn't interested. And also I was fired by parental disapproval, because my father would come and stick his head in and say, what's that awful record you're playing there? And he'd mispronounce the names of the artistes deliberately to inflame me further. And I thought, well, what I'd really like is a job on the radio playing records that I like to other people. And that, in essence, is all I've ever done, really. People try and read more into it than that, but there isn't anything else to read. What did your brother end up doing as a matter of interest? Well, he, most interesting, I have two brothers. The other one is seven years younger than me, so he didn't really play a part in these proceedings. But Francis insures nuns uniquely. Against what? Well, against almost anything, I think. I mean, if you have a nun you want insuring, I can put you in touch with him.

John Peel12:03

Again

Presenter12:10

Let's have record number three. Well this is by Jimmy Reid and uh I moved to America after I completed my national service and lived in Dallas and uh everybody there used to listen to a program called Cat's Caravan spelt with two K's and the big hero on Cat's Caravan was Jimmy Reed and uh at the time I was going out with a girl called Nancy Bowling from Brian Adams High School and this record was Our Tune.

John Peel12:37

Could sleep at night

John Peel12:40

Where can I say?

John Peel12:42

I worry so much that my hair turned grey into my

John Peel12:49

Whoa, yeah, too much.

John Peel12:55

I was a dead man.

John Peel12:58

I worry about my baby too much

Presenter13:04

Jimmy Reed, Too Much and Memories of Nancy Bowling in Dallas, Texas, where you'd become popular, I think, John, because you'd become a kind of surrogate Beatle. Well, yes, that happened obviously when the Beatles came along in 1964, 1965. And by that time, I'd been living in Dallas for four years and working principally as an office boy, which I thoroughly enjoyed. You know, it was one of those things my father would write me anguished letters saying, How are you getting on with your career? I just said, Well, I'm still an office boy with every prospect of remaining one. But when the Beatles came along, I was sitting in my little I used to live in a shed at the bottom of somebody's garden, which again I was quite happy doing.

Presenter13:44

The chap called Russ Knight, the Weird Beard, on radio station KLIF in Dallas was talking about Liverpool and talking a great deal of nonsense about it. So I phoned him up and said that I was from Liverpool and he immediately put me on the air and we talked a bit about Liverpool and I set him straight on one or two things. And I was then invited to go down to the station and become something of a Beatle expert because the Americans in a rather charmingly naive way assumed that anybody who came from roughly the same area as the Beatles would have if they weren't blood relatives of theirs would be an intimate friend. And I never said that I did know the Beatles, but then again I never said that I didn't. So I became a Beatle expert and indeed as you say a surrogate Beatle to the point where I used to get mobbed in downtown Dallas by gangs of teenage girls. So I used to make sure that I spent a great deal of time in downtown Dallas. You wouldn't have missed any of it for the world. Not at all.

John Peel14:35

Well

Presenter14:36

And you you changed the accent, didn't you? Well I did, yes. I then uh was required to obviously have something more of a Liverpool accent and I've never been terribly good at doing one, but I developed something that was satisfactory as far as Americans were concerned. And I've I'm sort of rather stuck with it now. People who hear it for the first time assume that I come from somewhere in the Midlands, which I must admit I deeply resent. Um and so you changed the voice, you changed the name as well, didn't you? Well that was wished on me when I came back from uh America in nineteen sixty seven. I was desperate for work and uh I went to the Pirate Station, Radio London.

Presenter15:08

I told them that I'd been working in California, which was true.

Presenter15:11

And they said, well, we'll give you a job on the air, because they knew that their days were numbered, and they thought that somebody who'd been working in California would be pretty darn exciting. And but they said that John Ravenscroft, which is my real name, was too long a name for people to memorise. John Robert Parker Ravenscroft. That's right. And one of the secretaries said, why don't we call him John Peel? And as I was desperate for work, I said, you know, I'll be John Peel. But if I'd gone there three or four months earlier, I'd have been called Mark Roman, so I think I got off quite lightly. I wonder why Peel. Well, I suppose because people would already know the name from the ghastly folk song. And then, of course, there's the beard. Have you had that forever? No, I grew this in my sort of late twenties. Really, as people always say it's something to hide behind, but mainly in my case was because whenever I shaved, I looked as though I was the victim of a knife attack. I used to bleed all. I mean, it'd take me hours to stop all the bleeding. So I grew it, and then about 13, when I was about 40, I suppose, something like that, 41, I shaved it off, you know, because just out of curiosity, and in fact, in one of the toilets here in Broadcasting House, and stood in front of the mirror, sort of staring in horror at a complete stranger, of course, because the chap who disappeared behind it, not a great-looking bloke, but reasonable, you know, as a 27-year-old fellow, slim and not unpleasant. And suddenly, from, you know, that's I was looking at somebody who looked like a mixture of my mother and Mussolini, and it wasn't a happy combination at all. So I quickly, my wife told me to grow it back again, quite rightly so. So you'll keep it forever? I think so.

John Peel16:41

I think

Presenter16:42

Record number four, what's that? Well, this is uh from Misty and Roots. This was recorded live at something called the Counter Eurovision Festival in uh Brussels in the late 1970s, I forget which year. And uh the start of this really in a sums up I'd like to think anyway, if there is a a kind of ethic behind the the programme that I do for Radio One, this this sort of describes what it is.

Speaker 317:04

When we trod this land, we walk for one reason. The reason is to try to help another man to think for himself.

Speaker 317:13

The music of our art is roots music.

Speaker 317:17

Music which recalls history.

Speaker 317:20

Because without the knowledge of your history, you cannot determine your destiny.

Speaker 317:25

The music about the present, because if you're not conscious of the present

Speaker 317:30

You're like a cabbage in this society.

Speaker 317:34

Music which tells about the future.

Speaker 317:37

And the judgment which is to come. The music of our art is roots, presenting mystery in roots.

Speaker 417:44

What?

Speaker 417:45

Roots music for everybody. I like to say good evening. Oh, good morning.

Speaker 417:51

It's one car man

Speaker 417:54

You are sinner.

Speaker 417:56

They shot the parish, they shot the bud

Speaker 418:00

Uh

Presenter18:04

Pistean Roots and Mankind.

Presenter18:07

Um John Peel, when you joined Radio One in nineteen sixty seven, your brief, as I understand it, was I quote to look beyond the horizons of pop, unquote. Was that their phrase or yours? No, it was very much theirs, and I think by it they'd intended that uh I should do things like go down to the London Palladium and interview Dusty Springfield about the forthcoming LP and stuff. But fortunately the the producer of the programme, which was called Top Gear, Bernie Andrews, now last retired, but he and I had a very different uh project in mind and uh we were much interested in the music that was coming over you know, what was really I suppose flower power music and

John Peel18:41

You know what?

Presenter18:43

The music was coming out of California and so forth, and a lot of it coming from Britain as well. And so we kind of bent the rules over a period of time.

Presenter18:52

So you were playing stuff that the other DJs during the day weren't playing? Well, this is yes, that's certainly the case, and still is to a certain extent. But I mean, in the hope, and I uh I I certainly have no kind of elitist feelings about the music that I that I like and never have done and wouldn't, you know I mean I I wish that they other people would play it and of course the irony of it is that a lot of the bands that we played then, people like the Pink Floyd and so forth and Jimi Hendrix and Cream and all these bands, people at the time said, How can you possibly play this awful stuff? Nobody know whereas now of course they're sort of pillars of the establishment, those that have survived. But you were regarded as a bit of a kind of late night nutter, weren't you?

John Peel19:23

But you will

Presenter19:27

Well, to a certain extent. But you became a a bit of a a you are a cult and it's not a a tag that you like, is it? Not at all, no, not really. I mean, I find, you know, people will do this and uh uh it's

Presenter19:40

If if you try to avoid having an image and just be yourself, which obviously is much easier, really. It's like the difference between telling truth and and telling lies,'cause if you tell lies, you have to try and remember what it is that you said and and to whom you said it. Whereas if you just tell the truth, it's a lot easier, you know, there's no nothing to remember. And uh so it's just a lot easier to to be yourself. But people really at times in the past, not so much now, um but in the past people have

Presenter20:03

You know, the kind of lack of image becomes an image in itself, and you can't escape from it. People will.

John Peel20:06

Cops

Presenter20:08

Try and make you fit into some kind of, you know, something that they've developed in their own mind. The interesting thing is, though, thinking about it, that it doesn't necessarily involve a deal of loyalty on your part to your listeners. I mean, you alienated a lot of your listeners, didn't you, in the mid-70s when you started playing punk, and they really didn't like it and they switched off. No, they didn't like it at all. I mean, it was that certainly was the case, but to me, it was the same when I first heard the Ramones, they were the first punk band that I heard. And hearing them is similar to hearing Little Richard as a teenager, where it was like, you know, Saul on the road to Damascus. It really was. It was a revelation. Rather frightening in a way. I mean, I borrowed the record from a record shop in Oxford Street and came back and I put about five or six tracks from it into that night's programme. And you felt kind of threatened by it because it was so alien and it was terrifically exciting. And a lot of people phoned in. I mean, the switchboard was jammed, which, as we know, is not a difficult thing for it to happen to it. But people phoned in and said, you know, you must never do this again. And then they wrote in afterwards and said, Never play any of these records ever again. And of course, I always find that quite exciting, you know. I then played a great deal more of them. And it was terrific. But the whole audience changed in the space of about a month. The average age of the audience dropped by about 10 years. And so all of the people who wanted to go on listening to Grateful Dead Records for the rest of their lives obviously got off the train at that point. We'll pause there for a minute and have some more music. What is it?

Presenter21:30

Well this this was a record which somebody actually did play, somebody else did play on the radio and I was driving up to see Liverpool play and I was in a traffic jam around Stoke-on-Trent I think and I heard Peter Powell play the undertones Teenage Kicks which I'd been playing for months but to hear it played by somebody else was a stupendous thing and I actually burst into floods of tears in the traffic jam. I'll try not to cry now.

John Peel21:54

Activic dreams are hard to beat

John Peel21:58

Every time she walks down the street.

John Peel22:01

Another gun, my neighbour, the web

John Peel22:05

Wish she was mad, she looked so good I wanna hold her, wanna hold her tight Empty, she kicks right through the night

Presenter22:20

The undertones and teenage kicks. You should do that really, John. It sounds funny, me saying the undertones. You did it very well.

John Peel22:26

Yeah, the undertaking. He did it.

John Peel22:27

Uh

Presenter22:28

Do you sort of champion the new for new's sake, or do you actually have to like the sound? I know it's difficult for you to define what you're saying. It is difficult. No, I I do genuinely like it, but um

John Peel22:35

What is difficult?

Presenter22:40

There is I like it, I suppose, really because I like it when people are making records because they have to be made, you know. But there comes if if they are in any way successful at all, there comes a point very quickly at which they're making records to order, to the requirements not just of the record company and accountants and so forth, but also to the requirements of the audience. You know, the audience having a mass audience anyway, having accepted uh a record by a particular band, then wants something which is vaguely similar the next time out. It's rather like if you buy cornflakes or something and you like them and you go to the supermarket to buy them again. You don't want them to be ginger flavoured or something whimsical like that. You want them to be pretty much as they were previously. And that's what happens with bands, I think. And so there comes a point, usually quite early in their career, if they're at all successful, as I say, in which they start to make things which just don't interest me anymore. And it's not a kind of, again, elitism or any kind of peculiar snobbery. It's it's whatever the element was that attracted me uh initially is somehow bled out of them by the process the of the record company processes.

Presenter23:40

There are undoubtedly John groups who would never have made it to the top without your initial loyalty and encouragement, which has meant that you've really been, you are, in a very powerful position on occasions. Do you enjoy that power? Not at all, really. And I don't think you can allow yourself to reflect on it when you're putting programmes together. And I don't really entirely believe in it anyway, because people say, you know, there are certain bands, and obviously you kind of advance them a little bit and bring them to the attention of a slightly larger audience than they previously had. But at the same time, there are numbers of bands whose records I've stoutly resisted playing and who I've refused to have in session, like U2 and The Police and Dire Straits, all of whom applied for sessions at one time or another, and all of whom were turned down by myself and producer John Walters. Quite rightly so, I think. So if ever I start to think of myself as a sort of kingmaker, I can reflect back on those bands that have become stupendously successful. And Bruce Springsteen was another chap, too. But you turned him down? Well, not for a session, but when his early records arrived, I thought they were absolute rubbish, and nobody could understand why I felt like this. I thought they were dreadful. I still think they're dreadful, as a matter of fact. And so people have been it's really quite a good thing, I think, for me to turn against you, you know, because it's a guarantee of stupendous success.

John Peel24:32

What you did

Presenter24:49

Let's have some more music.

Presenter24:51

Well, when my daughter Florence was born about eight years ago, Sheila, my wife, was very, very ill and it turned out subsequently that we both feared for her for her safety, really. I mean, she thought she was going to die, and I rather suspected that she might as well. She lost a lot of weight, and as I say, was very ill indeed. And on the I'd had to sleep in a different part of the house because she made so much noise when she was trying to sleep and so forth. And it sounds selfish, but I mean, we agreed that this was the only way that I could get any sleep. And she came to me at about four o'clock one morning and said she thought that she you know that the baby was about to be born and she climbed up into the onto the ledge where I'd been sleeping above the room where I play my records and lay down and I went and made her a cup of tea and put on Rachmaninoff's second piano concerter. And then when it had finished we both drove off to the hospital, both of us thinking separately that she was going to be at least very ill, possibly die. And in the event she was perfectly all right and Florence was born most healthy.

John Peel25:38

And then the

Presenter25:43

Pugnacious child and uh so Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto means an immense amount to both of us still.

Presenter26:47

Part of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. Two, played by Peter Catin with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Edric Kundal.

Presenter26:55

A record in memory of Florence, who's nearly eight now, John. Yes, she is indeed, yes, and uh most lively child, most amusing creature. And then there's Thomas, who's nine, Alexandra, who's twelve, and William, who's just fourteen. Each of whom have a a Liverpool name, too.

Presenter27:10

They do, yes. This is a source of great embarrassment to them, but as I always point out to them, if I'd been a Shrewsbury Town supporter, they'd be called well, William you see, for example, is William Robert Anfield Ravenscroft, and if I'd been a Shrewsbury Town supporter, he'd been William Robert Gay Meadow Ravenscroft, which would have been difficult to live with. And what are the others?

John Peel27:25

And what are the other

Presenter27:26

Uh there's Alexandra Mary Anfield and uh Thomas is Thomas James Dalgleash uh after Kenny Dalgleash obviously and curiously enough uh he actually looks slightly like him, he's sort of blonde and stocky and rather good at football and uh in fact scored his first hat-trick a couple of weeks ago. Which is greater, your passion for Liverpool football club or your passion for music?

Presenter27:46

Um

Presenter27:47

They're both about the same, I think. I mean, I I always say when people uh ask me which was the greatest moment of my life, I always say that uh seeing Alan Kennedy score the winning goal against Real Madrid in the Parc de Prince in uh Paris in the European Cup final is probably as good a moment as I've ever had. But that's perhaps being a bit flippant. I'd have to say that the birth of the children would be actually superior to that. And and their mother, Sheila, you call uh during the course of your programme the pig.

Presenter28:15

Yes, this this is because I mean only because uh uh she snorts when she laughs. So, I mean, she's always been called pig by me for that for that simple reason. Does she care about the music? Does she mind all that loud stuff?

Presenter28:26

Um I think she quite likes some of it. I mean, if she ever rushes into my room and says that's terrific, you know, what is it? then I'll know that I'm on to a winner, you know. So I trust her judgment considerably.

Presenter28:37

And you all live together very happily in Suffolk, a life which is not at all um avant-garde, not at all rebellious, in fact thoroughgoing, decent and sane and

Presenter28:46

Perhaps that's the truth about you, is it that you're an ordinary chap?

John Peel28:48

Well I think

John Peel28:49

I mean I wouldn't

Presenter28:50

I always feel that uh perhaps the music that I like, and I do genuinely like it, and and the stuff that I play on the radio, is really uh my own way of going out on the streets and righting those wrongs which I feel should be righted. That's the confrontational side, yeah. Yes, yes. That's that's the hooligan inside. That's right, trying to get out, is whack people over the head.

John Peel29:03

Yeah.

John Peel29:05

That's right.

Presenter29:09

Write some more music.

Presenter29:11

Well, over the past decade I there's been one band whose music has pleased me I think probably more than anybody else's. Uh that's been The Fall from Manchester and they're still around. I suppose they're about the only band which actually does sort of last from one end of the decade to the other. Almost any of their records would give me great pleasure, but each a self fitter is a particular favourite.

Presenter29:30

Went down the town to a HF club Sign at a cross Robbie well dressed They looked at my coat, they looked at my hair An easy ride of coupe grabbed the edge of my coat Said you're two smart f ⁇

John Peel29:43

Uh Yeah.

Presenter29:44

So now see the manager.

John Peel29:45

Yeah.

Presenter29:46

Uh

John Peel29:46

Uh

Presenter29:48

Here.

John Peel29:48

Bro.

Presenter29:48

Some mine, aren't you?

John Peel29:50

Eat yourself bitch up!

Presenter29:51

Up the stairs, Mister?

John Peel29:53

Eat yourself best.

Presenter29:58

The fall and eat yourself fitter. I don't get the impression, John, that you're the least practical. How long will you last on the desert island? Uh not very long, I'm afraid. Um I'm hopeless about the house. I mean I can change light bulbs and things like that. And I did once put up a corner cupboard and it's been there for something like fifteen years and it's held in place with wire coat hangers, but you can't tell that from the ground. Not a practical man at all. You couldn't catch a fish or snare a rabbit. No, I I couldn't no,'cause I well I don't eat meat anyway and uh so I should uh unless there was a

John Peel30:23

And that

Presenter30:28

A great quantity of fruit and vegetables on the island, and I should be in real trouble, I think. So, is there no happiness for you in the solitary state that we offer? Well, no, I think there would be, but only for a very short time. I mean, there have been times in the past when I've needed to just go away. And what I used to do is I used to go and check into a most peculiar hotel in Scarborough and just sort of spend the weekends watching TV by myself and reading and things. Life got too much for me. I don't do need to do that anymore, thank goodness. But I could cope for about 24 hours, I think, with being on my own. That's about as long as I could do it. What you'd really need is a kind of regular supply of new releases to give you zest for life. That, yes, and detailed reports on the football, too. So John Peel is going to go on and on looking forward, ever forward, huh? Well, it seems to me, as I said, a natural thing to do, certainly. Well, yeah.

John Peel30:59

What?

Presenter31:13

Your last record.

Presenter31:15

Well, this would be by the Four Brothers from Zimbabwe. A few years ago, I went to Zimbabwe to open a British Council exhibition about British pop music. As a replacement, I should add for Dave Lee Travis, who didn't want to go, so that kind of keeps you humble, the knowledge of that. But my wife came with me, because I always insist that she goes everywhere, because I just wouldn't like it if she didn't. And we went out into one of the townships to see to the Saratoga Club to see the Four Brothers play. And it was like something from a film. Somebody asked her to dance, and she's a very exuberant and lively dancer, and she danced for about three numbers. And when she left the dance floor, everybody applauded. It's like something in a John Travolta film. And I said to her later, I said, I wish the Four Brothers could play at my birthday party. And she genuinely organised this without my knowing anything about it at all. We had a marquee in the garden, and I wasn't allowed to go into it. And when I was allowed to go into it, the Four Brothers were there, and it was stupendous. And I maintain that they're the best live band that I've ever seen.

Presenter32:11

And you cried? I did cry, yes, I'm afraid I did.

John Peel32:25

Let's go.

Presenter32:45

The four brothers, and you can say this one, John. Well, it's something like Pasipano Pana Ziedzu, but whenever I say it to them, or have said it to them in the past, they shriek with laughter. But that's close enough.

Presenter32:54

Now can you choose one of those eight, which is more important to you than any of the others?

Presenter32:59

Well, a lot of them are are kind of down things, aren't they? Or things which would make me moody moody and introspective, and uh perhaps it would be not a good idea to have those with me. But you are moody and introspective.

John Peel33:07

But you won't

Presenter33:09

Yes, but I don't think it would be healthy for me to be like that on an island by myself. I might do myself a mischief ultimately. So I'd have to take something which cheered me up, which would leave either the Four Brothers or the Undertones. And I think because I've known The Undertones for so long and have always claimed that it was my favourite record of all time, I'd have to take Teenage Kicks. Live up to your own image.

Presenter33:27

The book, What Would You Like to Read? Well, I wish I had more time for reading, because I like reading, and I'm always appalled by my own ignorance when I read about sort of English literature. If I've won the football pools, I should like to spend the rest of my life just reading, I think. Dance to the Music of Time would do very nicely, because it's so long, my memory is so poor, that by the time I got to the end of it, I could start again at the beginning, and it would be as a new book to me. Anthony Pearl's Dance to the Music of Time. And your luxury, have you thought of one? Well, a football. I mean, I'd have to have a wall or something that I could kick it against, but a football would give me a great deal of pleasure, because as a boy playing football, I've always been a rather graceless creature. And I don't dance. I've never danced. I've always been too inhibited to dance. And I used to feel when I was playing football, I actually felt graceful. And I suppose playing football is I used to feel how other people feel when they're dancing. So football would be essential. Right. John Peel, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. You can go back to Radio 1 now. Thank you.

Presenter34:31

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio forum.