Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
The only disc jockey to stay with Radio One from its start, champion of pop's rebels and new music from flower power to hardcore thrash.
On the island
Eight records
Choir of Westminster Abbey and Orchestra
Recorded at the coronation of King George VI in Westminster Abbey
Live at the Counter Eurovision Festival in Brussels, sums up the ethic behind his Radio One programme
Teenage KicksFavourite
Heard Peter Powell play it on the radio; burst into tears in a traffic jam
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Peter Katin (piano), London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Edric Kundell
Played when his wife Sheila went into labour with Florence; they both feared she might die
His favourite band of the last decade; almost any record would please him
Played at his birthday party, organised by his wife; the best live band he's ever seen
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:43Is [the respectability of reaching fifty] unwanted?
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.
Presenter asks
1:49Why are you still there [at Radio One] when all the other original DJs have gone?
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.
Presenter asks
7:30Do you think [your father being away during the war] has affected you in any way?
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.
The keepsakes
The book
Anthony Powell
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
Presenter asks
8:54You were sent off to boarding school at Shrewsbury – did you love it or loathe it?
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. … I got beaten something like over thirty times in my first term. And these were not for offences, deliberate offences, but just for having forgotten to do things. … 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.
Presenter asks
23:40Do you enjoy [the] power [of being able to make or break bands]?
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. … [I]t's really quite a good thing, I think, for me to turn against you, you know, because it's a guarantee of stupendous success.
Presenter asks
27:46Which is greater, your passion for Liverpool Football Club or your passion for music?
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.
“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.”
“Because 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. 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 … 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.”
“Hearing [the Ramones] 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 … 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.”
“I maintain that [the Four Brothers] are the best live band that I've ever seen.”