John Peel dies in Peru

zcat | 26.10.2004 13:16 | Culture

I just heard on radio 4 that John Peel has died while on holiday in Peru.
He was 65 but could have been 18 cause of the ground breaking music he played on his shows on BBC radio 1
He championed punk, hiphop and lots of relitively unknown music that mite never have made it into popular hearing.

the bbc said this
Veteran BBC broadcaster John Peel has died at the age of 65, while on holiday in Peru.
Peel, whose radio career spanned 40 years, was on a working holiday in the resort of Cuzco with his wife Sheila when he suffered a heart attack.
He was BBC Radio 1's longest-serving DJ and in recent years had also presented Home Truths on Radio 4.
Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt said Peel's contribution to modern music and culture was "immeasurable".

Bloody right, he was great he turned so many people onto so much music
what the fuck am i going to listen to now, there is no one who even comes close to what he played from 1920s jazz to punk hardcore to acid and the rest.
He even played a record for me and my dog during his festive fifty about 3 years ago which i have on tape still, its treasured.
This is a sad day indeed.
Him and his shows will be sadly missed

zcat

Comments

Hide the following 17 comments

tributes to a great man

26.10.2004 14:05

Not meaning to be cynical but John was probably the most loved man in the country and one of the very few who was actually a great brit.

on bbc over 150 tributes so far on

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3955417.stm

on urban 75 now only a few hours after the announcement 198 replies to that thread

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=92558&page=1&pp=25

It feels like loosing one of ones parents

zcat

Nice Bloke for a Reactionary

26.10.2004 14:56

Admittedly, his Home Truths programme on Radio 4 was crap, and it wont even die with him, dave Lee Travis'll probably take it over. But what about all those wonderful adverts he made for insurance companies, they have been ignored - he was a great establishment reactionary, who used his credibility with yooth and experimental music to make authoritative reactionary statements.

Very sad and all that...

26.10.2004 15:04

Very sad and all that, but for fucks sake, this 'story' is all over the mainstream media! This isn't what IndyMedia is supposed to be for...

Mr Angry

peelie

26.10.2004 15:27

There are plenty of deejays around who have as eclectic taste as old peelie (who cut his teeth on the pirate stations) but will Radio One bosses give them a chance - if they don't there'll be a new wave of pirate broadcasting in the UK - and I look forward to that.
Just one anecdote from a studio engineer I knew that used to fix peelies turntables and cd players.
You know those long machine music tracks he used to play? Well apparrently mr peel used to turn up the 'Rogers' studio monitors to the maximum sit back in his chair and put his feet up on the wooden broadcast mixers with his hands behind his head... and lap up the pure joy that this was something the establishment wouldn't appreciate and it was - going out in glorious stereo over hundreds of BBC transmitters to the nation!
Long live the freedom of the airwaves Peelie! Your spirit lives on!

Tony Gosling
Homepage: http://www.public-interest.co.uk

Oi, fuckwit!

26.10.2004 15:41

Don't use big words like "reactionary" unless you know what they actually MEAN, O clueless soldier of your personal revolution.

Twat.

music lover

news!

26.10.2004 16:07

within seconds of the news being announced (on radio) I simultaneously recieved messages to let me know via email, text, phone call and voice message, including from friends in a caravan and at work in a young offenders' institution. Seems this event is truly news-worthy, the last time that sort of thing happened to me was 9/11! RIP JP, condolences to the pig.

anarchoteapot

dear Mr Angry

26.10.2004 16:39

Very sad and all that, but for fucks sake, this 'story' is all over the mainstream media! This isn't what IndyMedia is supposed to be for...

This guy certainly shaped the political landscape with the music he played.
I reckon if it wasnt for him alot of people wouldnt be activists now! I bet they dont mention that in the mainstream. if not for him I probably wouldnt be doing what i do today
This guy played stuff that was truly subversive which turned alot of minds away from the crap that the mainstream feed into peoples heads via radio, so well deserves a mention.
quote from another indymedia activist
"if it wasn't for john peel, i'd have been stuck in a narrow market town with no
idea of the cool music and ideas that lay beyond it. so yeah, he really shaped
me too"
maybe you'r to young or too ignorant to know that, and maybe both

zcat

I shed a tear

26.10.2004 16:40

what an inspiration...

an enigma...

godfather of the crossover
and mixture of genres...

the antithesis of pomopsity

a god of independant thought

now on tour at the great gig in the sky

love and tears

captain wardrobe

captain wardrobe

Yes it does matter

26.10.2004 17:21

I've robbed this offof the bbc tributes:

"I had the privilege of spending the entire Anti-Criminal Justice bill march in conversation with him, and he was every inch the man I'd hoped - passionate, caring, committed and modest. His words to me when I asked if he was speaking at the event were "Oh no, I just like to turn up and offer a bit of support at these things. I'm sure there are far more important people with things to say here than me"."

Music is a liberating force and no other DJ has freed as many minds as he did.

thinking of selling my radio

John was a dude!

26.10.2004 18:58

I'll always remember John Peel for when he played an entire drum'n'bass 12inch at the wrong speed and then said, in true, relaxed, John Peel style, "Oh, woops, I appear to have played that record at the wrong speed, I better play it again at the right speed".

Guess you had to be there. Sounded great both times anyway :-)

Not sure he was a reactionary though - ok so he advertised insurance companies... insurance is as useful a product as anything... ok so insurance companies are probably quite unethical but he doesn't know that... honestly, ask any 'normal' person who's not a revolutionary what's wrong with insurance companies and they'll probably say "nothing".

Ozymandias

forgetting every thing else about the man...

27.10.2004 09:22

...music wise, john peel's death is a real tragedy!

For those outside the UK, who don't know him, he was the greatest (the only) and most popular 'anti-music/radio-establishment' dj we've had.

No doubt radio 1 will be rubbing their hands with glee now (and basking in undeserved publicity and credit), as they can now fill our late evenings with more rubbish now that he has gone.

But, for those with broadband (or living in central London), the spirit lives on in Resonance104.4fm.

It is now even more imperitive, that we keep this station on the air waves!!!

dasmian

jesus, final proof that IndyMedia newswire is populated by insane trolls

27.10.2004 09:54

This takes the biscuit. A man who did a groovy music show dies and half of you can only arse on with critiques of his impure politics or strange self-obsessed rants against him, the BBC, the universe in general. Seriously, I think most of you need professional help.

the horror

Cynical bitch

27.10.2004 10:13

Julie Burchill is a cynical bitch. John Peel was a dude - he wasn't a saint but he WAS a dude. Who was a saint anyway? Who can honestly stand up and say they're purer than pure? It's so easy to pick holes in people's perfectness, especially when they're famous people. OK so he shagged underage girls. But it's not as if they didn't want it. Compare that with the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) who married a 14 year old girl (married here when she was 14) - which was most probably an arranged marriage.

dave

.

27.10.2004 10:15

Peel always strikes me as a very postive person. Whereas Julie Burchill is a stupid negative pessimisitic cynical whining bitch. I know who I'd rather be down the pub with.

dave again

Dave You Must Be Upset.

27.10.2004 22:31

Dave, I am very sympathetic, but why Burchill? And isn't wanting to go down the pub with a corpse eccentric?

I am getting through this by singing, to the tune of Rod Stewart's Sailing, a lovely poem written about John by Tony Gosling. I can share it with you.

Demo?

28.10.2004 09:41

Where and when's the funeral?

Real Jethro Tull Fan Club

Statement

28.10.2004 09:50

Any political action at John Peel's funeral has nothing to do with the official fan club.

We do not believe John brought about the premature end to Tull's illustrious career by never playing any of their records.

Official British Jethro Tull Fan Club