John Peel | |
|---|---|
 Peel in 1997 | |
| Born | John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (1939-08-30)30 August 1939 Heswall, England |
| Died | 25 October 2004(2004-10-25) (aged 65) Cusco, Peru |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouses | |
| Children | 4, includingTom |
John Robert Parker RavenscroftOBE (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), better known asJohn Peel, was an English radio presenter and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the originaldisc jockeys onBBC Radio 1, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004.
Peel was one of the first broadcasters to playpsychedelic rock andprogressive rock records on British radio. He is widely acknowledged for promoting artists of many genres, includingpop,dub reggae,punk rock andpost-punk,electronic music anddance music,indie rock,extreme metal andBritish hip hop. Fellow DJPaul Gambaccini described Peel as "the most important single person in popular music from approximately 1967 through 1978. He broke more important artists than any individual."[1]
Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for the regular "Peel Sessions", which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist in the BBC's studios, often providing the first major national coverage to bands that later achieved fame. The annualFestive Fifty countdown of his listeners' favourite records of the year was a notable part of his promotion of new music.[2]
Peel appeared on television occasionally as one of the presenters ofTop of the Pops in the 1980s, and providedvoice-over commentary for a number of BBC programmes. He became popular with the audience ofBBC Radio 4 for hisHome Truths programme, which ran from the 1990s, featuring unusual stories from listeners' domestic lives.
Peel was born John Robert Parker Ravenscroft at a nursing home inHeswall on 30 August 1939,[3][4] the son of Joan Mary (née Swainson)[4] and cotton merchant Robert Leslie Ravenscroft.[4][5] He had two younger brothers and grew up in the nearby village ofBurton.[5] He was educated as a boarder atShrewsbury School,[6] where futureMonty Python memberMichael Palin was his contemporary.[7] In his posthumously published autobiography, Peel said that he was raped by an older pupil while at the school.[8]
Peel was an avid radio listener and record collector from an early age, firstly of music offered by theAmerican Forces Network andRadio Luxembourg.[9] He recalled an early desire to host a radio programme of his own "so that I could play music that I heard and wanted others to hear".[9] His housemaster, R. H. J. Brooke, whom Peel described as "extraordinarily eccentric" and "amazingly perceptive", wrote on one of his school reports, "Perhaps it's possible that John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records and his delight in writing long and facetious essays."[10]
Peel completed hisnational service in 1959 in theRoyal Artillery as a B2radar operator.[11] Afterwards, he worked as a mill operative at Townhead Mill inRochdale[12] and returned each weekend to Heswall on a scooter borrowed from his sister. While in Rochdale during the week, he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in the area of Milkstone Road and Drake Street, and developed long-term associations with the town as the years progressed.[citation needed]
In 1960, aged 21, Peel went to the United States to work for acotton producer who had business dealings with his father.[13] He took a number of other jobs afterwards, including working as a travellinginsurance salesman. While inDallas, Texas, where the insurance company he worked for was based, he conversed with the presidential candidateJohn F. Kennedy, and his running mateLyndon B. Johnson, who were touring the city during the 1960 election campaign, and took photographs of them.[citation needed] Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Peel passed himself off as a reporter for theLiverpool Echo in order to attend the arraignment ofLee Harvey Oswald. He and a friend can be seen in the footage of the 22/23 November midnightpress conference at theDallas Police Department when Oswald was paraded before the media.[14] He later phoned in the story to theEcho.[citation needed]
While working for the insurance company, Peel wrote programs forpunched card entry for anIBM 1410 computer (which led to his entry inWho's Who noting him as a formercomputer programmer), and he got his first radio job working unpaid forWRR (AM) in Dallas. There, he presented the second hour of the Monday night programmeKat's Karavan, which was primarily hosted by the American singer and radio personalityJim Lowe. Following this, and asBeatlemania hit the United States, Peel was hired by the Dallas radio stationKLIF as the officialBeatles correspondent on the strength of his connection to Liverpool. He later worked forKOMA inOklahoma City, Oklahoma, until 1965, when he moved toKMEN inSan Bernardino, California, and used his birth name, John Ravenscroft, to present the breakfast show.[15]
Peel returned to England in early 1967 and found work with the offshorepirate radio stationRadio London.[16] He was offered the midnight-to-two shift, which gradually developed into a programme,The Perfumed Garden.[17][18]
Peel's show was an outlet for the music of theUK underground scene. He played classicblues,folk music andpsychedelic rock, with an emphasis on the new music emerging from Los Angeles and San Francisco. As important as the musical content of the programme was the personal – sometimes confessional – tone of Peel's presentation, and the listener participation it engendered. Underground events he had attended during his periods of shore leave, such as theUFO Club and the14 Hour Technicolor Dream, together withcauses célèbres like the drug busts ofthe Rolling Stones andJohn "Hoppy" Hopkins, were discussed between records. All this was far removed from Radio London's daytime format. Listeners sent Peel letters, poems and records from their own collections so that the programme became a vehicle for two-way communication; by the final week of Radio London he was receiving far more mail than any other DJ on the station.[19]
After the closure of Radio London in 1967, Peel wrote a column,The Perfumed Garden, for the underground newspaper theInternational Times (from autumn 1967 to mid-1969).[20][additional citation(s) needed]
When Radio London closed on 14 August 1967, Peel joined the BBC's new music station,BBC Radio 1, which was first broadcast on 30 September 1967. Unlike Big L, Radio 1 was not a full-time station but a broadcaster of a mixture of recorded music and live studio orchestras. Peel said he felt he was hired because the BBC "had no real idea what they were doing so they had to take people off the pirate ships because there wasn't anybody else". Peel presented a programme calledTop Gear. At first he was obliged to share presentation duties with other DJs (Pete Drummond andTommy Vance were among his co-hosts) but in February 1968 he was given sole charge ofTop Gear. He presented the show until it ended in 1975.[21]
In 1969, after hosting a trailer for a BBC programme on VD on hisNight Ride programme, Peel received significant media attention because he divulged on air that he had suffered from asexually transmitted disease earlier that year. This admission was later used in an attempt to discredit him when he appeared as a defence witness in the 1971Oz obscenity trial.[citation needed]
TheNight Ride programme, advertised by the BBC as an exploration of words and music, seemed to take up from whereThe Perfumed Garden had left off. It featured rock, folk, blues, classical and electronic music. A unique feature of the programme was the inclusion of tracks, mostly of exotic non-Western music, drawn from theBBC Sound Archive; the most popular of these were gathered on a BBC Records LP,John Peel's Archive Things (1970).Night Ride also featured poetry readings and numerous interviews with a wide range of guests, including his friendsMarc Bolan, journalist and musicianMick Farren, poet Pete Roche, singer-songwriterBridget St John and stars such asthe Byrds, the Rolling Stones andJohn Lennon andYoko Ono. The programme captured much of the creative activity of the underground scene. Its anti-establishment stance and unpredictability, however, did not find approval with the BBC hierarchy and it ended in September 1969 after 18 months.[citation needed]
In his sleeve notes to theArchive Things LP Peel calls the free-form nature ofNight Ride his preferred radio format. His subsequent shows featured a mixture of records and live sessions, a format that would characterise his Radio 1 programmes for the rest of his career.[citation needed]
Peel's enthusiasm for music outside the mainstream occasionally brought him into conflict with the Radio 1 hierarchy. On one occasion, the station controllerDerek Chinnery contactedJohn Walters and asked him to confirm that the show was not playing anypunk, which he (Chinnery) had read about in the press and of which he disapproved. Chinnery was evidently somewhat surprised by Walters' reply that in recent weeks they had been playing little else.[22]
In a 1990 interview, Peel recalled his 1976 discovery of the first album by New York punk band theRamones as a seminal event,
At that time almost all the new bands comprised of people who had previously been in successful bands who had broken up then reformed.... Well I played the first Ramones LP – it was identical to the first time I had heardLittle Richard – the intensity was frightening! So I played five or six tracks on the next show and immediately I received mail from people demanding that I never play stuff like that again. Whenever that happens I always go in the opposite direction, so I played more and it was great! It was a classic case of changing courses in mid-stream and in a month the average age of the audience dropped by 10 years and the whole social class changed – which I was very pleased about.[9]
In 1979, Peel stated: "They leave you to get on with it. I'm paid money by the BBC not to go off and work for a commercial radio station ... I wouldn't want to go to one anyway, because they wouldn't let me do what the BBC let me do."[23]
Peel's reputation as an important DJ who broke unsigned acts into the mainstream was such that young hopefuls sent him an enormous number of records, CDs, and tapes. When he returned home from a three-week holiday at the end of 1986 there were 173 LPs, 91 12"s and 179 7"s waiting for him. In 1983 Alan Melina and Jeff Chegwin, the music publishers for unsigned artistBilly Bragg, drove to the Radio 1 studios with a mushroombiryani and a copy of his record after hearing Peel mention that he was hungry; the subsequent airplay launched Billy Bragg's career.[24]
In addition to his Radio 1 show, Peel broadcast as a disc jockey on theBBC World Service, on theBritish Forces Broadcasting Service (John Peel's Music on BFBS) for 30 years,VPRO Radio3 in the Netherlands,YLE Radio Mafia in Finland,Ö3 in Austria (Nachtexpress), and on Radio 4U, Radio Eins (Peel ...),Radio Bremen (Ritz) and some independent radio stations around FSK Hamburg in Germany. As a result of his BFBS programme he was voted, in Germany, "Top DJ in Europe".[citation needed]
Peel was an occasional presenter ofTop of the Pops on BBC1 from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s, and in particular from 1982 to 1987 when he appeared regularly. In 1971 he appeared not as presenter but performer, alongsideRod Stewart and the Faces, pretending to playmandolin on "Maggie May".[25] He often presented the BBC's television coverage of music events, notably theGlastonbury Festival.
From 26 September to 31 October 1987, Peel produced a six-part radio series onBBC Radio 1 calledPeeling Back the Years. In it, he discussed his life and career at length with his long-time producer John Walters and also played some of his favorite records. The show's theme music was "Blue Tango" byRay Martin which, Peel revealed, was the first record he ever bought.
Between 1995 and 1997, Peel presentedOffspring, a show about children, onBBC Radio 4. In 1998,Offspring grew into the magazine-style documentary showHome Truths. When he took on the job presenting the programme, which was about everyday life in British families, Peel requested that it be free from celebrities, as he found real-life stories more entertaining.Home Truths was described by occasional stand-in presenterJohn Walters as being "about people who had fridges called Renfrewshire".[citation needed] Peel also made regular contributions to BBC Two's humorous look at the irritations of modern lifeGrumpy Old Men. His only appearances in an acting role in film or television were inHarry Enfield'sSmashie and Nicey: The End of an Era as John Past Bedtime, and in 1999 as a "grumpy old man who catalogues records" in the filmFive Seconds to Spare.[26] However, he had provided narration for others.[27]
He appeared as a celebrity guest on a number of TV shows, includingThis Is Your Life (1996, BBC),[28]Travels With My Camera (1996,Channel 4 TV) andGoing Home (2002,ITV TV), and presented the 1997 Channel 4 seriesClassic Trains.[29] He was also in demand as a voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC One'sA Life of Grime.
In April 2003, the publishersTransworld successfully wooed Peel with a package worth £1.5 million for his autobiography, having placed an advert in a national newspaper aimed only at Peel.[30] Unfinished at the time of his death, it was completed by Sheila and journalist Ryan Gilbey. It was published in October 2005 under the titleMargrave of the Marshes. A collection of Peel's miscellaneous writings,The Olivetti Chronicles, was published in 2008.[31]
At the age of 25, while residing inDallas in 1965, Peel married 15-year-old American girl Shirley Anne Milburn.[32] The marriage was never happy, with reports that she was often violent towards him. Although she accompanied Peel back to England in 1967, they were soon separated and the divorce became final in 1973. In 1987, Milburn took her own life.[33]
Peel married Sheila Gilhooly on 31 August 1974. The reception was held atRegent's Park, withRod Stewart as best man.[34] In the 1970s, Peel and Gilhooly moved to "Peel Acres", a thatched cottage inGreat Finborough. In later years, Peel broadcast many of his shows from a studio in the house, with Gilhooly and their children often being involved or at least mentioned. Peel's passion for Liverpool FC was reflected in his children's names: William RobertAnfield Ravenscroft, Alexandra Mary Anfield Ravenscroft, Thomas JamesDalglish Ravenscroft, and Florence VictoriaShankly Ravenscroft. Thomas, now better known asTom Ravenscroft, also became a radio DJ.[35]
At the age of 62, in 2001, Peel was diagnosed withinsulin-dependent diabetes following many years of fatigue.[36]
Peel has been accused of sexual misconduct, although he was never charged with any offences. The journalists Sarah Woolley and Fiona Sturges, inThe Independent, cite Peel's first marriage to Milburn in 1965 as an example, as Milburn was aged 15 and Peel 25 when they married; this was legal in Texas at the time.[37][38]
Peel toldThe Guardian in 1975, regarding his relations with young women, "All they wanted me to do was abuse them, sexually, which, of course, I was only too happy to do."[39][40] He toldThe Sunday Correspondent in 1989, "Girls used to queue up outside. By and large not usually for shagging. Oral sex they were particularly keen on, I remember. [...] One of my, er, regular customers, as it were, turned out to be 13, though she looked older."[41][42] He jokingly added that he "didn't ask for ID".[40][42] An interview originally published inThe Herald in April 2004 stated that he admitted to sexual contact with "an awful lot" of underage girls. He said that the only available women in the early 1960s were in high school.[32]
In 2012 a woman stated that she had a three-month affair with Peel in 1969, when she was 15 and he was 30.[43][40][44] She said they had unprotected sex; this was shortly after Peel discussed contracting asexually transmitted disease.[43] The relationship resulted in a "traumatic" abortion.[37][43] She stated that, "Looking back, it was terribly wrong and I was perhaps manipulated."[43]
In July 2022 a petition was launched to rename the "John Peel Stage" at theGlastonbury Festival, because of the accusations.[45] In 2023 the stage was renamed "Woodsies".Emily Eavis, co-organiser of the festival, said the name change "was not related to a recent petition".[46][47]
On 25 October 2004,[48] during a working holiday in the Peruvian city ofCusco, Peel suffered aheart attack and died suddenly at the age of 65.[49] Shortly after the announcement of his death, fans and supporters paid tribute to him. The following day,BBC Radio 1 cleared its schedule to broadcast a day of tributes.[48] London'sEvening Standard boards that afternoon read "the day the music died", quotingDon McLean's hit "American Pie".
Peel had often spokenwryly of his eventual death. He once said on theChannel 4 miniseriesSounds of the Suburbs, "I've always imagined I'd die by driving into the back of a truck while trying to read the name on a cassette and people would say, 'He would have wanted to go that way.' Well, I want them to know that I wouldn't."[50]
Peel once said that if he died before his producerJohn Walters, he wanted Walters to playRoy Harper's song "When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease".[51] Walters had died in 2001, leavingAndy Kershaw to end his tribute programme to Peel onBBC Radio 3 with the song. Peel's stand-in on his Radio 1 slot,Rob da Bank, also played the song at the start of the final show before his funeral. Another time, Peel said he would like to be remembered with agospel song. He stated that the final record he would play would be theC. L. Franklin sermon "Dry Bones in the Valley".
On hisHome Truths BBC radio show, Peel once commented about his own death: "I definitely want to be buried, although not yet. I'm 61 on Wednesday—just a working day for me, I'm afraid—so actually I should have a mile or two left in me, but I do want the children to be able to stand solemnly at my graveside and think lovely thoughts along the lines of 'get out of that one, you swine', which they won't be able to do if I've been cremated."[52]
Peel's funeral took place inBury St Edmunds on 12 November 2004 and was attended by over 1,000 people, including many of the artists he had championed. Eulogies were read by his brother Alan and fellow DJPaul Gambaccini. The service ended with clips of him talking about his life. His coffin was carried out to the accompaniment of his favourite song,the Undertones' "Teenage Kicks".[53] Peel had written that, apart from his name, all he wanted on his gravestone were the "Teenage Kicks" lyrics "teenage dreams, so hard to beat".[54] A headstone featuring the lyrics and theliver bird from his favourite football team,Liverpool FC, was placed at his grave in 2008.[55] He was buried in the graveyard of St Andrew's Church inGreat Finborough.[55]
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John Peel Sessions were a feature of his BBC Radio 1 shows, which usually consisted of four pieces of music pre-recorded at the BBC's studios. The sessions originally came about due to restrictions imposed on the BBC by theMusicians' Union andPhonographic Performance Limited which represented the record companies dominated by theEMI cartel.
Due to these restrictions, the BBC had been forced to hire bands and orchestras to rendercover versions of recorded music. The theory behind this device was that it would create employment and force people to buy records and not listen to them free of charge on the air. One of the reasons why the offshore broadcasting stations of the 1960s were called "pirates" was because they operated outside of British laws and were not bound by theneedle time restriction on the number of records they could play on the air.
The BBC employed its own house bands and orchestras and it also engaged outside bands to record exclusive tracks for its programmes in BBC studios. This was the reason why Peel was able to use "session men" in his own programmes. Sessions were usually four tracks recorded and mixed in a single day; as such they often had a rough-and-ready, demo-like feel, somewhere between a live performance and a finished recording. During the 37 years Peel remained onBBC Radio 1, over 4,000 sessions were recorded by over 2,000 artists.[56] Many classic Peel Sessions have been released on record, particularly by theStrange Fruit label. In May 2020, an alphabetised catalogue of hundreds of classic Peel Sessions others had previously uploaded to YouTube was published.[57]
TheFestive Fifty – a countdown of the best tracks of the year as voted for by the listeners – was an annual tradition of Peel's Radio 1 show. Despite his eclectic play list, it tended to be composed largely of "white boys with guitars", as Peel complained in 1988. In 1991, the broadcast of the chart was cancelled due to a lack of votes.
Topped byNirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", this Phantom Fifty was eventually broadcast at the rate of one track per programme in 1993.[58] The 1997 chart was initially cancelled due to the lack of air-time Peel had been allocated for the period, but enough "spontaneous" votes were received over the phone that a Festive Thirty-One was compiled and broadcast.[58]
Peel wrote that "The Festive 50 dates back to what was doubtless a crisp September morning in the early-to-mid Seventies, when John Walters and I were musing on life in his uniquely squalid office. In our waggish way, we decided to mock the enthusiasm of the Radio 1 management of the time for programmes withalliterative titles. Content, we felt, was of less importance than a snappyRadio Times billing. In the course of our historic meeting we had, I imagine, some fine reasons for dismissing the idea of a Festive 40 and going instead for a Festive 50, a decision that was to ruin my Decembers for years to come, condemning me to night after night at home with a ledger, when I could have been out and about having fun, fun, fun."[59]
After his death, the Festive Fifty was continued on Radio 1 byRob da Bank,Huw Stephens andRas Kwame for two years, but then given to Peel-inspired Internet radio stationDandelion Radio, and continues to be compiled.
In 1969, Peel foundedDandelion Records (named after his pet hamster) so that he could release the debut album byBridget St John, which he also produced. The label released 27 albums by 18 different artists before folding in 1972. Of its albums,There is Some Fun Going Forward was asampler intended to present its acts to a wide audience, but Dandelion was never a great success, with only two releases charting nationally:Medicine Head in the UK with "(And the) Pictures in the Sky" andBeau inLebanon with "1917 Revolution". Having had an affinity with the Manchester area from working in a cotton mill in Rochdale in 1959, Peel signed Manchester bandsStack Waddy andTractor to Dandelion and was always supportive of both bands throughout his life. It is alleged that Peel spotted a Rochdale postmark on the envelope containing the tape sent to him by Tractor, then called "The Way We Live".[60]
As Peel stated:
It was never a success financially. In fact, we lost money, if I remember correctly, on every single release bar one. I did quite like it but it was terribly indulgent. Not as indulgent as it would have been had I not had a business partner, admittedly ... I liked having a label. It enabled you to put out stuff that you liked without, in those days, having to worry about whether it was going to work commercially. I've never been a good business man.
Peel appeared on one Dandelion release: theDavid Bedford albumNurses Song with Elephants, recorded at the Marquee Studios, as part of a group playing twenty-seven plastic pipe twirlers on the track "Some Bright Stars for Queen's College".
In the 1980s Peel set upStrange Fruit Records with Clive Selwood to release material recorded by the BBC for Peel Sessions.
John Peel is sometimes confused with the more prolific record producer Jonathan Peel, who was an in-house music producer forEMI before going freelance in 1970.[61]
John Peel wrote in his autobiography,Margrave of the Marshes, that the band of which he owned the most records wasThe Fall. Regulars in theFestive 50, and easily recognised by vocalistMark E. Smith's distinctive delivery, The Fall became synonymous with Peel's Radio 1 show through the 1980s and 1990s. Peel kept in contact with many of the artists he championed but only met Smith on two, apparently awkward, occasions.
The Misunderstood is the only band that Peel ever personally managed – he first met the band in Riverside, California in 1966 and convinced them to move to London. He championed their music throughout his career; in 1968, he described their 1966 single "I Can Take You to the Sun" as "the best popular record that's ever been recorded."[62] and shortly before his death, he stated, "If I had to list the ten greatest performances I've seen in my life, one would be The Misunderstood at Pandora's Box, Hollywood, 1966 ... My god, they were a great band!"[63]
His favourite single is widely known to have been "Teenage Kicks" byThe Undertones; in an interview in 2001, he stated "There's nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it."[54] In the same 2001 interview, he also listed "No More Ghettos in America" by Stanley Winston, "There Must Be Thousands" byThe Quads and "Lonely Saturday Night" by Don French as being among his all-time favourites. He also describedLianne Hall as one of the great English voices.
In 1997The Guardian asked Peel to list his top 20 albums. He listedCaptain Beefheart'sTrout Mask Replica as his number 1, having previously described it as "a work of art". The top 20 also included LPs byThe Velvet Underground,The Ramones,Pulp,Misty in Roots,Nirvana,Neil Young,Pink Floyd,The Four Brothers,Dave Clarke,Richard and Linda Thompson andThe Rolling Stones.[64]
A longer list of his favourite singles was revealed in 2005 when the contents of a wooden box in which he stored the records that meant the most to him were made public.[65] The box was the subject of a television documentary,John Peel's Record Box. Out of 130 vinyl singles in the box, 11 of them were byThe White Stripes, more than any other band in the box.[66]
In 1999 Peel presented a nightly segment on his programme titled thePeelennium, in which he played four recordings from each year of the 20th century.
Peel was 11 timesMelody Maker′s DJ of the year,Sony Broadcaster of the Year in 1993, winner of the publicly voted Godlike Genius Award from theNME in 1994,Sony Gold Award winner in 2002 and is a member of theRadio Academy Hall of Fame. At the NME awards in 2005, he was Hero of the Year and was posthumously given a special award for "Lifelong Service To Music". At the same event the "John Peel Award For Musical Innovation" was awarded toThe Others.
He was awarded manyhonorary degrees including an MA from theUniversity of East Anglia, doctorates (Anglia Polytechnic University andSheffield Hallam University), various degrees (University of Liverpool,Open University,University of Portsmouth,University of Bradford) and a fellowship ofLiverpool John Moores University.
He was appointed anOBE in 1998, for his services to British music. In 2002, the BBC conducted a vote to discover the100 Greatest Britons of all time, in which Peel was voted 43rd.[67]
| Name of show | Radio station | First show | Last show | Frequency | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kat's Karavan | WRR, Dallas | 1961 | ? | weekly | unpaid |
| ? | KLIF | ? | ? | ||
| ? | KOMA, Oklahoma City | ? | ? | ||
| ? | KLMA, Oklahoma City | ? | ? | ||
| ? | KMEN, San Bernardino | 1966 | 1967 | ||
| The Perfumed Garden | Wonderful Radio London | ca 8 March 1967 | 14 August 1967 | ||
| Top Gear | BBC Radio 1 | 1967 | 1975 | ||
| Nightride | BBC Radio 1 | 6 March 1968 | 1969 | ||
| John Peel | BBC Radio 1 | 1975 | 2004 | ||
| Rock Today | BFBS Radio 1 | April 1977 | December 1979 | weekly | |
| John Peel's Music on BFBS | BFBS Radio 1 | Jan 1980 | ? | weekly | |
| ? | DT64 | ? | ? | ||
| The John Peel Show: essentiële popmuziek zonder ondertiteling | VPRORadio3 | 26 September 1984 | 24 September 1986 | weekly | every Wednesday |
| ? | Hansawelle | ? | ? | ||
| John Peel | Radio Mafia, Helsinki | 1990 | 2003 | ||
| John Peel Show | Rockradio, Finland | 1987 | 1990 | ||
| ? | YleX, Finland | 2003 | ? | ||
| ? | Radio Bremen 2 | 1985 | ? | ||
| ? | Radio Bremen Vier | 1987 | ? | ||
| ? | BBC Radio Cambridgeshire | 1988 | 1990 | weekly | |
| Nachtexpress | Hitradio Ö3 | 1989 | 1994 | monthly | |
| Offspring | BBC Radio 4 | 1995 | 1997 | ||
| Peel | Radio Eins, Berlin | September 1997 | 18 December 2003 | weekly | |
| Home Truths | BBC Radio 4 | 1998 | 16 October 2004 |
Since his death various parties have recognised Peel's influence. A stage for new bands at theGlastonbury Festival, previously known as "The New Bands Tent" was renamed "The John Peel Stage" in 2005, although this was renamed again as "Woodsies" in 2023.
In 2008Merseytravel announced it would be naming a train after him.[31]
The John Peel Centre for Creative Arts opened inStowmarket in early 2013. The main purposes of the centre is to serve as a live venue for music and performance and as a community meeting point.[68][69]
The 2005Mogwai live compilation albumGovernment Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996–2003 was dedicated to Peel as some of the tracks had been performed during the Peel Sessions. Peel's voice announces "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mogwai!" at the intro to "Hunted by a Freak", the album's opener.[70]
On 8 October 2005Cotswold Rail locomotive47813 was namedJohn Peel by Peel's widow Sheila atBury St Edmunds station.[71]
On 13 October 2005, the first "John Peel Day" was held to mark the anniversary of his last show. The BBC encouraged as many bands as possible to stage gigs on the 13th, and over 500 gigs took place in the UK and as far away as Canada and New Zealand, from bands ranging from Peel favouritesNew Order andThe Fall, to many new and unsigned bands. A second John Peel day was held on 12 October 2006, and a third on 11 October 2007. The BBC had originally planned to hold a John Peel Day annually, but Radio 1 has not held any official commemoration of the event since 2007, though gigs still took place around the country to mark the anniversary for a number of years afterwards.[72][73]
In 2007, ambient duoStars of the Lid released a tour EP ('Carte De Visite') with a track titled 'J.P.R.I.P' with a soundbyte of Peel during the intro.[74]
At the annual Gilles Peterson'sWorldwide Awards, the "John Peel Play More Jazz Award" was named in his honour.[75]
In Peel's hometown of Heswall, a pub was opened in his honour in 2007. Named The Ravenscroft, the pub was converted from the old Heswall Telephone Exchange[76] but has since been renamed.[77]
In 2012 Peel was among theBritish cultural icons selected by artist SirPeter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.[78]
Several Peel-related compilation albums have been released since his death, includingJohn Peel and Sheila: The Pig's Big 78s: A Beginner's Guide, a project Peel started with his wife that was left unfinished when he died, andKats Karavan: The History of John Peel on the Radio (2009), a 4 CDbox set. Rock music criticPeter Paphides said in a review of the box set that "[s]ome artists remain forever associated with him", including...And the Native Hipsters with "There Goes Concorde Again", andIvor Cutler with "Jam".[79] A sizable online community has also emerged dedicated to sharing recordings of his radio shows.[80]
In May 2012 a campaign was started to turn demolition-threatenedBradford Odeon into the John Peel Creative Arts Centre in the North,[81] though this was ultimately unsuccessful.[82]
In 2009blue plaques bearing Peel's name were unveiled at two former recording studios inRochdale – one at the site of Tractor Sound Studios inHeywood, the other at the site of the Kenion Street Music Building – to recognise Peel's contribution to the local music industry.[83]
In June 2017 Peel's widow Sheila unveiled a blue plaque in his honour in Great Finborough.[84]
described in his autobiography as "Heswall Cottage Hospital"
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