John Peel

An extensive interview by Eve Wood with legendary DJ John Peel at his home, Peel Acres, in 2001. With the debut of his original show Night Ride in 1968, Peel declared, "This is the first of a new series of programmes on which you may hear just about anything." Indeed, Peel was responsible for introducing once radical and obscure genres such as punk and reggae to BBC listeners, who were as passionate and eager as he to discover "something that was going to shake things up a bit." Peel was probably the single most authoritative voice on new music during his lifetime, and for bands just starting out, his shows were important legitimizing platforms that broadcast to an audience of enlightened music-lovers, some of whom became prominent musicians themselves.

Read John Peel: Margrave of the Marshes (Chicago Review Press, 2005) - a self-portrait by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft.