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b.
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft OBE, 30th August
1939, Cheshire, England.
d. 25 October 2004,
Cuzco, Peru. |
John Peel was one of
Brtain's most loved broadcasters.
With a whiplash wit, a
dry delivery and a total adoration and love of music in all its forms,
Peel was a true one-off. There was more to John Peel than spinning
discs, curating the famous Peel Sessions and supporting bands with names
like You've Got Foetus On Your Breath and Napalm Death. You may not know
that he 'did time' in the army and he battled bullies at a posh boarding
school. Glad to say he came out on top and with a healthy disregard for
authority. You also may not know that he sailed the high seas as a
pirate (of sorts) and was known in his day to be quite a looker, winning
the mass adoration from thousands of screaming teenage
Beatlemaniacs across the Atlantic. His Liverpudlian roots were to blame
for that! Hopefully this biography will give you a little more insight
into the man behind the microphone, splash a bit of colour on a
kaleidoscopic life, and explain exactly why John Peel is so greatly
missed by so many music fans.
John Peel always prided himself on
maintaining an anti-establishment attitude and on his ability to back
the underdog. He was anti-establishment because he knew how the
establishment worked - he'd been part of it and he didn't like it.
John was sent
away from home at 13 to be educated as a boarder at the prestigious
Shrewsbury School in Shropshire. He was shy and quiet at boarding school
where the head boys bullied him. He preferred to shirk off games of
rugby in favour of kicking back with a choice selection of rare vinyl.
He also snubbed the class system by becoming an avid Liverpool FC fan.
Football was something that was seen to be a very working class passion
and certainly not a suitable pursuit for a well-educated boy, but he was
adamant he wouldn't fall in with the "Heswall Henrys" of his school. His
housemaster R. H. J. Brooke remembers John well and encouraged his "more
wayward pursuits", allowing him to listen to "very noisy records in the
study next door to the library." John described Reverend Brooke as "the
greatest man I ever met" and Reverend Brooke certainly saw potential of
a kind in John's writing, as can be seen 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." see
Alan Freeman
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