Editing John Peel (section)

== Career ==
=== United States ===
In 1960, aged 21, Peel went to the United States to work for a [[Cotton growing|cotton producer]] who had business dealings with his father.{{sfn|Heatley|2004|pp=26–27}} He took a number of other jobs afterwards, including working as a travelling [[Insurance policy|insurance salesman]]. While in [[Dallas]], Texas, where the insurance company he worked for was based, he conversed with the presidential candidate [[John F. Kennedy]], and his running mate [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], who were touring the city during the 1960 election campaign, and took photographs of them.{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}} Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Peel passed himself off as a reporter for the ''[[Liverpool Echo]]'' in order to attend the arraignment of [[Lee Harvey Oswald]]. He and a friend can be seen in the footage of the 22/23 November midnight [[press conference]] at the [[Dallas Police Department]] when Oswald was paraded before the media.<ref>{{cite interview |first=John |last=Peel |work=Fillerzine |number=5 |date=September 1996 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aHDJy0R8nQ | archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/0aHDJy0R8nQ| archive-date=11 December 2021 | url-status=live|title=John Peel in Dallas}}{{cbignore}}</ref> He later phoned in the story to the ''Echo''.{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}}

While working for the insurance company, Peel wrote programs for [[punched card]] entry for an [[IBM 1410]] computer (which led to his entry in ''[[Who's Who (UK)|Who's Who]]'' noting him as a former [[computer programmer]]), and he got his first radio job working unpaid for [[WRR (AM)]] in Dallas. There, he presented the second hour of the Monday night programme ''Kat's Karavan'', which was primarily hosted by the American singer and radio personality [[Jim Lowe]]. Following this, and as [[Beatlemania]] hit the United States, Peel was hired by the Dallas radio station [[KLIF (AM)|KLIF]] as the official [[The Beatles|Beatles]] correspondent on the strength of his connection to Liverpool. He later worked for [[KOKC (AM)|KOMA]] in [[Oklahoma City, Oklahoma]], until 1965, when he moved to [[KKDD|KMEN]] in [[San Bernardino, California]], and used his birth name, John Ravenscroft, to present the breakfast show.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/events/peel/perfumed_garden.shtml |title=6 Music – Events – Peeling Back The Years |publisher=BBC |access-date=9 February 2013}}</ref>

=== Return to England ===
Peel returned to England in early 1967 and found work with the offshore [[UK pirate radio|pirate radio]] station [[Wonderful Radio London|Radio London]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Cartwright |first=Garth |date=27 October 2004 |title=Obituary: John Peel |url=http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/27/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1 |access-date=4 May 2022 |website=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> He was offered the midnight-to-two shift, which gradually developed into a programme, ''[[The Perfumed Garden (radio show)|The Perfumed Garden]]''.<ref>{{cite web |title=BBC – 6 Music – Events – Peeling Back The Years – What Was The Perfumed Garden? |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/events/peel/perfumed_garden.shtml |website=www.bbc.co.uk |publisher=BBC |access-date=2024-08-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230913163333/https://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/events/peel/perfumed_garden.shtml |archive-date=2023-09-13 |date=2014-11-21 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=BBC – Radio 1 – Keeping It Peel – Biography – 1967 Part One |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/biography/1960s/1967_Part_One/ |website=www.bbc.co.uk |publisher=BBC |access-date=2024-08-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230422160455/https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/biography/1960s/1967_Part_One/ |archive-date=2023-04-22 |date=2014-12-02 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Peel's show was an outlet for the music of the [[UK underground]] scene. He played classic [[blues]], [[folk music]] and [[psychedelic 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 the [[UFO Club]] and the [[The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream|14 Hour Technicolor Dream]], together with [[causes célèbres]] like the drug busts of [[the Rolling Stones]] and [[John "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.<ref name="djhistory">{{cite web |url=http://www.djhistory.com/djhistory/archiveInterviewDisplay.php?interview_id=43 |first=Bill |last=Brewster |date=30 April 2004 |website=DJHistory.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080216184646/http://www.djhistory.com/djhistory/archiveInterviewDisplay.php?interview_id=43 |title=Archive Interviews: John Peel |archive-date=16 February 2008}}</ref>

After the closure of Radio London in 1967, Peel wrote a column, ''The Perfumed Garden'', for the underground newspaper the ''[[International Times]]'' (from autumn 1967 to mid-1969).<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hodgson |first1=Stewart |title=Teenage kicks: The John Peel story |url=https://radiofidelity.com/the-story-of-john-peel/ |website=radiofidelity.com |publisher=Radio Fidelity, LLC |access-date=2024-08-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240416144106/https://radiofidelity.com/the-story-of-john-peel/ |archive-date=2024-04-16 |date=2023-11-09 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{Additional citation needed|date=August 2024}}

=== BBC ===
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 called ''[[Top Gear (radio show)|Top Gear]].'' At first he was obliged to share presentation duties with other DJs ([[Pete Drummond]] and [[Tommy Vance]] were among his co-hosts) but in February 1968 he was given sole charge of ''Top Gear.'' He presented the show until it ended in 1975.<ref>{{Cite web |title=BBC - Radio 1 - Keeping It Peel - Biography - 1960s |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/biography/1960s/ |access-date=2025-03-27 |website=www.bbc.co.uk}}</ref> 

In 1969, after hosting a trailer for a BBC programme on VD on his ''Night Ride'' programme, Peel received significant media attention because he divulged on air that he had suffered from a [[sexually 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 1971 ''[[Oz (magazine)|Oz]]'' obscenity trial.{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}}

The ''Night Ride'' programme, advertised by the BBC as an exploration of words and music, seemed to take up from where ''The 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 the [[BBC 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 friends [[Marc Bolan]], journalist and musician [[Mick Farren]], poet Pete Roche, singer-songwriter [[Bridget St John]] and stars such as [[the Byrds]], the Rolling Stones and [[John Lennon]] and [[Yoko 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.{{cn|date=February 2024}} 

In his sleeve notes to the ''Archive Things'' LP Peel calls the free-form nature of ''Night 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.{{cn|date=February 2024}}

=== Punk era ===
Peel's enthusiasm for music outside the mainstream occasionally brought him into conflict with the Radio 1 hierarchy. On one occasion, the station controller [[Derek Chinnery]] contacted [[John Walters (broadcaster)|John Walters]] and asked him to confirm that the show was not playing any [[punk rock|punk]], 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.simongarfield.com/assets/pdfs/books_extracts/the_nations_favourite.pdf |title=Simon Garfield interview with John Peel |work=Simongarfield.com |access-date=9 February 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080626133533/http://www.simongarfield.com/assets/pdfs/books_extracts/the_nations_favourite.pdf |archive-date=26 June 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

In a 1990 interview, Peel recalled his 1976 discovery of the first album by New York punk band the [[Ramones]] as a seminal event,

{{Blockquote|At that time almost all the new bands {{sic|comprised |hide=y}} 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 heard [[Little 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.<ref name=Flipside />}}

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."<ref name="Hepworth">{{cite interview| interviewer= David Hepworth| last= Peel| first= John | title= Forty is More Fun: John Peel, Superfan, Talks to David Hepworth| work= [[Smash Hits]]| publisher= EMAP National Publications Ltd| date= 4–17 October 1979| page= 15}}</ref>

[[File:JP Peel Acres.jpg|thumb|Peel Acres in [[Great Finborough]], Suffolk]]
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 artist [[Billy Bragg]], drove to the Radio 1 studios with a mushroom [[biryani]] and a copy of his record after hearing Peel mention that he was hungry; the subsequent airplay launched Billy Bragg's career.<ref>{{cite book| author-link= Andrew Collins (broadcaster) | first= Andrew | last= Collins| title= Still Suitable for Miners (Billy Bragg: The Official Biography)| edition= Revised |publisher= Virgin Books| year= 2002}}</ref>

[[File:JP Homestudio.jpg|thumb|Studio at Peel Acres]]

In addition to his Radio 1 show, Peel broadcast as a disc jockey on the [[BBC World Service]], on the [[British Forces Broadcasting Service]] (''John Peel's Music on BFBS'') for 30 years, [[NPO 3FM|VPRO Radio3]] in the Netherlands, [[Radiomafia|YLE Radio Mafia]] in Finland, [[Hitradio Ö3|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".{{cn|date=August 2022}}

Peel was an occasional presenter of ''[[Top 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, alongside [[Faces (band)|Rod Stewart and the Faces]], pretending to play [[mandolin]] on "[[Maggie May]]".<ref>{{cite web |date= 27 October 2004 |title= John Peel |url= https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/john-peel-30592.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220613/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/john-peel-30592.html |archive-date=13 June 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |website= [[The Independent]] }}</ref> He often presented the BBC's television coverage of music events, notably the [[Glastonbury Festival]].

From 26 September to 31 October 1987, Peel produced a six-part radio series on [[BBC Radio 1]] called ''Peeling 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]]" by [[Ray Martin (orchestra leader)|Ray Martin]] which, Peel revealed, was the first record he ever bought.

=== Later years ===
Between 1995 and 1997, Peel presented ''Offspring'', a show about children, on [[BBC Radio 4]]. In 1998, ''Offspring'' grew into the magazine-style documentary show ''[[Home 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 presenter [[John Walters (broadcaster)|John Walters]] as being "about people who had fridges called Renfrewshire".{{cn|date=August 2022}} Peel also made regular contributions to BBC Two's humorous look at the irritations of modern life ''[[Grumpy Old Men (TV show)|Grumpy Old Men]]''. His only appearances in an acting role in film or television were in [[Harry Enfield]]'s ''[[Smashie and Nicey]]: The End of an Era'' as John Past Bedtime, and in 1999 as a "grumpy old man who catalogues records" in the film ''Five Seconds to Spare''.<ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0205936/fullcredits/cast?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm |title=Five Seconds to Spare (2000) – IMDb |language=en |access-date=2024-09-17 |via=m.imdb.com}}</ref> However, he had provided narration for others.<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205936/ "Keeping it Peel"], [[BBC Radio 1]], 30 September 2007. Retrieved 30 September 2007.</ref>
[[File:JP BBC.jpg|thumb|Peel at a [[Yalding House]] studio, 1997]]
He appeared as a celebrity guest on a number of TV shows, including ''[[This Is Your Life (UK TV series)|This Is Your Life]]'' (1996, BBC),<ref>{{citation |title=John Peel "This is your life" 1996 | date=22 April 2007 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXA8p4-x0Co |access-date=2 May 2022}}</ref> ''Travels With My Camera'' (1996, [[Channel 4]] TV) and ''Going Home'' (2002, [[ITV (TV network)|ITV]] TV), and presented the 1997 Channel 4 series ''Classic Trains''.<ref>{{cite news |last=Aaronovitch |first=David |author-link=David Aaronovitch |title=Critics are ignorant – and I should know |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/critics-are-ignorant--and-i-should-know-1278957.html |url-status=live |url-access=subscription |newspaper=The Independent |location=London |date=16 February 1997 |access-date=9 February 2013 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220613/https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/critics-are-ignorant--and-i-should-know-1278957.html |archive-date=13 June 2022}}</ref> He was also in demand as a voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC One's ''[[A Life of Grime]]''.

In April 2003, the publishers [[Transworld (company)|Transworld]] 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.<ref>{{cite news |last=Gerard |first=Jasper |title=If you can remember the Sixties ... you get £1.5m – Interview – John Peel |url=http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article227354.ece |url-status=dead |newspaper=The Sunday Times |location=London |date=20 April 2003 |access-date=19 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170201235354/http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article227354.ece |archive-date=1 February 2017}}</ref> Unfinished at the time of his death, it was completed by Sheila and journalist Ryan Gilbey. It was published in October 2005 under the title ''Margrave of the Marshes''. A collection of Peel's miscellaneous writings, ''The Olivetti Chronicles'', was published in 2008.<ref name="train">{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7679157.stm |title= Memorial sees Peel try new tracks |publisher=BBC News |date=20 October 2008 |access-date=9 February 2013}}</ref>