Of course, we know little more of the man that what we've read and chosen to believe, but we can't help feeling that the current hullabaloo around John Peel day is the sort of thing that would have made him feel genuinely uncomfortable - doubtless, like his This Is Your Life appearance or his MBE, he'd have gone along with it all out a sense of not wanting to let people down.
It's also a bit of an interesting lesson in how you lose control of your life when you start to share it. Take, for example, the tale of sexual abuse at his public school. In the autobiography, of course, it's an event that happened but isn't seen as being keen. The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, having paid for the serialisation rights, falls on the story and blow it up, onto the news pages, although with some sort of context left in: "This man - and although it is tempting to name him, I'm not going to - was, I think, the only genuinely amoral person I've ever met. Towards the end of our time together, he compelled me to agree to meet him in a public toilet in the cemetery on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, where he raped me. Oddly enough, much as I hated the experience, I think I had become so accustomed to systematic sexual abuse that I wasn't especially traumatised by the experience." They then seek out some friends to prod the story some more. By this morning, the tale has washed up into the tabloids, with the People luridly yelling "PEEL TELLS OF SCHOOL RAPE HELL." In capitals, and everything.
A fascinating life, so many tales, and it boils down to being forced in a Shropshire bog.
The Telegraph does redeem itself somewhat with an excellent interview with Sheila, if you can get through it without tearing up: "One does not have to spend long in Sheila Ravenscroft's company to realise that whatever else John Peel might have achieved in his life, in marriage he was deeply blessed. She is a handsome woman in her fifties, immensely hospitable, forthright, quick to laugh, and, it is immediately apparent, the family's pillar of strength." [...]
"When Sheila suffered a brain haemorrhage in 1996, John was in the Isle of Man with his friend and fellow DJ Andy Kershaw, watching the TT races. When he was told the news over the phone by their daughter Danda his first response was: "If your mum goes, I go too. I don't want to go on living without her." [...] In the book she writes: "One of the reasons we lasted so long and so well was that we spent half the week apart, but never stopped longing for one another."
Oddly, the interview has been left in the hands of Mick Brown, but he carries it off well - much better than the starting point of "at least it's not Neil McCormack" would lead you to believe. And it's not all designed to send you looking for a Kleenex up your cardigan sleeve - there's some great Peel tales in there, too:
"His disdain for Simon Bates was such that, on one occasion, Peel, Sheila and Kershaw were moved to take a 250-mile round-trip to High Wycombe simply to boo Bates's appearance as Abunazzar in Aladdin."
At the end, though, there's that still nagging doubt that perhaps part of the reason why Radio One is throwing itself so wholeheartedly into Peel Day this week might be, perhaps, just because it feels a little bit guilty:
"In the last years of his life, Sheila says, John was "happier and more contented" than she had ever seen him. Her only concern was over his health. A year before his death, his Radio 1 programme was shifted, yet again, to a later time - 11pm-1am. "He was very tired, and I was worried about him. I said: 'I can't believe you're not going to complain.' But he said he'd be fine. He was just relieved he was still on the radio.""
Another deceased semi-scouser takes pride of place in the Independent - on this weekend, when Lennon would have been turning 65, had we not been spared from any further Double Fantasies or Womans, Hunter 'how much of a career can one man shake out of writing about a single band' Davies speculates on what Lennon would have been like had he lived. Some sort of secular saint, of course, is what Hunter decides - he'd have put things right by Cynthia and Julian (elsewhere, in the Guardian Review, Michel Faber suggests that the one decent line in Cynthia's latest 'I was married to John Lennon, you know' book was when Julian asked "Dad's always telling people to love each other, but how come he doesn't love me?"); probably would have split up with Yoko. And would have stood for - and won - a parliamentary seat, while curiously still living in the Dakota Building. Most alarming of all, the art department run up a photo of how he would look today - Hunter S Thompson, apparently. Of course, we know the truth: had Lennon survived, we'd have had an ever increasing pile of poorly thought out records; more and more books of poetry; the guest appearances onstage with Oasis and, naturally, the ongoing feud with McCartney. Of course, nobody would wish him dead. But if we could have encouraged him to retire at that point, everyone would have been happy.
It seems that the monthly Sound Nation is turning up about every three days, which we're certainly not complaining about. There's news of gigs returning to Bangor Hendre Hall - with reggae nights, mainly to allow a Jamaican-Welsh pun, we think: Reggae Fi Wan; and a resurrected gig building in Cardiff's Buffalo Bar. If the Welsh music scene isn't going through a golden age right now, Soundnation should probably get some sort of spin doctoring award.
There's a great bit on the legalities of podcasting - Adrian Crookes from the MCPS-PRS alliance tuts and fusses and panics: "without DRM, podcasts can be made into digital copy after digital copy after digital copy." Of course, he recommends making sure your podcast is legal, but as the magazine points out, it's not that easy. "The application for the JOL [Joint Online Licence] includes questions about your company's status, its auditors, accountatnts and professional affiliations. You'll need to supply a copy of your certificate of incorporation, your audited accounts and a Status Enquiry Form that enables MCPS-PRS to ask your bank if they think you're a good credit risk. You'll also need to give revenue and listener predictions." In other words, to knock together a show that would take you an hour to make on your Mac, you're expected to spend a couple of weeks setting up a company and filing forms and filling boxes. The idea of the JOL was to make it easy and simple to use music legitimately online; clearly, it's failed. And the reason why unlicensed podcasts will proliferate is because the only way of doing it legally is so long-winded, people will ignore the law.
Crookes mutters that they might come to some sort of limited, trial-basis license for zero-revenue podcasts, but still seems to be thinking in terms of charges in the hundreds of pounds. And so people will still carry on by-passing the rules.
The sound of tills ringing you'll have heard this week would have been the increased sales of the NME. Yes, Babyshambles on the cover again, flogging the new tour and talking up the "three act rock opera" (no, they're not joking, unfortunately). The increasingly shabby act rolls around - demanding money for the interview (they get forty quid out of Alex Needham; apparently, the News of the World have been offering £35k for a phone interview; £70k for a face-to-face and a £15k bung for the Babyshambles PR); moaning about Alan McGee still - "I'm not speaking ill of people, bit Alan McGee's still charging me for Anthony Rossamando's air fare... what a piss take"; being totally uninterested in questions about music; and making vague threats against whoever it was who sold Kate Moss up to the Mirror (NME: "So what's going to happen?" "Something nasty" he whispers.) In short, Pete is every inch the drug bore, pity-meing about having to sell "one" of the Playstations off the tour bus (what for, eh?). He also attempts to explain why he headbutted Johnny Borrell, which is a long and confusing story in which The Libertines lived with Borrell's mum and Borrell introduced Doherty to the Clash and the New York Dolls. We think, therefore, that Doherty's kind of scared that Borrell actually invented him. It's an Oedipus thing.
Elsewhere in the NME, Thom Yorke has been invited to meet Tony Blair and is worrying about it - more curiously, though, is the discovery that Chris Martin sent Tony a letter telling him "all the stuff you're doing to sort the whole place out is brilliant." This was last Christmas, then, after Iraq and Hutton.
Oasis are going to work with Kasabian, which at least means that we'll be able to ignore both of them at once.
Bloc Party have announced they're taking a live break - until 2006. Which is, what, all of seventy-odd days away now.
Radar focuses its beady sweat-eyes on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (great to listen to, shit to have to type out); Sam Champion and We Are Scientists ("epic versions of everyone's favourite 80s bands.")
Editors attempt to deny that they're nuts - "I'm not singing about unhinged things... I'm singing about love or lack of love or whatever. They affect everyone, not just depressed people."
Sid and Nancy come spewing up out of the archives, at least timely in light of the Muppets Christmas Carol reworking of the myth being played out by Pete and Kate. "She was a bad influence on my Sid" moaned Sid's Mum, amusing words in a week when Old Mother Doherty turned up to berate Pete at a Bristol gig.
reviews
live
red organ serpent sound - nottingham rescue rooms - "so in your face you can't even see the costumes"
the rakes - portsmouth wedgewood rooms - "play fast, die young, leave a hideously hungover corpse"
the chalets - dublin dun laoghaire art college - "sexy, sassy and smart"
albums
john peel tribute album - "Would Napalm Death not have flagged up more of what peel was really about than the cripplingly awful Belle and Sebastian?", 8
Sugababes - taller in more ways - "a mini potted pop history", 6
little brother - the minstrel show - "a sharp sense of humour; warm, supple beats", 8
tracks
totw - white rose movement - alsatian - "robots have a sense of humour too"
the kooks - sofa song - "made for the sofa of your lethargy"
battle - demons - "far from your average wrist slashing ditty"
And finally, Peter Robinson meets up with Miquita Oliver, off of PopWorld and Radio One. Is she, asks Peter, John Peel reincarnated? "Oh God, no, they don't trust me to play music I like."
[EDIT: We forgot to thank Aaron S for the tip on the Telegraph interview.]
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