Peel On Record Cover Sleevenotes

(Related pages: Peel On Record, Peel On Record Covers)

"“The lot of the part-time sleeve not writer is not, haunters of the demi-monde, an easy one. Bravura flourishes of imagined “style”, gruesome lapses into tweeness, and overconfident predictions of impending greatness, the latter often stimulated by a commissioner’s cheque, have a disquieting habit of slithering into view in secondhand shops and/or your local branch of Woolworths.” (John Peel, Street To Street: A Liverpool Album Vol 1, sleevenotes, 1980)"

"'The problem is that sleeve-notes are as passe as the string bass and the military two-step. Photos of the group looking moody in a wood somewhere - that's what the public wants these days.' ('John MacPeel', JSD Band, JSD Band, sleevenotes, 1972)"

The following chronological list of Peel's occasional excursions into the world of sleevenote-writing was compiled largely from the AllMusic John Peel 'Credits' page. Other sources are indicated with numbered or other links (it may be necessary to use the zoom function on your browser to read these easily). Many thanks to members of the Peel Mailing List for extra information. Please add further data if known.
 * 1967
 * Deviants: Ptooff!
 * JP: “On this LP there is little that is not good, much that is excellent and the occasional flash of brilliance. The Underground is a shifting, undefinable and vital force - the same is true of The Deviants." (read more)


 * John Mayall: The Blues Alone
 * JP: "In the summer of 1966 I was working for a radio station in Southern California and, in my capacity as resident Englishman and therefore intimate friend of all groups, I had to contribute a column of light hearted chatter about the British music scene to the station paper. Part of this column was a listing of the current British top ten. As far as the inhabitants of San Bernadino and Riverside counties knew, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers had a string of enormous hits during that summer..." (read more)


 * 1968
 * Various: Select Elektra
 * JP: "In these days, often rancid, it is written in some plastic bound handbook that recorded creations and love are to lie smothered beneath the grasping need for 'Chart' records. New labels spin, laden with good intentions, into the fringes of our understanding with signs crying 'brave' and 'new'..." (read more)


 * Tyrannosaurus Rex: My People Were Fair And Had Sky in Their Hair... But Now They're Content to Wear Stars On Their Brows
 * JP: "Tyrannosaurus Rex rose out of the sad and scattered leaves of an older summer. During the dark, grey winter they were tended and strengthened by those who love them...” (read more)


 * Pentangle: Pentangle
 * JP:"Is it necessary to talk of "fusions of traditional folk-forms", "musical innovations", "collective explorations" and the like? Answer "No" in sixty words or less. Play this record to those you love." read more)


 * JP: "I snap up all copies of the first Pentangle LP I see, so that as few people as possible can taunt me over my ‘… Pentangular faithful squatting swollen-eyed and morning-mouthed, outside garish Wilson-Picketted shop windows.’ Kinda cute, huh?" (Street To Street: A Liverpool Album Vol 1, sleevenotes)


 * Skip Bifferty Skip Bifferty
 * JP: "It grows daily more obvious that, following the incredible forces generated by British musicians during the past four years, there is opening up a vast void where the new things should be. The main reasons for this sudden, though predictable, and wholly destructive situation is the lack of opportunities for exposure on the mass media ..." (read more)


 * JP (06 January 1995): “[Skip Bifferty] were much featured on the programmes I did at the end of the 1960s, Top Gear … and when they put out their only LP, I wrote the sleeve notes, and I was reading them again the other day, and pompous and self-serving they were too. My goodness me! I'm glad you can't read them.”


 * 1969
 * Clark-Hutchinson: A=MH2
 * JP: "Do you remember people climbing on the scaffolding inside the Alexander Palace during the 24 Hour Technicolour Dream?” (read more)


 * Album produced by Peter Shertser and Ian Sippen of Peel's erstwhile associates The Firm, the blues-loving "psychedelic street gang" referred to in his 1967 IT columns and on the Perfumed Garden. Additional sleevenotes (with references to René Daumal and the Maharishi) by (Barry) Miles of International Times.


 * Forest: Forest
 * JP: "In the autumn of a year which historians have, with the aid of carbon dating, pin-pointed as 1968, I was in the gay carbon-monoxide cloud some authorities call Birmingham, in pursuit of a ladye [sic] with what I considered to be a dangerously high nubility quotient..." (read more)


 * Velvett Fogg: Velvett Fogg
 * JP: "There is a lot of good music on this record. Remember Velvett Fogg - you will hear the name again."


 * JP appears to have signed off his sleevenotes "Johnn Peell".


 * Woody Kern: The Awful Disclosures Of Maria Monk
 * JP: “What about this from ... the first LP from Derby band Woody Kern (1969): ‘I think you’ll like what you hear … watch out for further recorded offerings’. People didn’t – and I have a recurring vision of some gaunt figure sitting on a rock in the Peak District still watching out for the further offerings that never came.” (Street To Street: A Liverpool Album Vol 1, sleevenotes)


 * 1970
 * Various: John Peel's Archive Things
 * JP: "You probably have your own theories about the ideal format for radio. My personal wish is for a completely flexible and format-less service and the closest I've ever come to a realization of this wish was during 1968-69 in two programmes for the BBC. These were the first half of Wednesday's "Night Ride" and the subsequent son of "Night Ride" that appeared briefly on Wednesday evening before being pruned in the name of uniformity..." (read more)


 * Pentangle: Cruel Sister


 * 1971
 * Moonkyte: Count Me Out


 * 1972
 * JSD Band: JSD Band
 * JP: "Trudy of Cube Records is growing concerned. She's not actually said anything but the stress lines on her forehead are lengthening daily. Last Friday she was just a little bit too carefree when she asked whether the notes for this LP were yet finished. When she head that it would be this Tuesday without a doubt she seemed to go rather pale..." (read more by clicking here and again on the image)


 * Stackwaddy Stack Waddy/Bugger Off!


 * 1973
 * JSD Band: Travelling Days
 * Faust: The Faust Tapes
 * JP (originally from Disc & Music Echo article, Feb 1972): "The first time I heard tell of Faust was when I saw their extraordinary first LP in its equally extraordinary sleeve and felt that, regardless of the music within, I had to acquire one. When the music turned out to be highly original and very exciting that was a welcome bonus..." (read more)


 * 1975
 * Status Quo: Live! (EP)
 * JP: "It was 1968 or 1969 ... and Gaffer Peel is compere at a rock festival in Nottingham ... this shower get on stage unannounced. 'Ello', they bellow, stirring the stoned handful out of their torpor, 'you're not gonna like us at, we make hit singles and we're very loud'. They didn't, they do, and they are. At the time I was outraged..." (read more)


 * Various: Chess Golden Decade Sampler
 * online review: “The liner notes on the sampler album are by John Peel and are particularly funny, informative and full of his joy for music.”


 * JP: “Crammed with the usual specious stuff about schoolgirls, Biggles and football … deeply and desperately overwritten.” (Street To Street: A Liverpool Album Vol 1, sleevenotes)


 * 1980
 * Various: Street To Street: A Liverpool Album Vol 1
 * JP: ”Big In Japan, a quixotic cornerstone (that’s not going to look good in ten years’ time, I’m afraid) of Merseyside music, are no more..." (read more)


 * 1990
 * Various: Palatine - The Factory Story / 1979-1990


 * 1992
 * Misunderstood: Before The Dream Faded (CD release of 1982 compilation)
 * JP (writing as 'John Ravencroft', Kmentertainer, 1966): "Nature is the harmonious combination of all life processes in this dimension, balanced by instinct rather than emotion..." (read more)


 * 1995
 * Thin Lizzy: Peel Sessions
 * JP: "The story of my first meeting with Phil Lynott and the boys aboard a ferry, salt caked smokestacks and the rest, between Dun Laoghaire and Holyhead, has been told too many times already. Suffice to say, Thin Lizzy were crossing to England for the first time aboard the same boat as myself, made contact and urged me to listen out for them. ... Throughout the first half of the seventies, they provided a welcome antidote to much of the pretentious hogwash that bedevilled the age ..."


 * 1996
 * Fall: Light User Syndrome
 * JP: "Waleed lives in Baghdad. He wants to hear The Fall. Penelope is a teacher. She lives in Honey Grove, Texas, and heard The Fall on the BBC World Service. Sebastian works in Hamburg. He's a doctor and roams the internet in search of Fall information. Not all the time, mind. Jeff does the same. He lives in Ipswich and has compiled an authoritative Fall discography. William is my son. He said 'Fall LP's don't really need sleeve notes, Dad'. He's right, of course."


 * 2001
 * Martin Carthy: Carthy Chronicles: A Journey Through the Folk Revival
 * 2002
 * Bonzo Dog Band Complete BBC Recordings


 * 2003
 * Altered Images: Destiny: The Hits
 * Electric Light Orchestra: ELO II/The Lost Planet
 * Moondogs: John Peel Sessions
 * Fall: Live at the Phoenix Festival 95-96


 * 2004
 * Brinsley Schwarz: Cruel to Be Kind
 * Tyrannosaurus Rex: For the Lion and the Unicorn in the Oak Forests of Faun

Peel Quoted On Sleevenotes

 * 1985
 * Jimmy Reed: Upside Your Head
 * (Liner Notes by Cliff White):
 * You'll never know how close you came to being briefed about the late lamented Jimmy Reed by A Famous Person. Right here, on this very sleeve. TWICE.
 * Alas, as is often the case with Famous People, both of them were unavoidably detained at the 11th hour. So you'll just have to make do with a few extracts from my 1964 diary....
 * A last thought. I owe Jimmy, or you, or myself, at least a quote from one of those Famous People I mentioned at the beginning. This one's not as famous as the other one but who's counting. Come in, John Peel, a man who has always championed and played Jimmy Reed and therefore obviously a man of impeccable taste whose word should be harkened unto. "The thing I've always like about Jimmy's records Cliff, is it's all such great music to fuck to."
 * True, John, true. But will they stock it in WH Smith's?
 * (read more)

Dedications to Peel

 * 1980
 * Pink MIlitary: Do Animals Believe In God
 * "This album is for all the people who have been friends - Mike Carrow, John Peel, Phil Ross." Read more