John Peel Show

"'John (Walters)'s going to be producing the late night programmes when they start next Monday....don't you forget to be there on Monday night at 11 o'clock on Radio 1 and on VHF for the new Who LP, 'Who By Numbers.'' (JP's final words on the last Top Gear show, 25 September 1975.)"

Introduction

 * Top Gear had run for eight years before a revamp (originally designed as a cost-saving exercise) saw it being dropped. Radio 1 merged with Radio 2 between 6-11 p.m. every night, and then the service returned for just one hour with a new Peel-presnted show until midnight. This programme is generally referred to as the 'John Peel Show', although the Radio Times merely listed it as 'John Peel' and JP himself called it either "the John Peel wingding", "my domestic programmes" (on overseas stations such as BFBS), or, most significantly, "Kat's Karavan". This was a programme (interestingly, broadcast on station WRR between 10 p.m.-12 a.m.) that he had become a fan of while working in Texas during the early 1960's, and on which he subsequently presented the second hour of that strand. (He was apparently sacked when he asked to be paid.) The style of the programme undoiubtedly influenced him: while the daytime stations were playing wall-to-wall pop, this show introduced him to the kind of material he wanted to play: blues records interspersed with comedy recordings.

1975-6: From Prog To Punk

 * With the control allowed him by an ostensibly open-ended format, the first eight months of the programme's life followed the Top Gear diet of rock and folk giants and session recordings from stalwarts such as Loudon Wainwright III with more off-centre helpings from the likes of Ivor Cutler and Viv Stanshall, whose 'Rawlinson End' saga occupied a whole week leading up to Christmas 1975. The new theme tune, rather than being one specially composed for the purpose, was an instrumental by the little-known Grinderswitch called Pickin' The Blues that would top and tail his programming for 17 years (and continue to appear on the World Service after that).
 * The event that changed the face of the show for good was the first play of a track by the Ramones, 'Judy Is A Punk', on 19 May 1976. The musical make-up of the programme did not immediately revolutionise, but in the summer John programmed a series of retrospective programmes that can now be seen as summing up life before punk. More and more of punk's first wave began to find its way onto the show, and October and December featured the first sessions by the Vibrators and the Damned respectively, the latter being first broadcast as part of the first punk special (10 December 1976). With 'Anarchy In The U.K.' already receiving regular airplay, it was clear that Peel's sympathies now lay in a different area, and the average listening age for his shows dropped dramatically.
 * The former listeners who had followed him from the Perfumed Garden through Top Gear and into the first year of his new show had one last hurrah, however. The 1976 Festive Fifty, an all-time favourites listener chart dreamed up in the autumn by Peel and Walters and which would become a staple of his December programming to the very end, featured only one track from the previous year - and no punk.

1977-8: Complete Control
"'It wasn’t a period that I particularly enjoyed in a way, as far as the radio went anyway, because the programme became given over almost entirely to punk records and punk-related stuff, with reggae included as well, but actually nothing else. And I think in retrospect that that was probably a mistake, because the programmes that we do now are much more broad – they cover a much wider range of stuff – and I think that is really the way it should be. But what happened, I suppose, to be perfectly honest, was that the programme became - as it has from time to time over the years – it became fleetingly fashionable.' (Peeling Back The Years, Part 4.)"
 * If the rock audience who had reviled Peel for playing punk secretly hoped that this was a 'phase' he would soon discard, they were to be sorely disillusioned. The summer of punk was upon Kat's Karavan, and to celebrate its burgeoning young audience, it was now given an extra hour a night, and a successful year for the show was topped by Peel selecting his own (61 entry) chart in lieu of one chosen by listeners (1977 Festive Fifty). The premier punk album of the year, the Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks, was played in its entirety by JP, and despite the fact that God Save The Queen was banned across the board in the wake of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, it continued to be played.
 * Nonetheless, John was not altogether happy with the direction the show had taken:
 * In fact, as Ken Garner notes in The Peel Sessions (p. 104), a plan was afoot to give David Jensen Peel's 10-12 slot (he was tried out for two weeks 'sitting in' for JP in March 1977) and move Kat's Karavan to the mid-evening, which would have lost the FM simulcast. However, Walters successfully argued with Radio 1 controller Derek Chinnery that he risked exposing bands with names such as the Molesters, Penetration and the Vibrators to a young audience before the watershed, and the plan was dropped.
 * The point John had made about the co-existence of reggae and punk was borne out by the fact that Steel Pulse and Aswad were being played as much as the Clash and the Jam. However, the show seemed to be trying to cover too many bases at once, and in November 1978, pursuant to Radio 1 moving from 247 metres to 275 and 285 in a blaze of publicity and an Elvis Costello jingle, it lost the Friday spot to JP's colleague Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show. JP was understandably upset at the thought of two hours of airtime being taken away from new bands and returned to the established rock acts he now despised, but at least this freed him from the responsibility of having to satisfy the old guard's appetite for rock. (It also marked the end of the best period of airtime he had ever enjoyed: he would never have ten hours a week again.)
 * The 1978 Festive Fifty punctuated the change in musical fashion startlingly, as Peel reviewed the 1976 chart before playing the new one, and 'Anarchy In The U.K.' replaced 'Stairway To Heaven' at number 1. Moreover, the year had seen the emergence of two love affairs he would never turn his back on. The Fall did their first session in June, and September saw the first plays of the Undertones' Teenage Kicks.

1979-1980: The New Wave
"'The audience of two years ago was an audience growing old with me. My listeners were in their mid-to-late 20s, either students or ex-students. My existing audience did not come with me as I thought they would, and I developed a whole new audience. The audience is now a disenfranchised minority.' (JP in Melody Maker, as quoted in The Peel Sessions, p. 104.)"
 * The last year of the 1970s was a watershed in the UK's history, as a decade of Thatcherism loomed, and in music too it was time for another change. The rebels of 1977 were now turning into the old guard: the Pistols were no more, the Clash, Jam and Stranglers were modifying thier styles in order to maintain commercial momentum, and the tension generated from external pressures resulted in the formation of two very different musical scenes.
 * On the one hand, there was dark, neo-realistic electronica, represented by Joy Division (who recorded both of their sessions for Peel in 1979), the first recordings of Punishment Of Luxury and the Prefects (the first band of someone who would continue to appear on Kat's Karavan in a variety of guises, Robert Lloyd), and the growing success of the Factory label. On the other, the dance scene, which in the shape of funk and disco had virtually passed the programme by, made itself felt in the resurgence of the 60s genres of ska and bluebeat. Suddenly, the Beat, Selecter, Madness and Specials were all recording sessions and getting both show plays and chart success.
 * John celebrated his 40th birthday in August with two shows detailing the records he wanted played at the party, but in his eyes there was little to celebrate, what with a backlash against the 2-Tone label quick to appear and a festive chart that was virtually unchanged from the previous year's. His loss of the Friday night slot was somewhat compensated by the addition of an hour-long programme on Sundays (John Peel's Rock Requests), but one gets the impression that this was not what he wanted to do (this show only lasted nine months), and he would never broadcast five nights a week again.
 * 1980 was notable mainly for two high profile deaths, those of Malcolm Owen of the Ruts) and Ian Curtis of Joy Division. The latter band predictably gained several entries in the 1980 Festive Fifty whereas the previous year their music had been completely ignored by the voters. A signficant show was that of the 27 May 1980, an all-record celebration of independent labels which dramatically demonstrated that do-it-yourself rather than sign to a major label was still a valid option. And Wah!, who would reappear in one form or another for many years, were played very early in their career in a private recording from Eric's in Liverpool.

1981-2: "A Trough After A Peak"
"'Looking back, it does seem to be a very slack period. It seemed to be a million-and-one bands called 'Dance' something. Punk had become an historic thing. It was a trough after a peak.' (John Walters, as quoted in The Peel Sessions, p. 110.)" >work ongoing
 * 1981 started promisingly, when an association that would continue throughout the rest of the programme's history was initiated. New Order had been formed following the aforementioned death of Ian Curtis, and, even though JP had never seen Joy Division live, the new band recorded their first session in January. 23 February 1981 saw the first play of their debut single 'Ceremony' (actually a JD composition that they had performed live), with John being so impressed he played both sides in succession, although he had not initially planned to do so. Nonetheless, there were now only two sessions a week being taped, and John Walters started a side project, Walters' Weekly, that took him away from Peel show production for two years, to be replaced by Chris Lycett (although he would continue to contribute a pre-recorded Wednesday show during this time).
 * Despite Walters' somewhat gloomy recollection, several notable musical highlights punctuated the show. In June, JP played Laurie Anderson's O Supermsan, gaining it a commercial kudos that would see it being played by Dave Lee Travis,amongst others, and reaching number 2 in the charts. The Birthday Party, whose post-punk noise had been championed very early on in 1980, were to record two further sessions in 81 and a final one in 1982 before metamorphosing into Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. An unknown Sheffield band called Pulp were in the studios in November, but would take another twelve years to attain stardom.
 * One of the discoveries of that year were Altered Images, whose Happy Birthday entered the UK Top 10, but who had been Peel favourites since he heard a demo tape containing 'Dead Pop Stars' and given them a session in September 1980. Like his preoccupation with Sheena Easton's 'Nine To Five' 7 inch (what he called a "perfect pop single") the pervious year, this was the betrayal of something approaching a mid-life crisis, as he declared Clare Grogan to be "the only person, apart of course from my wife, who could have persuaded me to go into a recording studio and sing." The year was rounded out by the 1981 Festive Fifty, which for some reason actually had 60 places, presumably because JP wanted to see whether the lower rungs of the chart would provide more interesting fare than the by now traditional punk and post-punk fare of the top 20. This format was soon to see a radical change.


 * Footnotes