John Walters

"'The true genius of Room 318, the philosopher, the creative force, the cultural prism, the inspiration, the social historian and agitator, and the genuine soul rebel behind (Peel's) achievement, was John Walters.....Without Walters, the national treasure that Peel became would not have existed.' (Andy Kershaw, No Off Switch, Virgin Books 2012, p. 257)"



John Peel's producer from 1969 to 1991. Born Long Eaton, Derbyshire 11 July 1939; married 1966 Helen Gallagher; died Oxted, Surrey 30 July 2001.

Walters had studied fine art at Durham University and had worked as a schoolteacher and journalist in Newcastle before embarking on a career as a professional musician. Originally a trumpet player with local trad jazz bands (some tracks by Bill Croft's Blue Star Jazzmen, with Walters on trumpet, appeared in 2014 on a Lake Records anthology, "British Traditional Jazz At A Tangent Vol. 4 - Territory Bands"), he went on to join the Alan Price Set, toured with them and played on most of their hits.

He became interested in radio production work as a result of recording BBC radio sessions with Price's band. As he told John Tobler in Zigzag 24 (1972):

"....I wrote to them. They'd heard of the Alan Price Set and invited me for an interview. I told them that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life rushing up and down the M1 and, much to my surprise, the BBC almost snapped my hand off. They were so very amazed that anyone should actually want to leave the million-pounds-a-week Beatle style life (they had no clear idea of what a real group's life was like), and they thought I must be crazy...."

Walters joined Radio One in 1967, becoming Peel's producer two years later. He also produced Radio Flashes, when Peel was on holiday, which featured stand in hosts Vivian Stanshall and Keith Moon.



Walters later became a broadcaster in his own right. appearing on the likes of Start The Week and Woman's Hour. He had his own Radio 1 series called Walters' Weekly and another Radio 4 series, Idle Thoughts. Other appearances included BBC TV's Northern Lights and in 1990 he had a Radio 4 series called Largely Walters. Walters Beside The Seaside took a dryly laconic look at the traditional British holiday.

Peel said of him before he died, "Walters is sustained in his retirement by his determination to deliver the eulogy at my funeral. This will be unbelievably long and more about Walters than me".

Links to Peel
After previously working with Jimmy Savile, Walters became Peel's producer at Top Gear in 1969, replacing Bernie Andrews. The pair's working partnership continued, other than a break in 1981-3, until Walters' retirement in 1991. But initially there was a coolness between them, as Walters explained to John Tobler in 1972 (Zigzag 24, no page numbers)

When I first got onto Top Gear, Peel disliked me intensely, because to him I represented a form of cynicism and commercialism from the Savile era.....

''When Peely and I got together, we were both, for different reasons, aghast. I'd seen the more superficial side of the 'underground' thing and thought it was going to be all that "running through the cornfields of my mind" sort of piss, because there was so much of that "margarine policeman" stuff after 'Sgt. Pepper'...and when you've done a four year art school course, you're not easily fooled by third form poetry or fourth form philosophy, or fifth form paperback oriental religion. Naturally, I reacted strongly against this, whereas Peely was a bit more committed; not that he was into the third form stuff, but he encouraged it in the hope that something would happen, so we were at different ends. But eventually we broke it down, had a couple of lunches together, and found that we had a lot more common than we thought, because we tended to laugh at the same things.....''

He goes on to describe how "the turning point" was when they went to see a festival of W.C. Fields films together; after that they became firm friends.

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Mentioned On Shows

 * 1960s
 * 29 June 1969: ‎Some nascent Peel/Walters banter, with JP having a go at his new producer for mixing up the Idle Race running order.
 * 06 July 1969: It's clear that the Peel/Walters relationship is developing nicely here, as there are several quips from John P about his new mate.


 * 1970s
 * 04 July 1970: Country Joe had recently stopped working with The Fish (as he told John Walters while recording the session).
 * 24 April 1973: ‎Sessions from two Merseybeat stalwarts of yesteryear (plus Manchester-born Wayne Fontana from the same era), and all the records but one dating back to the previous decade, including many old favourites. In The Peel Sessions (pg 288), Ken Garner quotes John Walters' verdict on the show in 1992 as "must have been one of Peel's funny periods."
 * 02 November 1973: ‎A Touch Of Moon, produced by Walters
 * D024 (unknown date, 1974/1975): "The programme produced of course by John Walters."
 * 11 August 1976: “And producer John Walters and myself are often to be seen around London exciting the admiration of young girls in our matching Eddie Riff sweatshirts, and these sweatshirts were issued to coincide with the release of the LP ‘In Search of Eddie Riff’ by Andy Mackay, from which this excellent tune is taken.”
 * 16 August 1976: "And ebullient producer John Walters was just saying that he remembers Cream recording that for a Top Gear session, ooh, ever so many years ago."
 * 10 December 1976: Punk special. Walters: "It's not meant to be a history of punk, but a presentation of the music, after all the remarks about the sociology of the players. It's not like the BBC is jumping on the punk bandwagon, but just some examples of what the actual artists sound like." (As reprinted in In Session Tonight, Ken Garner, BBC Books 1993, p.102.)
 * 30 December 1976: "John Walters and meself were talking recently to a girl who works at the BBC called Veronica, and discussing the Beatles, and she said, "Oh yes, I can just remember them." Amazing when you think about it."
 * 21 March 1977: ‎(Kid Jensen sitting in for Peel: "Thanks to Thin Lizzy, producer John Walters and of course to you for listening, and I hope you'll join me tomorrow night for Graham Parker & The Rumour. Goodnight."
 * 11 May 1977: ‎ Repeat of Roxy Music session #3. JP claims it was their first and that the producer was John Walters (Ken Garner lists Mike Franks).
 * 04 August 1978: ‎ JP suspects that John Walters is guilty of a running order joke when he follows 'Rose Of Cimarron' with 'Hippys Graveyard'.
 * 29 September 1978: ‎"Haven’t played that for a very long time obviously, but a great record I think. And here’s a connection between that record and the next one that I bet even John Walters didn’t foresee."
 * 04 October 1978: "And while that was going on John Walters was delivering himself of a soliloquy on idiot dancing and mourning its passing. I don’t quite understand why – I don’t imagine he’d be very graceful at it himself.”
 * 12 October 1978: “And producer John Walters is currently vacationing in the barbarous splendor of his mother’s house in the Isle Of White, but he would regard this as being a programming touch worthy of himself. We follow Night Time with White Night.”
 * 02 November 1978: Peel blames Walters for following The Nips with Half Japanese.
 * 11 June 1979: Before playing a Barbara Cartland track JP says he and Walters thought it would do listeners good to here something sincere.
 * 28 June 1979: Peel is somewhat taken with an erotic photograph on the back of the Jane Aire & The Belvederes record, although John Walters apparently was nonplussed.
 * 17 July 1979: ‎ Peel points out the programming hand of John Walters in a series of telephone-related songs.
 * 06 March 1980: ‎JP says he and Walters will deliver a "good thwacking" if they ever find the 15-year-old with "good taste" -- meaning Genesis, Police and Rice & Lloyd-Weber -- mentioned in a recent Sunday Times column by Derek Jewel ("an infallible guide to all that is pompous and generally worthless").


 * 1980s
 * 22 May 1980: JP (after playing U2's '11 O'Clock Tick Tock'): "What kind of a DJ am I? Don't answer that question; I should have played that at 11 o'clock and indeed Walters had intended that I should do.... As it is, it's what, 9 minutes past 11. It's not the same is it? Be honest."
 * 21 July 1980: Peel & John Walters decided to make this an all records show as there was so much good stuff waiting to be played.
 * 23 July 1981: ‎Trailer for Walters' Weekly
 * 12 September 1981 ‎(Peel's Pleasures): Voice of John Walters pre-recording his Walters' Weekly show and indicating mistakes to the tape editor by going "beep" (frequently)
 * 30 September 1982: Chris Farlow plays live with backing band that includes John Walters.
 * 19 December 1984: "Walters always says that, if I die before him, and he's asked to go on the radio and do a kind of 'Tribute To John Peel', he'll play When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease. He's got it all worked out. Then I'll have some kind of Radio One Fun Funeral. Actually, I suppose 'Funneral' is what they'll call it. It'll be terrific."
 * 02 January 1985: ‎ JP has been told by John Walters to mention that he has won the Sounds DJ poll. Thanks people who voted for him.
 * 23 January 1985: Peel & Walters decide to introduce a new "spotlight artist of the week" feature. Next week they plan to feature Kitty Wells (after enjoying the track in this show so much) and get so carried away that the following week they have already planned to feature Marino Marini.
 * 01 May 1985: ‎Features John Walters' impression of an elephant.
 * 24 July 1985: Upcoming at the weekend is a five-hour Arena blues night on BBC-2 that will include John Walters interviewing BB King.
 * 12 August 1985: ‎Peel plays a Sanny X and P-Rez track that is apparently a favourite of John Walters. JP verdict: “I know it’s awful, but I mean it’s satisfyingly awful rather than being just awful.”
 * 22 December 1986: ‎'It can hardly have escaped your notice over the past few years that Walters is spreading through the media like some virulent form of creeper, and has even got his foot in our door now." Trailer follows for Janice Long Christmas show the next day, voiced by Long and John Walters.
 * 29 September 1987: ‎Peel explains that both Walters and office secretary Janice were off sick during the day, so he had to do all the work for the show, including answering the telephone. He resorts to reading the music press while the records are playing in order to discover what gigs, if any, his session guests have coming up.
 * 16 June 1987: Peel reads out a postcard sent to him and Walters from Ted Chippington in the USA.
 * 30 June 1987: Peel relates that Cud were only one of five bands chosen for sessions on the basis of demo tapes heard on the car stereo by JP himself (who was driving) and John Walters.
 * 05 October 1988: "A bonny start for bubbling brunette John Walters. I particularly liked the rapping with Overlord X and indeed the rapping by Overlord X. Our sessions come, as Walters said, from the Funky Ginger and My Bloody Valentine. And if you heard him you'll know he played a new tune from the Fall and said that I'd play another one."
 * 11 July 1989: "Today, producer John Walters is 50, and fittingly he spent it at home sitting in the sun. I hope he's had a good day, and I hope he has lots more of them, and I bet you do too." ‎
 * 30 August 1989: ‎JP 50th birthday special, introduced by John Walters.
 * 06 November 1989: JP: "Within ten seconds of that starting, John Walters was on the phone, but within another ten seconds we were cut off. I don't think he's noticed yet, he's probably still sitting there talking at the other end of the phone."


 * 1990s
 * 30 June 1991: John Walters' last show as producer. Peel pays tribute: "Career In Rock" brings me rather neatly into the subject of John Walters, because in one minute's time, his hand will leave the tiller of this programme after 20-odd years. I'm not going to make a long speech about it, because there's not really much more that I can say. I mean, people who've listened regularly to the programme will quite clearly know what a considerable debt we owe to him, and he's going to be very much missed. We've always tried to think of different ways of describing our relationship: quite clearly, the words that he uses are very different from the ones that I use, but the neatest way that I've managed to conjure it up anyway is to say that we're like a man and his dog, each imagining the other to be the dog, and I think that's not a million miles from the way that it's worked over the years." (Ken Garner relates (in The Peel Sessions, p. 137-9) that Walters, unusually for him, broke down as he listened to this pre-recorded show. As Ken explains, "He had made Peel his life's work, and now it was over.")
 * 26 October 1991: "Terry also points out in his letter, "Jacko the mindermast" (shouldn't that be mastermind?) "behind Stiff Records had an interesting Dandelion single the other day: Bill Oddie performing On Ilkley Moor Baht'At in the manner of Joe Cocker, and yourself on the B side singing Hare Krishna." He says, "We think it's time you gave it an airing on the show. Don't be shy." No chance Terry, and I suspect that I own all of the copies apart from the one that you found. Also featuring on that particular recording was John Walters, and indeed the Pig."
 * 05 April 1992 (BFBS): "If people say, "Who's the greatest DJ who ever lived?," an extraordinary question to ask, but when they do, I always name Fluff, because I do think he's quite magnificent. I used to do a programme immediately after the one that he did, and used to do trails for it, John Walters and I, he was the producer of the programme. He used to make a great number of offensive remarks about Fluff, as you might imagine. One of the theories that we had was that he'd had so many facelifts that his ears had passed each other on the top of his head, and if you look very closely at him, his ears were on upside down."
 * 01 January 1993: "I was listening to Radio Four, because it is important to monitor what's going on on the other networks. They were having their pick of the year, and it's really frustrating listening to that. I'm not suggesting they should have picked anything from this programme, although why not, you know? But there was nothing from Radio 1 at all. In fact, the only time that Radio 1 got mentioned in the entire programme was when they played a little bit of John Walters, which was highly entertaining, but they said, 'former Radio 1 producer', and that was the only mention of it."
 * 13 August 1993: "I was disconcerted a few weeks ago when somebody wrote and told me that my attempts at saying things in Welsh sounded German. Oddly enough, John Walters always used to say that my attempts at saying things in German sounded Welsh."


 * 2001


 * 31 July 2001: Peel's first show since learning of the death of former producer and friend John Walters.
 * 01 August 2001: The Son House session was repeated largely at the suggestion of the White Stripes. It was just coincidence that the session, produced by John Walters, was scheduled into the programme the day after Walters' death had been announced.
 * 05 March 2002: Peel had been in London the previous day with Sheila for a memorial event for John Walters. He tells an amusing anecdote about Walters' response to Peel's warning about an incident involving rude language in the show.
 * 09 April 2002: ‎A listener asks if there's any chance of a box set of Viv Stanshall sessions: "Well, it's one of those faintly frustrating, in fact very frustrating, things. Because John Walters always wanted Viv Stanshall to release the things that he did for these programmes on record. But Viv being Viv always wanted to go away and re-record them, and also being Viv, never got very far with the project, which is a pity." Peel also says the Stevie Wonder track played on this show had followed him around NZ. Recalls that he debuted and played the LP (Talking Book) in its entirety back in 1972, adding that John Walters had been a great Stevie Wonder fan.
 * 14 May 2002: ‎Plays a track from the Siouxsie & The Banshees debut album after learning they are going on tour; says he hadn’t realized they were still going in any meaningful way: “The late John Walters and myself were mad for Siouxsie & The Banshees, and Mary Anne Hobbs reckons she can remember me playing an entire Siouxsie & The Banshees LP through from start to finish on one occasion."
 * 05 February 2003: "Do you know I've supported Liverpool all of my life, I mean that's fifty years or more. And these bastards are a disgrace, they really are. John Walters, who was the producer of this programme for about twenty years, was a Crystal Palace supporter and congratulations to them. He'd be enjoying tonight hugely."
 * 13 May 2004: The Alan Price Set song played is from a 1966 French pressing that has been sent by listener: "I'd never heard it before, and it was composed by the man who produced this programme for 20 years or more and was best man at our wedding - John Walters."
 * 29 September 2004: 'I'm Looking Over A Fourleaf Clover' is played as a Pig's Big 78: "Made the Pig and myself quite sad, actually, because it reminded us so much of the late John Walters, who produced this programme for twenty years or so, because, as I say, he used to do an excellent version of that, and he was, I suppose, my best mate, and I don't really have a best mate in the same way now."

Links

 * Extracts from first Peel show after Walters death
 * BBC News report of his death
 * BBC News obituary
 * The Independent obituary
 * The Guardian obituary
 * A collection of Walters Week mp3's to download
 * John Walters on Room 101
 * Mark E Smith on John Walters
 * Walters on Peel's This Is Your Life
 * Walters on Room 101 Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Trakmarx/ZigZag articles

 * John Walters
 * Peel, Walters & Beefheart
 * John Walters Column — Peel's Armpits!
 * John Walters on Xmas Shopping & The Curse Of The Muso
 * John Walters Column — 'Loonies! Don'cha just love'em?
 * Complete Zigzag issue 86 - August 1978 to download