Reading: Radio

John Peel attended the Reading Festival regularly from the early 1970s, both as a stage compere and to take part in the BBC Radio One coverage. The list below, intended to cover his comments about the festival on his radio shows, his programmes from the event and radio broadcasts of related music, was compiled from the database of this site. Please add further information if known.

1977

 * 29 August 1977: JP mentions his recent visit to the Reading Festival, which he says he enjoyed and where "Capital Radio In Tune With Nothing" stickers where apparently to be seen. "Most unfair," claims Peel.


 * 30 August 1977: Motors: Phoney Heaven (LP - 1) Virgin (JP: “I think it's an excellent record from an excellent band, and I was rather surprised by the only polite reception they got at the Reading Festival, but I enjoyed the Reading Festival anyway, although I don't think there were any amazing musical highlights. The Festival always reaffirms my faith in human nature in a way, because there were so many agreeable people there, like the lads sleeping in the van next to ours, the members of Motors in fact, and David Goughan and a whole host of other people. The list is considerable really, if you can be bothered to make one.”)

1978

 * 28 August 1978: Motors: 'Dancing The Night Away (LP-1)' (Virgin) (JP: "The Motors - one of the successes of the Reading Festival.") - JP refers to the previous Friday night at the Reading Festival, and confesses to not being able to remember standing up on stage with cans of beer bouncing off him, he is in fact surprised he was even able to stand up on a stage at that point! - Jam: A Bomb On Wardour Street (7" David Watts / "A" Bomb In Wardour Street) Polydor 2059 054 (JP confesses to being slightly disappointed by the Jam at Reading)

1979

 * 01 November 1979: JP: "I actually met the band (Cure) because I saw them at Reading - which I was compering - the festival. Best thing about it, I thought actually. I went back afterwards to speak to them. Did my usual, trying to be terribly funny and terribly witty and well-informed at the same time, which was rather embarrassing - horrific, in fact. And I apologise to them for that." 

1987

 * 03 August 1987: The Fall are playing at the upcoming Reading Festival. Peel says earlier that in the day he wrote a piece for the Radio Times on his years as a Reading compare in the 1970s and that he has more good memories of the experience than bad ones.

1990

 * 28 August 1990: Tracks interspersed with extended comprehensive debriefing of JP's attendance at the Reading Festival. Music and Mexican Beers!
 * 22 December 1990: Deee-Lite: Groove Is In The Heart 1990 Festive Fifty #44 (JP: 'I always associate them, particularly the LP that followed that, with the Reading Festival, because of the night that I was kept awake most of the night by the Inspiral Carpets playing most of it in their room downstairs, or one of their rooms downstairs, where they were partying of course, as most Madchester fans do continuously, and keeping an old man awake.')

1992

 * 04 September 1992: Detailed commentary on JP's visit to the Reading Festival the previous weekend. - John recounts an amusing tale from the festival involving a bunch of 90s comedians and his son William.... - JP:'' "And then after them came the Farm, who'd been added to the bill at the last moment because somebody else, Disposable Heroes I think, somebody had dropped out. I like the Farm and I've known Peter Hooton for years - oh sorry, that's me banging the microphone, waving my arms around in my excitement - known him for years and I like him a lot and I like the other members of the band as well, so I was saddened when people started chucking mud at them, which I suppose they probably did because they'd been, like, a 'chart group' as people perceive it. They saw it as being a kind of 2-2 away draw which is what Liverpool had had the same afternoon against Leeds of course. Nearly beat them, nearly got beaten in a curious way, the last three minutes, absolute chaos. I think the Farm pulled it back from being a goal or two down and it was a 2-2 away draw was how they assessed it at the end and a lot of mud on the stage which I didn't like to see I must admit. I felt sorry for them. Manic Street Preachers, not my cup of tea really again. EMF went down very well, as did Ride. I didn't see much of Ride, I'm afraid I was backstage at that stage, having had a fairly exhausting day. Cos you do actually, on the stage for 12 hours rushing backwards and forwards and trying to sort things out and not get in the way (laughs) and be helpful and cooperative and so forth. I was having a few exotic beers backstage. Canadian this year actually, rather than Mexican I'm afraid. Of course on Saturday night, top of the bill the only black music act really for the whole weekend as far as I can think of (Public Enemy). There should be more of that, no question about it. And they were quite astonishingly good. Of course they used the famous twelve-letter word on... if they were being paid by their use of that particular word, and the abbreviated versions thereof, they'd be multi-millionaires. Perhaps they are multi-millionaires by now. Eventually, obviously it lost what impact it ever had because of its sheer repetition of it, but it was quite extraordinary the whole performance. Very, very powerful and I was very pleased to have seen them again." - JP: 'On the Saturday at Reading, I was unable to get along to the tent at all because the whole of the backstage area was so jammed with people pretending to be NME and Melody Maker journalists that you couldn't really fight your way through them. But our Thomas, even before he got to Reading, in fact for weeks before, was saying that the thing he was looking forward to most was Shonen Knife. Where he got this from I simply don't know at all, but this is what he was after, and after he had seen them, he pronounced himself well-satisfied with them. So, Tom, if you're listening, this is a record by Shonen Knife, and you ought to be asleep by now.'  - JP: 'On Saturday night/Sunday morning in Reading, and indeed in much of the rest of the country as well, of course, there was a terrific storm, and even in our luxury hotel it was a bit alarming: we thought the roof was going to come off that. Obviously, a lot of the people who were on the campsite must have had a thoroughly loathsome night. I lay awake, feeling a great deal of sympathy with them, I want you to know that. The following morning, the music was started with the Melvins, who introduced themselves with a particularly long and lugubrious Miles Davis track, and were OK once they got going.'  - JP: 'Let's go back to Reading. The Melvins were the last band I discussed with you. Then came Screaming Trees, another band that, I used to like their stuff two or three years ago, but the present line-up didn't really excite me a great deal, then came Pavement, who were for me actually, it's always stupid to say that "they were the best of the entire weekend", but I'm going to say it anyway. I enjoyed them more than anybody else, although the audience response was sort of, muted, I thought. Polite. But I hope to see them again further up the bill, or I just hope to see them again. After Pavement, it was Bjorn Again, the Abba copyists of course, as you may imagine, and once you've got the joke, I think it's all over, to be honest. They did it perfectly competently but the original Abba obviously rather better. After Bjorn Again, it was the Beastie Boys. I think, after we'd seen Public Enemy the night before, the Beastie Boys looked rather thin, frankly. L7 came next, and again they're one of those...I wasn't much impressed by them. They seemed to be demonstrating, as much as anything else, that girls can be as daft as boys. And Teenage Fanclub followed, they went down pretty well. I didn't see much of their set, but our son Thomas said they were pretty good again. Then came Mudhoney, and I suppose because of the name as much as anything else, people decided to pelt them with mud. Although they denied that it affected their set, it quite clearly had done to a degree. That was a pity because I like Mudhoney, and I like the kind of irony that they bring to their music as well, and was looking forward to the kind of between song announcements, but they were muted, to say the least, as a result of the hail of mud. I was going to play you a track from a cassette of the new LP that Mark Arm gave to me...came up to me...gave it to me! I did those awful things that you do when you meet famous people, standing there saying incredibly stupid things. And even as you say them, you can't believe that you're saying them. But unfortunately, I've left the cassette in my car. That's the level of competence that I bring to tonight's programme, but we'll have sorted it out in time for tomorrow night's programme.'  - JP:  'Briefly back to the Reading Festival. As you know, second from top of the bill on Sunday night, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and I have to admit that I didn't much care for the last Nick Cave LP, because it did seem to me, and people are doubtless going to write in and complain about this as well, as though some computer had analysed Nick Cave's previous lyrics, and then written some new songs on his behalf and he'd recorded them and put them on an LP. There seemed to me to be an element of that involved. Of course, top of the bill were Nirvana. I managed to get my son Thomas and my daughter Alexandra on to the stage with her mates, so that they were sort of, they could see everything that was going on on the stage, and then when the band went off, to kind of regroup or do anything at all, they had to come and stand by where they were sitting. Obviously, they were very pleased to be in that position. Afterwards, I was hoping they were going to say, "Kurt turned round and said something really interesting", or passed on some bit of gossip. In fact what they were saying was, "Oh, he winked at me", or, "he trod on my foot", so they were more impressed by the status of the artistes than anything else. The 90-minute set sounded pretty good to me. Kurt didn't look particularly fit, but then at the same time, what had been written about him in the papers and the tabloids and things didn't seem to be evidence of it anyway.'   - JP:  'For weeks, sometimes months after Reading Festivals, I get letters from people saying they had stuff stolen out of their tents, a lot of rather sad letters from people. This year it seems to have been as bad as ever, no worse than any other time. This is a record for all of those people who had stuff nicked.'   - JP:  'I'm going to go off and have that long overdue nervous breakdown, I think, now, but before I do, I'll play you the record which seemed to get people dancing most at this year's Reading Festival. I played it immediately after the Abba copyists had been on, so perhaps it's not entirely unconnected. It's always nice when you put records on and see people jumping about in the mud, and this was that record.'   Plays Chicory Tip: 'Son Of My Father (7 inch)' (CBS) (JP: ' Never thought I'd play that on the radio.' )''

1993

 * 02 August 1993 (Ö3): JP:  'Last weekend I spent at an event called the Phoenix Festival near Stratford Upon Avon, a three-day event, which had been set up originally as a kind of rival to the Reading Festival, but then of course the same people have taken over the Reading Festival, so they didn't need to have a rival, if you see what I mean.”
 * 27 August 1993: Senser, Voodoo Queens (from Reading Festival)
 * 28 August 1993: The show is broadcast from backstage at the Reading Festival. - John describes himself as ‘slightly hysterical and rather tired’. The reason for this is that he miscalculated what an exhausting weekend this was going to be, eleven hours onstage playing records between bands on top of his usual radio broadcast, coupled with a lack of sleep and no breakfast. - The show includes recorded interviews with Kat Bjelland from Babes In Toyland, Billy Coté and Mary Lorson from Madder Rose, Granville Marsden and Antony Hodgkinson from Bivouac, Matty Hanson from Credit To The Nation and another live chat with Anjali Bhatia and Ella Drauglis from the Voodoo Queens. - JP: ‘At the beginning of the programme, Johnnie Walker, when he handed over said that we were in London. Of course we’re not at all we’re still at the Reading Festival. [Although] The music on the stage behind us seems to have stopped. Can we fade up atmospheres so we that we can demonstrate’ [brief snippet of stage noise]. ‘OK better fade them back down again before someone says a rude word. Been a lot of rude words from the stage here. Well actually the same rude over and over and over again. A twelve letter word I’ll let you guess what it is’.

1994

 * 26 August 1994: Flaming Lips (live at Reading Festival) - The programme comes from backstage at the Reading Festival and includes with interviews Louise Wener from Sleeper, John “Fat” Beast, Voodoo Queens, David Gedge, Paul Lester and contributions from John’s daughter Flossie. - JP: ‘[You] must be picking up that booming Cyprus Hill bass that’s going on in the background. I’ll just pause for a second so you can get a bit of the atmos’. John turns up effects mike, just as Cyprus Hill launch into a string of expletives. ‘Well there you go. Thank you. That’s your ration of rude words for the time being’. - Elastica: Waking Up [BBC Radio 1 FM Session] (Various Artists Cassette - Reading Present) Melody Maker
 * 27 August 1994: Live set at Reading by Reverend Horton Heat. - The show comes from backstage at the festival and includes interviews with Justine Frischmann & Annie Holland of Elastica, the band Chuck, Mac McCaughan & Jon Wurster of Superchunk, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Nicola Hodgkinson of Boyracer, Justine Wolfenden of Hemiola Records and David Gedge.
 * 03 September 1994: JP: "This is a record that I was given as part of my birthday present by somebody at the Reading Festival last weekend and it comes originally from Venezuela... I wish Andy was here, I could ask him what it means."  (Plays Proyecto Uno: Esta Pega'o (single) Cafe Latino.) - JP: "Last weekend when I was at Reading I did any number of exhilarating pop star interviews. I'm sure you heard and enjoyed every single one of them. One of them was with Jon 'Fat' Beast. I can't remember what it was that we talked about but I bet it was jolly interesting, and he's on the phone again now because he's been to a football match".
 * 05 September 1994 (Ö3): Elastica: Waking Up (CDS) Deceptive (JP relates his experiences of the Reading Festival, how good Elastica were there)
 * 10 September 1994 (BFBS): (John is just back from the Reading Festival and was surprised that he found the musical highlight to be....) Elastica: Waking Up [BBC Radio 1 FM Evening Session] (Cassette - Reading Present) Melody Maker - John had a mixed weekend at Reading, disliking the echoey clattering drum sounds that seem to come to the fore at big festivals.
 * 02 December 1994: show includes Hole recorded at the Reading festival on 1994-08-26.

1995

 * 25 August 1995: Live sets from Reading by China Drum, Stereolab, Solar Race, Hole, Cable and Beck. - JP: 'In the BBC van, as I say, of course, backstage at Reading, the turntable that I play that record on is so far away it's in a different parish, so if I sound slightly out of breath, it's because I've been rushing down to the other end of the van to put a record on the turntable.'  - JP: "I think you have to say that once again the highlight of the day at the Reading Festival, in spite of all the other extraordinary things that have gone on, was the performance by Hole. I was backstage when Courtney Love arrived, obviously the centre of attention. It was all American, in fact, backstage: the only thing you heard spoken was American. Courtney arrived in a London taxi...which was kind of a dramatic entrance to what you'd normally expect. I have to say when she got out of the taxi she was staggering slightly and sort of supported by security people...disappeared into a van somewhere, but then came back out and went onto the stage, and it was yet another, as with last year, another absolutely electrifying performance. The thing about Hole, as far as I'm concerned...they can be alarming, disconcerting, they can be embarrassing at times, but you want to see and hear every second of it." 
 * 26 August 1995: Joyrider, Bluetones, Spare Snare (live at Reading Festival)
 * 27 August 1995: Live performances at the Reading Festival featuring Mudhoney, Babes In Toyland, Flinch and Pavement. John sounds slightly bitter about not being able to include Neil Young's performance in his show.
 * 01 September 1995: The show features live recordings from the Reading Festival by AC Acoustics and Flying Saucer Attack.
 * 02 September 1995: Delicatessen recorded live at the Reading Festival.
 * 08 September 1995: Prolapse live at Reading
 * 23 December 1995 (BFBS): JP: “I was really fed up with it, I'd got a blinding headache from the stress of it all [presenting Top Of The Pops]. I had to do my introduction to Bjork three times, and on each occasion standing facing her about four, five feet away from her, and I had to spin through 180 degrees, which isn't easy for me to do when I'm not holding a microphone and trying to remember my amusing ad-libs. Of course, I'd written a really hostile review of her performance at the Reading Festival, and was thinking, is she a Guardian reader or not? Happily, it seems that she wasn't, 'cos she'd certainly have slapped me if she'd read the review which was very bitchy indeed, I'm pleased to say." 

1996

 * 24 August 1996: Live sets from Reading by Sebadoh, Dweeb, China Drum, Billy Bragg
 * 25 August 1996: Four-hour show. Sets from Three Colours Red, Wedding Present, Catatonia, Ash, Julian Cope and Flaming Lips, recorded live at the 1996 Reading Festival. Includes interviews with David Gedge from the Wedding Present and Tim Wheeler from Ash. - JP: “First class weekend I’ve had here at the Reading Festival. The only thing that I’ve missed really, to be perfectly honest with you, these people.” (Plays ‘Prole Art Threat’ by the Fall.)

1998

 * 30 December 1998: New Order live at the Reading Festival 1998

1999

 * 31 August 1999 (JP on Nirvana): “When they played Reading for the second time, when they were on the main stage, I said to their roadie or whatever, I said, ‘Look, is it alright if my children come and stand in the little area where I stand anyway just to watch the band? They won’t get in the way and they are not going to scream or do anything silly.’ And he went off to have a word with Kurt about it and Kurt came back and just said, ‘Actually, why don’t they just sit on the stage behind the band?’ They were wildly overexcited and whenever he changed guitars and things, he came over and sort of stood by them and on one occasion actually stood on my daughter Alexandra, who was the big Kurt Cobain fan at the time. I don’t think - she has probably been happier since, but she certainly hadn’t been happier up to that point, being trodden on by Kurt Cobain.” 
 * 15 September 1999: Atari Teenage Riot live at Reading

2001

 * 04 September 2001: And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead recorded live at Reading Festival.
 * 05 September 2001: Stephen Malkmus recorded live at Reading Festival.
 * 06 September 2001: PJ Harvey recorded live at Reading Festival.

2002

 * 23 January 2002: JP: “(Grinderswitch) played at a Reading Festival one year and had brought over some kind of extravagant present to give me, because I'd been using their tune for so long, they'd derived quite a bit of income from it. At some stage, unfortunately, when they were holed up in a hotel room in London getting ready to give me the present, they must have listened to the programme. They decamped in horror and took the present away with them as well, and so I never got it. There you go, must have listened to the programme and hated what they heard. Disappointing, but that's the way life is at times.” 
 * 27 August 2002: Icurus Line, Von Bondies, White Stripes (live from Reading/Leeds Festivals)
 * 28 August 2002: Breeders, Pulp live from Reading Festival