Beatles


 * The Beatles are not only the most successful rock group of all time, but a worldwide cultural phenomenon which defined the popular image of youth culture in the 1960s and beyond, into the twenty-first century. They are also the subject of a vast amount of writing, as the Wikipedia entry on them shows [read more]

Links to Peel
John Lennon (1940-1980), Paul McCartney (b.1942), Ringo Starr (b1940) and George Harrison (b.1943) were all born and brought up in Liverpool and were of the same generation as Peel. Yet their paths did not cross; Peel was born in 1939, was sent to boarding schools, was one of the last intake of National Servicemen, and emigrated to the USA in 1960. The Beatles were beginning their career at this time and remained little-known beyond Merseyside until their commercial breakthrough in 1963.

Peel's career was transformed by "Beatlemania" in the US, as he was able to begin his radio career as a "Beatles expert" on KLIF in Dallas. He later attended a Beatles press conference while working for KOMA in Oklahoma City.

On his return to Britain in 1967, the Beatles were at the height of their creativity, having just released the single "Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever". They were revered by many, including Peel's Radio London colleague Kenny Everett, and the release of "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in June 1967 intensified this adulation. The LP was previewed on Radio London and became an essential part of the Perfumed Garden playlist; its atmosphere, a mixture of psychedelic strangeness and images drawn from everyday British life, was reflected in Peel's presentation style, alternately dreamy and down-to-earth. As a Liverpudlian, he sought to distance himself from the fashionable cliques of "Swinging London".

At the same time the Beatles were involved with the London underground, whose newspaper International Times was supported financially by Paul McCartney, at the time a friend of IT editor Barry Miles. In the second column Peel wrote for the paper October 1967 there is a mysterious "Memo to J.L.", which may hint at the friendship Peel developed with John Lennon (which he only revealed years after Lennon's death).

Throughout the late 1960s Peel retained his high opinion of the Beatles, playing their new records as they appeared, and after the band split up in 1970 their solo records also featured in his playlists. Yet in the course of time his attitude towards them began to change, perhaps because of their position in what was becoming an established canon of rock history - which, after the mid-1970s, began to be challenged. In addition, as Peel got older he returned more and more to the key listening experiences of his youth, which had occurred in the 1950s when he discovered skiffle and early rock'roll. Despite the fact that he lived through the Beatle era, in his final years he saw Lonnie Donegan as a more important influence on his musical taste.

TBC......

Sessions

 * Number of sessions? Any commercial release of sessions?

1. Recorded: YYYY-MM-DD. First broadcast: DD Month YYYY. Repeated: DD Month YYY 2. Recorded: YYYY-MM-DD. First broadcast: DD Month YYYY. Repeated: DD Month YYY etc
 * Song title / Song Title / Song Title / Song Title
 * Song title / Song Title / Song Title / Song Title

(Please correct mistakes and add any missing info)

Other Shows Played
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 * DD Month YYYY: Song (single/album) Label