Observer

The Observer is a British Sunday newspaper first published in 1791. Since 1993 it has been the sister newspaper of The Guardian.

John Peel wrote regularly for The Observer in the second half of the 1980s, frequently reviews of live music events he had attended, but the relationship evidently turned sour: he once called them 'the Sunday newspaper that turned its back on me a few years ago, when I was their man in pop music' (01 March 1992 show). He was then briefly picked up by the newly-launched rival Independent on Sunday.

Peel Articles
Many pieces written by Peel for the newspaper were re-published in Olivetti Chronicles:
 * 1985-09-01, Top of the Pops, pg. 301-3
 * 1985-11-10, Cliff Richard, pg. 255-6
 * 1985-12-22, Turntable Mistress, pg. 314-5
 * 1986-01-19, Bottom Lines, pg. 30-31
 * 1986-01-26, Half Man Half Biscuit, pg. 108-9
 * 1986-03-09, Madonna, pg. 151-3
 * 1986-04-06, Captain Beefheart 1, pg. 36-8
 * 1986-05-11, Aural Vandalism, pg. 9-11
 * 1986-06-15, Misty in Roots, pg. 160-2
 * 1986-07-06, Wham!, pg. 333-5
 * 1986-07-27, UK Fresh 86, pg. 316-7
 * 1986-08-24, Fall, pg. 90-1
 * 1987-02-15, Bhundu Boys, pg. 25-26
 * 1987-02-22, Europe, pg. 64-5
 * 1987-03-08, Chicago House, pg. 42-3
 * 1987-03-22, Protest Songs, pg. 235-6
 * 1987-05-17, Eurovision, pg. 66-8
 * 1987-06-28, Bhangra, pg. 22-24
 * 1987-07-12, Billy Joel, pg. 125-6
 * 1987-07-26, Bemeya Jazz National, pg. 15-16
 * 1987-08-02, Smiths, pg. 276-7
 * 1987-08-16, Butthole Surfers, pg. 32-3
 * 1987-08-23, Madonna 2, pg. 154-5
 * 1987-10-04, Napalm Death, pg. 169-70
 * 1987-11-29, Public Enemy, pg. 237-8
 * 1988-02-07, New Age Music, pg. 171-2
 * 1988-03-06, USSR, pg. 318-9
 * 1988-05-01, Frankie Laine, pg. 139-40
 * 1988-06-05, Extreme Noise Terror, pg. 75-6
 * 1988-07-10, Kylie Minogue, pg. 158-9
 * 1988-07-17, Michael Jackson, pg. 122-4
 * 1988-07-31, Prince, pg. 233-4
 * 1988-10-02, Mancunian Music, pg. 41
 * 1988-10-30, Roy Orbison, pg. 195-6
 * 1988-12-04, Happy Mondays, pg. 110-1
 * 1989-01-22, Bryan Ferry, pg. 92-3
 * 1989-01-29, Sub Pop, pg. 290-1

Please add further information on Peel's articles for The Observer if known.

Online
Those with a subscription (freely available from many libraries) can read Peel's Observer articles in their original form via the Guardian and Observer Digital Archive

The below articles can be read without such a subscription:

1985

 * June 16: Open air rock Festivals have, with too few exceptions, been pretty beastly affairs. Repellent food, medieval toilet facilities, torpid bands and heavy handed security have been commonplace, and the survival of the ... (read more)
 * June 23: If life has prodded you on the nose at all in the recent past, may I recommend a sequence from the second programme of excerpts from Ready, Steady, Go!, to be shown on Channel 4 this Friday at 5.50 p.m., as a powerful ... (read more)
 * June 30: Recent trips to Europe have shown that our friends in Holland and Germany, not to mention Belgium and France, are even more persuaded of the greatness and goodness of Bruce Soringsteen than we are here in Britain. Only last night a telephone conversation with ... (read more)
 * July 21: There is something rather charming about 'Top of the Pops,' the clothes, the dancing and the often genuine atmosphere of a rumbustious adolescent party smacking more of the village hall than, let's say, London's Camden Palace. Last week the palace hosted the first ... (read more)
 * August 04:  'She will do the question and answer situation,' said Peter Stringfellow. 'Then there will be a photography shoot in the Star Bar.' He urged us to relax. In fact, he was positively insistent that we relax. 'Relax,' he said. Veterans of record company receptions smiled knowingly ... (read more)


 * August 11: An ICA audience really knows how to sit on the floor and look glum. On Wednesday, as part of the series of Rock Weeks, the diverting German combo Frei Willige Selbstkontrolle played to a largely floor-bound congregation, anxious not to allow the ghost of a ... (read more)
 * October 27: Some of pop music's friskiest thinkers urge that for fresh and creative bands you must look overseas, to America and Australia and a new generation of guitar totin' suburbanites. I recommend three bands from Tucson, Arizona: ... (read more)
 * November 03: As the crowds drifted away from Wembley, the young woman clad all in white, shimmering samite perhaps, danced through the North Exit, through the drizzle, through the traffic and disappeared into the night, still dancing. To make someone feel that ... (read more)
 * December 01:  'My goodness, the Albert Hall,' observed Elaine Paige. The audience applauded this feat of recognition enthusiastically. Many years ago, I sat cross-legged on the same stage and read a by and large half baked story written by the late ... (read more)
 * December 29: In the autumn of 1976 and faced with producing a series of programmes with which to entrance the Radio 1 audience over the Christmas holiday, John Walters and I decided to invite listeners to list their three favourite records of all time. From their cards and ... (read more)

1986

 * February 02: Towards the end of 1982 word seeped through to the major record labels from the dance floors of Britain that consumer interest in African music was growing. Working on the 'Mine ! Mine !' I saw them first principal, the companies hastened to sign an ... (read more)
 * February 16: The Corruption Collective, loosely based on Nottingham, are organisers of musical events, including performances on sites not traditionally associated with song and dance, and are currently assembling a package to include a record, a cassette, a magazine and what they describe as ... (read more)
 * March 02: A year ago there were 15 Thetford Breakers. Now there are three. Andrew Saunders, whose street name - or perhaps, as this is rural East Anglia, that should be lane name - is Sherlock A, Daniel Lish, now Devious Dee, and Peter Hurt, whose doorbell in Ripon Way proclaims him a ... (read more)
 * April 13: Several months ago I listened with some astonishment to an LP by a Christian heavy metal band called Stryper, an LP which includes a version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic which would set a smile playing about the face of the sourest critic. On the sleeve, the members of Stryper, dressed in ... (read more)
 * May 04: On 3 July Gary 'Gaz' Mayall celebrates six years of Gaz's Rockin' Blues, nights for the fervent reveller at Soho's Gossips niterie. With help from his sister Red and brothers Jason and Ben, Gaz has provided a platform for dozens of ... (read more)
 * June 01: You don't need me, I'm sure, to tell you that 'bhundu' is Shona for 'bush.' The Bhundu Boys, all in their early to mid-twenties, are from Zimbabwe and have this week completed their first tour of Britain, a tour promoted by the admirable Champion Doug Veitch and his ... (read more)
 * July 13:  'PLAID LAFUR CYMRU' read the banner over the stage. Beneath it Yr Anhrefn were nearing the end of what had been a strikingly informal sound check. 'I thought punk was supposed to do away with sound checks,' grumbled David Edwards of ... (read more)
 * August 03:  'Drop a bomb on Billy Bragg's knickers,' suggested singer Martin Degville. Quite why he wished us to do such a thing was never made clear, but this somewhat puzzling aside provided the most challenging moment in Sigue Sigue Sputnik's performance at the Camden Palace on ... (read more)
 * August 31: A disproportionate number of column inches in the music press have, over the past decade, been dedicated to the propositions that punk is dead, that rock is dead, even, in the more philosophical publications, that we are ... (read more)
 * September 07: On Thursday afternoon a van chartered by Radio One drew up at our ranch-styled home in the East Anglia badlands. Ten large boxes were offloaded and carried into the house. Each box contained a quantity of cassettes which have now been added to the ... (read more)
 * October 05:  'ONE COPY ONLY - autographed - of the "Live in Athens" cassette,' cried the man behind the Nana Mouskouri ephemera stall as we shuffled into a Brighton Dome heated to a degree suitable for an audience deemed to be at risk from hypothermia. Inside, the air ... (read more)
 * November 02: The first World Popular Song Festival, in case you missed it, took place in Tokyo in 1970, when Israel's Hedva and David walked off - there can be no other words for it - with the Grand Prize. Israel was not represented at this year finals in the ... (read more)


 * November 23:  'Banjo players pluck with a stiff pick', reads one of the hand lettered notices on the bandstand. 'I'm not deaf - I'm ignoring you,' explains another. Around the walls are reproductions of newspaper stories with such headlines as ... (read more)
 * December 07:  'It's a shame to spoil the magic for the youngsters,' the woman said. Standing in the bar of the Gaumont, Ipswich, she was discussing a book written about Shakin' Stevens by his former manager Paul Barrett. 'A lot of bitterness there,' she suggested. Her family and a couple she had met at a ... (read more)
 * December 14: I have never been much of a dancing man. If cornered, I tap my knee in a conspiratorial way - not an easy thing to do and mutter - 'Korean War ... Shrapnel ... Official Secret ... sorry.' The truth is that the only dance of which I have ever been master is the ... (read more)

1987

 * February 08: The enthusiasm of listeners for a recent Radio One session by The Stupids was generally expressed in terms more appropriate to the casualty ward than to music criticism. 'It rips,' suggested one writer. 'The Stupids shred,' enthused another. 'They truly maim,' volunteered a ... (read more)


 * May 03: On a recent voyage of discovery through sections of Scandinavia, during which we found that, by and large, Sweden is closed and that the most amusing thing to do in Denmark is to take lunch in the town of Middlefart, many hours were devoted to ... (read more)
 * June 07: As we sat and waited for Neil Young and Crazy Horse at Wembley we were treated to a playing of - ah, you're ahead of me - 'Sergeant Pepper.' A bad, bad omen, I felt, and for about an hour of Thursday's concert it appeared that I was right. In 1979 Young and the band released a ... (read more)


 * June 19: ‘And a half a lager for me, please,’ I whispered. ‘Are you sure?’ asked the barman, plainly worried. This was the Metropole, Sunbridge Road, Bradford, serious pints territory where members of the long-established 1 in 12 Club were gathered in an upper room to hear, amongst other bands, Nottingham’s Heresy ... (read more). (See also 03 August 1987)
 * June 28: 'Ranjit to the stage please', urged the DJ, punching up the Nitro Deluxe record and thereby promoting substantial activity on the dance floor. Many of the dancers looked as though they should be at school. Their customers ranged from ... (read more)
 * July 05: A check through the programme for Luther Vandross's concerts in Britain reveals no mention of the singer's star sign nor, indeed, of God. This is a refreshing break with tradition. American soul stars are usually terrifically keen on ... (read more)
 * November 01: At the end of their perfervid days at the office, Japanese businessmen care for nothing as much as an hour or two in the karaoke bar singing their troubles away to pre-recorded backing tapes. Now karaoke is catching on in ... (read more)
 * November 15: Bochum's Zeche was constructed during that brief period when it was considered smart to leave ventilation ducts, scaffolding and other construction effects on public view. Spacious, with a restaurant, bars, pool room, and a theatre, the latter with a ... (read more)
 * December 06: It is with regret that I have had to abandon the opening paragraph I prepared earlier on the subject of Gary Glitter: something spiteful about oven-ready turkeys being stuffed for Christmas. For Gary, last spotted in Lilliputian scale as a bulky ... (read more)

1988

 * January 03: The Festive 50, you recall, is a chart lovingly handcrafted from the votes of my Radio 1 listeners for their three favourite tracks of the year. In 1986, as may have slipped your memory, the Festive 50 was made faintly ridiculous by the inclusion of seven tracks by the ... (read more)


 * March 06: Moscow's Olympinsky Village, internally clad with light coloured woods and boasting all the invitations of rock 'n' roll untidiness that one associates with the Purcell Room, was playing host - for one night only - to the local rock community, on this evidence ... (read more)
 * April 10: The officer on duty in the Zambian Immigration Office at Victoria Falls seemed quite pleased to see the three of us when we arrived, already glistening with spray, at his counter. Our purpose in entering his country was, we explained, the better to see the ... (read more)
 * July 17: The last time I saw Michael Jackson at Wembley, he was a diminutive fifth of the Jackson 5, cute and precocious. On Thursday he returned as superhero, larger and appearing stranger than life, with a show I do not expect to see equalled in my lifetime ... (read more)
 * August 07:  'My children,' my correspondent wrote, 'attend Brockweir primary school, which is one of the smallest schools in Gloucestershire with 23 pupils. On July 12 the school had a real treat when the group Amayenge came and gave a dance and music workshop. The children had a ... (read more)
 * August 21: Ask Americans if they know Iowa City, Iowa, and they will look at you with the incredulity you might reserve for an immigration officer who insisted upon seeing the Escort XR 3-shaped birthmark your passport clams you have upon your hip. Iowa City, Iowa, their pleasing eyes tell you, is not the ... (read more)
 * September 25: Cheekily half-inching something of the leaden prose style traditionally associated with Soviet bureaucracy, Stuart Adamson of Big Country, writing of his band's impending trip to Moscow, has equipped: 'This is a unique opportunity for us to make ... (read more)
 * October 02: As a man, who spent his formative on Merseyside, it has always been a source of irritation that so much of the music I prefer originates in Manchester, a city I was encouraged from an early age to believe was populated by the less than human. In the past decade ... (read more)
 * October 23: A few weeks ago Delhi For Delhi were having a thoroughly bad time providing support for Siouxsie & The Banshees in Leicester. Crippled by equipment failure, they were unable to engage much other than the mild hostility of the ... (read more)
 * November 06: Dear old Walter had slipped away silently in his sleep; Nelson Gabriel, close to tears, had asked for a few moments alone with his father. This seemed like no time at all to be leaving the quiet luxury of the car for the rude streets of Finsbury Park and another night of ... (read more)

1989

 * January 01: EACH YEAR, as the 'days dwindle down to a precious few November, December,' I urge listeners to my programmes on Radio 1 FM to submit lists of their three favourite tracks from the previous 12 months. From these lists I hand tool ... (read more)
 * January 08: FOR those keen to see the wider range of pop music presented on television, most dawns have been false. Channel 4's 'The Tube' was not without merit, of course, but the deification of its presenters and their descent into ... (read more)

2001

 * Aug 12: A lot of restaurants feel that they need to intimidate customers into believing that they are good, most people are too terrified of appearing uncool to ask what the hell they are eating. Whenever we go to the Brewers we get a good square meal and without too much fuss ... (read more)

2003

 * Feb 23: This is the first Nick Hornby book I've read. Shocking, but true. Surely, people have said, you must have read Fever Pitch. 'But it's about Arsenal,' I have replied, remembering the pain of the 1950 Cup Final, when they beat Liverpool 2-0. Happily, 31 Songs is not about Arsenal. And, of course, it is a list ... (read more)
 * Apr 20: I'VE NEVER BEEN a one for autographs, I asked Sam Lightnin' Hopkins for his, Jimi Hendrix for his and I collected Billy Liddell's on a flyer for the Reynolds News before a match at Anfield in the Fifties. To behonest I don't remember the first Liverpool match I went to, although ... (read more)

2004

 * Dec 12 (reprinted Introduction to 'Choosing Death - The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore'): "ENT (Extreme Noise Terror) were amazing. So were their fans. Any track more than 20 seconds long was greeted with derisive cries of "too long, too slow" or "fucking prog-rockers" from the faithful ... (read more)

Links

 * Wikipedia
 * Homepage
 * Selection of quotes