- De Quincy Lucian Plantagenet "Pete" Roche, Intro's commentator on the pop scene, the poet, bonviveur, wit and first chairman of the Roche Powdered Water Company (just add a glassful of water for a pefect glass of water every time) was born in a small bamboo sampan off Birkenhead. After a false start as a Cabinet Minister, he quickly made his mark on the Liverpool scene. The council are still trying to get it off. Many people are still haunted by memories of Radio Roche, the notorious pirate station he ran from a horse trough off Carnaby Street.
- It is difficult to predict exactly where Pete's wayward genius will take him. Or is it? (Intro, January 20, 1968, p. 31[1])
Pete Roche was a poet, journalist and songwriter from Liverpool. He edited the 1967 anthology, Love, love, love: The new love poetry (Corgi), which included poems by many of the young poets of the era and in 1967-68 wrote for the short-lived girls' fashion magazine Intro (which in March 1968 ceased publication under that name and became part of Petticoat) . He was a founding member of the poetry and music group Occasional Word Ensemble and contributed record reviews to Cream magazine in the early 1970s. He later co-wrote a number of songs with Trevor Lucas of Fairport Convention. Little is known of his career after 1975, but a 2015 posting on the Dandelion Records discussion forum by fellow Occasional Word member Geoff Hill suggests that Pete Roche is dead.
Links to Peel[]
The 31 young poets anthologised in the Love, love, love... collection included many who would later appear on Night Ride, including Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Pete Brown, Spike Hawkins, Michael Horovitz, Alan Jackson, Adrian Mitchell, Henry Graham and Tom Pickard. In the introduction, Pete Roche wrote:
- ...I believe that [this] work represents a significant departure - both in style and content - from the kind of poetry that has been produced in this country for the past fifteen years or so.
- Part of the reason for this lies in the feeling of impatience and general dissatisfaction which any generation almost inevitably has for its own literary predecessors; and it would certainly be true to say that many of the poets represented here feel a closer affinity with some of today's better pop lyricists than they do with most of the poets who were in vogue during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Peel agreed with this statement, and for a time, Pete Roche seemed to be part of the DJ's circle of close friends. Roche interviewed him for an article on the new Radio 1 in the fifth issue of Intro magazine, dated November 04, 1967, saying "I was round at John Peel's place in Fulham the other day, listening to some of his three million LPs" and mentioning that "there is a chance that John will be getting his own late-night show. Which will make a lot of people very happy, including John himself.." He also commented; "I don't know about you, but I personally consider John Peel to be one of the best DJs to have emerged in the last ten years - there aren't many who are so in tune with a lot of young people's ideas and tastes"[2]
A couple of weeks later, Intro published a feature by Roche entitled "The Pull Of A New Pop-Style", which described how poetry readings were now attracting young people and profiled five of the poets who would later appear on Night Ride[3]. In the final 1967 issue, datred December 30, Peel was one of "a dozen pop people" asked by Pete Roche to predict what would happen in 1968 (others included Pete Murray, Alan Freeman, Spencer Davis and Jonathan King). He foresaw "a sharper division between the mundane, banal music and the constructive, creative sort" and said "Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band will be very big next year, mark my words. And Soft Machine will become better known"[4]
On the first Night Ride of 06 March 1968, Peel announced that the following week's guests would be Tyrannosaurus Rex and poet Pete Roche, because he was a neighbour "and he's bigger than me". Roche also appeared on the 28 May 1969 "son of Night Ride" show, on which Peel created a stir by admitting that he had had VD, but the poet was present in the studio on many other occasions. In an interview, Bridget St John credits him with introducing her to Peel: "I met John Peel through a guy called Pete Roche, a poet who was affiliated with the Liverpool Scene. He knew people I knew at Sheffield (University)..." In another interview she mentions that she was going out with Pete Roche at that time, and that he "used to introduce John to a lot of poets he didn't know of, but perhaps wanted to" (Liquorice, issue 1, April 1975, p. 15)
In The Peel Sessions, Ken Garner relates (p.63):
- Pete Roche, a poet and regular guest, livened up the penultimate show no end. "At first, I thought he was perhaps changing into something, as you do," Peel remembered. "All of a sudden, there was this naked figure in the studio saying 'Hi John, look at me'," recalls Pete Ritzema. After a moment's shocked pause, fellow guest Viv Stanshall exclaimed, "I say, what a good idea!"
Pete Roche never achieved the fame of the Liverpool poets Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten and although Peel's Dandelion label released an LP by the Occasional Word Ensemble, it was unsuccessful and the group soon split up. Clive Selwood's book All The Moves (but none of the licks) (Peter Owen 2003) gives a somewhat fanciful account of what happened next:
"The Occasional Word Ensemble was a bunch of poets cast along the lines of the Scaffold....It was shortly after our album was released that one of the leading players, Pete Roche, became convinced that God had instructed him to eat only an apple a day (no more and no less) until Liverpool Football Club won by a particular score. Pete soon began wasting away at an alarming rate. He was eventually persuaded to seek treatment, and a year later I saw him on a train, complete with briefcase and Daily Telegraph, apparently on his way to the City. Shame."
Whatever the truth of this, Pete Roche was mentioned in a July 1975 Peel column is Sounds, where he is referred to as "the poet Roche", "a man whose name has been spelt wrongly and Roach on the last three Fairport Convention albums". He had apparently won a couple of prizes at the village fete he and Peel attended. In a show from around the same time, after the DJ had played the Fairport Convention song "Restless" and was talking about his weekend he also refers to this:
"Co-written by Trevor Lucas and Pete Roche, who also incidentally won the Chipping A Golf Ball Into A Partly Deflated Paddling Pool competition: I don't know what he got for that, but I'm sure it was a handsome prize. We look after our friends on this programme, you know."[5]
But after this, there seem to be no more mentions of Pete Roche on Peel shows.
Festive Fifty Entries[]
- None
Sessions[]
- No sessions, although Roche appeared reading poems as a live studio guest on the Night Ride of 13 March 1968 and the "son of Night Ride" show of 28 May 1969. He is not among the members of Occasional Word Ensemble listed by Ken Garner as taking part in the band's only session, broadcast 24 July 1968.
Other Shows Played[]
- None known.