When John Peel stepped behind glass at BBC Radio, big wigs were harsh. In ‘67, silver-tressed Brit’s preached conservatism, and Peel was the longshot ex-pirate DJ. By ‘04, Peel’s last year of life, longshot became bigshot, and the UK wept for the best friend they’d never met, the voice whose screaming whisper cried for new music.
The book is about the live recordings initially created to combat conformity to restrictions on ‘needletime’ (actual record airtime). This complete history, citing before Sessions had ‘Peel’ prefixes, includes 160+ pages listing every artist Peel showcased, and it’s a doozy. When punk wasn’t dead, but Queen E turned her royal nose at it, and The Smith’s made knots in old-fashioned BBC’s BVDs, Peel played it anyway. Detailing cussing and spitting punk’s in studio and Marley’s mid-session hashish grind-up, the book chronicles Peel’s music philosophy of ‘like it or not, this is happening’. We Yanks’ weren’t BBC fanatics in the 70’s-80’s, but we can respect Peel’s first reveal of ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Part history, fable, and archive, this is the encyclopedia of the broadcaster’s legacy.

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