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October 25th 2009 is the fifth anniversary of John Peel's death
Tony Michaelides gives some thoughts on John Peel in the media player above and we look back over his career...
Born John Robert Parker Ravenscroft in Heswall, near Liverpool in 1939. He attended Shrewsbury public school which he hated, but light came into his life in the form of Elvis Presley singing Heartbreak Hotel.
"Everything changed when I heard Elvis," he later reflected. "Where there had been nothing there was suddenly something."
After National Service between 1957 and 1959 Peel went to America. Beatlemania was at it's height, and his Liverpudlian heritage proved very helpful in securing a job as a DJ for WRR radio in Dallas. He once said: "They'd got this idea that if you lived in the UK there were probably only a couple of hundred people and they were all bound to know each other."
Returning to England in 1967 he joined the pirate station Radio London, before moving to the new national pop channel Radio 1. He was to remain there for the rest of his life, the longest serving member of Radio 1's team.
Peel played by his own rules. He never interrupted a track, much to the delight of the hundereds of thousands of people sitting at home and taping his show. And there was never an irritating trans atlantic DJ voice with Peel.
He also had an ear for music he felt was going to be important, championing the likes of Bolan, Bowie and Captain Beefheart by giving them studio time to record the now legendary "Peel sessions".
It was in the mid-1970s that John Peel first heard something new that got him really excited. Punk.
He introduced The Sex Pistols, The Clash and later Joy Division and the Undertones, who famously provided him with his favourite single Teenage Kicks, lines from which would later provide his epitaph.
The 1980s saw the birth of a band that would always have a special place in his heart and in his record box. The Fall 'they're always different but always the same....a band by which, in our house all others are judged'
In his later years Peel presented Home Truths and Grumpy Old Men. He received an OBE in 1998 and earned a place in the Radio Academy Hall of Fame. He died on a working holiday in Peru aged 65 and his funeral attracted over a thousand people, many of whom were in bands that he had supported over the years. And his spirit will continue to support today's new music as he lends his name to the John Peel stage at Glastonbury, a fitting tribute to a man who was responsible for introducing so many to so much.
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Tags: john peel tony michaelides
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