john peel

[JKiF]

t's only pop music, guys, not Beethoven

 

Financial Times (London, England)

November 1, 2004 Monday

London Edition 1

 

The Princess Diana syndrome was in evidence last week. Insomniacs surfing the dial on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning could be excused for thinking that the world had lost an international peacemaker or the curer of Aids. The voice of John Peel was heard throughout the land, in a subtly varying range of accents.

 

In a Front Row devoted entirely to the sexagenarian DJ, Andy Kershaw unwittingly put his finger on why some of us remained impervious to the Peel spell. The former John Ravenscroft from the Wirral had first pretended to be a down-home Scouser when in Beatles-fancying America, but his whole life had been an attempt to deny middle-class roots and public-school education. Possibly admirable (and doubtless necessary), it explained the clash between northern drone and talking proper that the night's nostalgic sampling threw up. It was strange, too, to recall the inconsistency in Peel's initial attitude to what he once termed Middle England and his acquiescence in ultimately being taken to its bosom in Radio 4's Home Truths.

 

On various wavelengths the superlatives about the most important figure in British music in the past 40 years came thick and fast. Gambaccini, Holland, Albarn - colleagues and proteges, mediafolk and musicians - paid tribute. With all due regret for a notable broadcaster and much-loved individual, am I alone in finding the reaction OTT? Peel's innate rebelliousness caused him to pioneer lesser-known areas of music and unknown artists, but he could sound like self-parody. At worst there were moments for Pseuds' Corner.

 

And the self-importance of the pop and rock world as it emerged over those few hours was suffocating, ludicrous and sinister. This is pop music, guys, an industry aiming ephemeral products at impulse buyers with instant gratification in mind. Beethoven's late quartets it ain't. Plumbing the mysteries of human existence, delving into the recesses of the human heart, assessing man's place in the universe: none of these are its business nor should they be.

 

It's not created to be revived and reinterpreted over the centuries. It's not Bach, "A Groovy Kind of Love" and "A Lovers' Concerto" notwithstanding. Loading it with such portentousness merely emphasises how eagerly we scuttle towards the easy, the glib, the populist and anything lending itself to pseudo-sociological and quasi-artistic generalisations. All we needed was Christopher Frayling to announce a memorial in Hyde Park. As it was, a grieving statement from Tony Blair, in tones indistinguishable from those used when speaking of war casualties, set the perfect seal on the whole sad event.

 

Peel was an influential broadcaster who formed the taste of many music fans and helped some unknown performers to recognition. He was good at his job. Let's not make his memory, his undoubted professionalism, tacky with hyperbole. Even now, I'm sure, Front Row is preparing for Mozart's 250th birthday in 15 months' time. Three minutes of stilted questions to an obscure academic from a carefully primed presenter reading from a cribsheet, stumbling over the foreign words and alien names? You can bet that there will be no word from Downing Street.

 

Martin Hoyle