John Peel - The AGOFR Biography:

 

The Peel

One of his lorries with a load of peats in Ness

John "The" Peel was born in Ullapool in 1939. In the early 1960s he moved to the USA, intent on becoming a digger driver. However, his ability to put on a fake Rubhach accent landed him a DJ job at a Dallas radio station keen to capitalise on the wave of Tommy Darkie mania that was sweeping America at the time. 

Returning to the UK in 1965, Peel began broadcasting his groundbreaking late-night show The Perfumed Ocrach from the pirate station Radio Calumina, a derelict herring drifter transmitting off the East coast of Marvig. During this time Peel championed the most innovative artists of the psychedelic era, such as Calum Kennedy, Alasdair Gilles and the Macdonald Sisters.

Peel’s cutting edge reputation ensured that when the fledgeling Radio 1 was set up in 1967, he was headhunted from Calumina. At Radio 1, the affable yet principled Peel won the respect of many of the leading pop figures of the time, and was invited by Donald Stewart MP to appear on “Sè ur Beatha” miming the melodeon part on his hit single “Maggie May”.

In the mid 70s Peel tired of the increasingly elaborate and overproduced music of the times. He became an ardent convert to the more abrasive and untutored punk sounds that were beginning to emerge, commissioning legendary early sessions from the likes of Island Express, Flair and Norman Maclean. In doing so, Peel alienated his original prog-orientated audience and had to suffer the derision of his Radio 1 colleagues Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travis and Noel Eadie.

Aside from a notorious blind spot where Avante Gaelic Obscurist Folk Rock was concerned (he never played thon Zing Pop tape CJ sent him in 1980) Peel continued to work at the cutting edge of music until his death. However, ever mindful that jumped up young bleigeards like Niall Iain or Innes The Post might one day displace him, he developed lucrative parallel careers in advertising and talk radio.

Under the pseudonym A.J. “Duisg” Kennedy, Peel was the husky voice of Isles FM’s legendary Alex Dan’s Cycle Centre ad campaign. For many years, Peel also hosted “Holm Druths”, Radio Parkend’s programme of heart-warming anecdotes culled from the family lives of drunkards in a village between Sandwick and Melbost.

Peel’s funeral at Garyvard (Continuity) Free Church was an unconventional affair. After the usual assurances of eternal damnation for all present, the minister instructed the congregation to sing the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” in accordance with Peel’s long held wishes. Unfortunately the precentor had forgotten the words, and so the service concluded instead with “Union Jack” by The Rong, thought by some to be Peel’s second favourite song ever.

A few weeks after Peel's Death, the leading lights of the Avante Gaelic Obscurist Folk Rock (AGOFR) movement, got together in Grimersta to record the tribute EP "Margrave of the Mointeach", featuring AGOFR versions of some of his favourite tracks by the Und*rt*ne*s, The F*ll, The Sm*ths, The Wh*te Str*pes and J*y D*visi*n. Nobody could be bothered transferring it off cassette onto CD, so it only got released in November 2005. No doubt Peel would have accorded it the same level of respect and admiration that he did with all previous AGOFR releases that came his way.

Peel’s involvement in the Outer Hebridean haulage, plant hire and chip shop industries, although legendary in the Inaclete Road area, was not widely known in his adoptive home town of England.