He didn't play anything from the charts, didn't fulfill any listeners' wishes and never went off in annoying chatter. Instead, John Peel presented artists and songs that other radio presenters would not have touched with pincers. He was the voice of the global underground, the door opener for umpteen cult bands and one of the biggest vinyl junkies the world knows. On 30 August he would have turned 80 - the perfect occasion for a tribute.
"Without John Peel, a whole series of genres would probably never have been heard; they would have disappeared just as quickly as they appeared. But through him they found an audience and developed a life of their own. Maybe I'm leaning out of the window now, but I would say: The reason why so little exciting has happened in the music world in recent years is not least because it's no longer there. That there is no one who has an ear for strange new things - and the courage to play them."
This quote from Nick Mason speaks volumes: John Peel was not some radio DJ. The Englishman held an exceptional position, he was a catalyst for unusual sounds and made a career possible for many interesting artists that they themselves had never expected. Like Pink Floyd, who was a regular guest on the peel shows "The Perfumed Garden" (on the pirate station Radio London) and later on "Top Gear" and "John Peel" on Radio 1 (BBC) from 1967 and was one of his declared favourites. "The music of Pink Floyd reminds us of the sound of dying galaxies," he once announced. Peel was a pioneer in psychedelic and progressive rock music for many years. He was the first DJ to regularly send these underground sounds over the airwaves and thus declared war on the established, the alto baked and the boring and was always one step ahead of the pulse of the times - who gave punk, new wave, reggae, dub, hip hop, indie rock, folk, blues and noise a forum and often juxtaposed these timbres.
He did this for 37 years for the BBC and for more than 30 years with "Rock Today" and "John Peel's Music", which were also broadcast in Germany and led to engagements with stations such as DT64, Radio Bremen 2, Radio Eins or Hitradio Ö3 and established Peel's reputation as Europe's most unconventional and influential DJ.
