JOHN PEEL had the most complete, intricate, knowledgable and experienced
record collection anybody in this country has ever put together.
He provided a musical education to generations of radio listeners who have a
passion for music.
I’m absolutely delighted it’s intact, preserved and now it’s going to be
available to everybody around the world. I think John would be quietly
pleased by this.
John had a huge impact on the lives of The Undertones, as he did on any number
of aspiring bands.
You can go through the decades, from Captain Beefheart to Joy Division and The
White Stripes, to see the “John Peel effect”.
John is the person I could point to and utter those immortal words: “It was
his fault.” When Teenage Kicks was first released (in 1978),
there were just 1,000 copies in a record shop in Belfast. We had no idea
about marketing but we sent one copy to John and he played it.
He did that over and over and over again for thousands of artists who were
making recordings on cassette machines or putting out 500 copies of a 7in
vinyl.
The extraordinary thing about John was he maintained that enthusiasm for
discovering new music. We all love finding those gems that aren’t in the pop
charts, the ones you can say, “I heard them before anyone else.” John
certainly had that. But he wasn’t just five minutes ahead of the rest of us,
he was five weeks ahead.
He was constantly inviting new artists to his house, Peel Acres, just to
applaud and encourage them. For any young artist, that’s extraordinary,
especially coming from someone with the level of respect he had. If you got
the thumbs-up from John Peel, you could die and go to Heaven right there.
After The Undertones, when I became a record company exec for Polygram, I
would often hear bands on John’s show and immediately get on the phone to
sign them up.
If anyone wants an anthology of the development of pop music over the past few
decades, it is in John’s collection of 26,000 records. What a wonderful
legacy to leave behind.
You can flick through John’s archive at .
Feargal’s fee for this article has been donated to The Salvation Army, a
cause John Peel championed.