87-577: Loudon Snowden Wainwright III (born September 5, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actor. He has released twenty-six studio albums, four live albums, and six compilations. Some of his best-known songs include "The Swimming Song", "Motel Blues", "The Man Who Couldn't Cry", "Dead Skunk", and "Lullaby". In 2007, he collaborated with musician Joe Henry to create the soundtrack for Judd Apatow 's film Knocked Up . In addition to music, he has acted in small roles in at least eighteen television programs and feature films, including three episodes in
174-425: A heart attack and died suddenly at the age of 65. Shortly after the announcement of his death, fans and supporters paid tribute to him. The following day, BBC Radio 1 cleared its schedule to broadcast a day of tributes. London's Evening Standard boards that afternoon read "the day the music died", quoting Don McLean 's hit " American Pie ". Peel had often spoken wryly of his eventual death. He once said on
261-400: A "grumpy old man who catalogues records" in the film Five Seconds to Spare . However, he had provided narration for others. He appeared as a celebrity guest on a number of TV shows, including This Is Your Life (1996, BBC), Travels With My Camera (1996, Channel 4 TV) and Going Home (2002, ITV TV), and presented the 1997 Channel 4 series Classic Trains . He was also in demand as
348-540: A column, The Perfumed Garden , for the underground newspaper the International Times (from autumn 1967 to mid-1969). When Radio London closed on 14 August 1967, Peel joined the BBC's new music station, BBC Radio 1 , which was first broadcast on 30 September 1967. Unlike Big L, Radio 1 was not a full-time station but a broadcaster of a mixture of recorded music and live studio orchestras. Peel said he felt he
435-429: A duet on "Father Daughter Dialogue" (on Loudon's 1995 album, Grown Man ) and collaborated on the song "You Never Phone" (on Loudon's 2003 live album, So Damn Happy ). Wainwright's songs inspired by his first daughter, Martha, are "That Hospital" (about visiting a hospital during her gestation for an attempted abortion) "Pretty Little Martha" (about her as an infant), "Five Years Old" (about missing her fifth birthday),
522-439: A friend's guitar and write his first song, "Edgar". Wainwright soon bought his own guitar and in about a year wrote nearly twenty songs. He went to Boston and New York City to play in folk clubs and was eventually noticed by Milton Kramer, who became his manager. He signed a record deal with Atlantic , which released his self-titled debut album in 1970. Wainwright is perhaps best known for the 1972 novelty song " Dead Skunk (in
609-483: A mixture of records and live sessions, a format that would characterise his Radio 1 programmes for the rest of his career. Peel's enthusiasm for music outside the mainstream occasionally brought him into conflict with the Radio 1 hierarchy. On one occasion, the station controller Derek Chinnery contacted John Walters and asked him to confirm that the show was not playing any punk , which he (Chinnery) had read about in
696-434: A month the average age of the audience dropped by 10 years and the whole social class changed – which I was very pleased about. In 1979, Peel stated: "They leave you to get on with it. I'm paid money by the BBC not to go off and work for a commercial radio station ... I wouldn't want to go to one anyway, because they wouldn't let me do what the BBC let me do." Peel's reputation as an important DJ who broke unsigned acts into
783-475: A radio programme of his own "so that I could play music that I heard and wanted others to hear". His housemaster, R. H. J. Brooke, whom Peel described as "extraordinarily eccentric" and "amazingly perceptive", wrote on one of his school reports, "Perhaps it's possible that John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records and his delight in writing long and facetious essays." Peel completed his national service in 1959 in
870-537: A recording contract with A&M, which subsequently released the albums Murder of Crows in 1989 and Shuffletown in 1990. Shuffletown, produced by T Bone Burnett , represented a shift in musical direction towards the " alt country " genre. Henry's next two recordings, Short Man's Room (1992) and Kindness of the World (1993), featured members of the country-rock band the Jayhawks . The song "King's Highway"
957-714: A relationship with singer Suzzy Roche , during which they had a daughter, Lucy Wainwright Roche , who is also a musician. The relationship ended, although Wainwright and Suzzy Roche remain on good terms and occasionally appear onstage together, sometimes with Lucy. Wainwright's second marriage was to Ritamarie Kelly, and the couple lived in Los Angeles. This also ended in divorce. They have a daughter, Alexandra (Lexie) Kelly Wainwright (born 1993). Since 2015, Wainwright has lived with Susan Morrison, an editor at The New Yorker . Wainright's first wife, Kate McGarrigle, wrote her song "Go Leave" about him. In it, she recounts how in
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#17327981867221044-619: A result of his BFBS programme he was voted, in Germany, "Top DJ in Europe". Peel was an occasional presenter of Top of the Pops on BBC1 from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s, and in particular from 1982 to 1987 when he appeared regularly. In 1971 he appeared not as presenter but performer, alongside Rod Stewart and the Faces , pretending to play mandolin on " Maggie May ". He often presented
1131-568: A simultaneous broadcast on BBC TV and on Radio 1 in February 1978 (known as Sight and Sound in Concert ). However, it was in the late 1980s that he gained much wider popularity in Britain, when he appeared as the resident singer with comedian Jasper Carrott in his show Carrott Confidential . He appeared as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live in the first season 's fifth episode, which
1218-753: A snappy Radio Times billing. In the course of our historic meeting we had, I imagine, some fine reasons for dismissing the idea of a Festive 40 and going instead for a Festive 50, a decision that was to ruin my Decembers for years to come, condemning me to night after night at home with a ledger, when I could have been out and about having fun, fun, fun." After his death, the Festive Fifty was continued on Radio 1 by Rob da Bank , Huw Stephens and Ras Kwame for two years, but then given to Peel-inspired Internet radio station Dandelion Radio , and continues to be compiled. In 1969, Peel founded Dandelion Records (named after his pet hamster) so that he could release
1305-420: A sprinkling of jazz, rock and pop and traces the rugged history of American storytelling." In May 2011, Henry released the album Reverie with simple acoustic instrumention on guitar, upright bass, piano and drums. "When you listen to Reverie , especially on headphones, you can hear traffic in the background or a neighbor calling her dog. It's not always a pristine recording environment. Henry not only left
1392-587: A trailer for a BBC programme on VD on his Night Ride programme, Peel received significant media attention because he divulged on air that he had suffered from a sexually transmitted disease earlier that year. This admission was later used in an attempt to discredit him when he appeared as a defence witness in the 1971 Oz obscenity trial. The Night Ride programme, advertised by the BBC as an exploration of words and music, seemed to take up from where The Perfumed Garden had left off. It featured rock, folk, blues, classical and electronic music. A unique feature of
1479-469: A voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC One's A Life of Grime . In April 2003, the publishers Transworld successfully wooed Peel with a package worth £1.5 million for his autobiography, having placed an advert in a national newspaper aimed only at Peel. Unfinished at the time of his death, it was completed by Sheila and journalist Ryan Gilbey. It was published in October 2005 under
1566-542: Is Sloan Wainwright , also a singer. Like his father, he attended St. Andrew's School near Middletown, Delaware . Wainwright's career began in the late 1960s. He had played the guitar while in school but subsequently sold it for yoga lessons while living in San Francisco. Later, in Rhode Island , Wainwright's grandmother got him a job working in a boatyard. An old lobsterman named Edgar inspired him to borrow
1653-525: Is the sister of Madonna . In 2013, Henry and his brother David released a biography of Richard Pryor, titled Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him . Joe Henry and his family moved out of their home (and his long-time recording space), The Garfield House, in early 2015. In May 2019 Joe Henry revealed that a few months earlier he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. He further advised that he has responded well to
1740-522: The Channel 4 miniseries Sounds of the Suburbs , "I've always imagined I'd die by driving into the back of a truck while trying to read the name on a cassette and people would say, 'He would have wanted to go that way.' Well, I want them to know that I wouldn't." Peel once said that if he died before his producer John Walters , he wanted Walters to play Roy Harper 's song " When an Old Cricketer Leaves
1827-599: The Royal Artillery as a B2 radar operator. Afterwards, he worked as a mill operative at Townhead Mill in Rochdale and returned each weekend to Heswall on a scooter borrowed from his sister. While in Rochdale during the week, he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in the area of Milkstone Road and Drake Street, and developed long-term associations with the town as the years progressed. In 1960, aged 21, Peel went to
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#17327981867221914-501: The Strange Fruit label. In May 2020, an alphabetised catalogue of hundreds of classic Peel Sessions others had previously uploaded to YouTube was published. The Festive Fifty – a countdown of the best tracks of the year as voted for by the listeners – was an annual tradition of Peel's Radio 1 show. Despite his eclectic play list, it tended to be composed largely of "white boys with guitars", as Peel complained in 1988. In 1991,
2001-469: The "Teenage Kicks" lyrics "teenage dreams, so hard to beat". A headstone featuring the lyrics and the liver bird from his favourite football team, Liverpool FC , was placed at his grave in 2008. He was buried in the graveyard of St Andrew's Church in Great Finborough . John Peel Sessions were a feature of his BBC Radio 1 shows, which usually consisted of four pieces of music pre-recorded at
2088-617: The 1960 election campaign, and took photographs of them. Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Peel passed himself off as a reporter for the Liverpool Echo in order to attend the arraignment of Lee Harvey Oswald . He and a friend can be seen in the footage of the 22/23 November midnight press conference at the Dallas Police Department when Oswald was paraded before the media. He later phoned in
2175-409: The 1970s, he, her then-husband, ran off to Europe with performance artist Penny Arcade . McGarrigle, who was pregnant at the time with what would have been their third child, traveled from Canada to England in search of him. After finding him, she lost the baby, and Wainwright informed her that he was leaving her. Their daughter, Martha, has said that it is "the most gut-wrenchingly painful song ever. At
2262-728: The American singer and radio personality Jim Lowe . Following this, and as Beatlemania hit the United States, Peel was hired by the Dallas radio station KLIF as the official Beatles correspondent on the strength of his connection to Liverpool. He later worked for KOMA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma , until 1965, when he moved to KMEN in San Bernardino, California , and used his birth name, John Ravenscroft, to present
2349-599: The BBC's studios. The sessions originally came about due to restrictions imposed on the BBC by the Musicians' Union and Phonographic Performance Limited which represented the record companies dominated by the EMI cartel. Due to these restrictions, the BBC had been forced to hire bands and orchestras to render cover versions of recorded music. The theory behind this device was that it would create employment and force people to buy records and not listen to them free of charge on
2436-550: The BBC's television coverage of music events, notably the Glastonbury Festival . From 26 September to 31 October 1987, Peel produced a six-part radio series on BBC Radio 1 called Peeling Back the Years . In it, he discussed his life and career at length with his long-time producer John Walters and also played some of his favorite records. The show's theme music was " Blue Tango " by Ray Martin which, Peel revealed,
2523-701: The Byrds , the Rolling Stones and John Lennon and Yoko Ono . The programme captured much of the creative activity of the underground scene. Its anti-establishment stance and unpredictability, however, did not find approval with the BBC hierarchy and it ended in September 1969 after 18 months. In his sleeve notes to the Archive Things LP Peel calls the free-form nature of Night Ride his preferred radio format. His subsequent shows featured
2610-483: The Crease ". Walters had died in 2001, leaving Andy Kershaw to end his tribute programme to Peel on BBC Radio 3 with the song. Peel's stand-in on his Radio 1 slot, Rob da Bank , also played the song at the start of the final show before his funeral. Another time, Peel said he would like to be remembered with a gospel song . He stated that the final record he would play would be the C. L. Franklin sermon "Dry Bones in
2697-642: The Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in January 2010. Wainwright has also appeared in a number of films, including small parts in The Aviator (with two of his children), Big Fish , Elizabethtown , The 40-Year-Old Virgin , 28 Days , and Knocked Up , and the television series Undeclared and Parks and Recreation . In the UK, he recorded sessions for John Peel from 1971 onwards and appeared on
Loudon Wainwright III - Misplaced Pages Continue
2784-569: The Manchester area from working in a cotton mill in Rochdale in 1959, Peel signed Manchester bands Stack Waddy and Tractor to Dandelion and was always supportive of both bands throughout his life. It is alleged that Peel spotted a Rochdale postmark on the envelope containing the tape sent to him by Tractor, then called "The Way We Live". As Peel stated: It was never a success financially. In fact, we lost money, if I remember correctly, on every single release bar one. I did quite like it but it
2871-688: The Middle of the Road) " and for playing Captain Calvin Spalding (the "singing surgeon") on the American television show M*A*S*H . His appearances spanned three episodes in the show's third season (1974–1975). Using a witty, self-mocking style, Wainwright has recorded over twenty albums on eleven different labels. Three of his albums have been nominated for Grammy Awards : I'm Alright (1985), More Love Songs (1986), and High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project (2009), for which he won
2958-547: The Pops in the 1980s, and provided voice-over commentary for a number of BBC programmes. He became popular with the audience of BBC Radio 4 for his Home Truths programme, which ran from the 1990s, featuring unusual stories from listeners' domestic lives. Peel was born John Robert Parker Ravenscroft at a nursing home in Heswall on 30 August 1939, the son of Joan Mary (née Swainson) and cotton merchant Robert Leslie Ravenscroft. He had two younger brothers and grew up in
3045-436: The Rolling Stones and John "Hoppy" Hopkins , were discussed between records. All this was far removed from Radio London's daytime format. Listeners sent Peel letters, poems and records from their own collections so that the programme became a vehicle for two-way communication; by the final week of Radio London he was receiving far more mail than any other DJ on the station. After the closure of Radio London in 1967, Peel wrote
3132-462: The United States to work for a cotton producer who had business dealings with his father. He took a number of other jobs afterwards, including working as a travelling insurance salesman . While in Dallas , Texas, where the insurance company he worked for was based, he conversed with the presidential candidate John F. Kennedy , and his running mate Lyndon B. Johnson , who were touring the city during
3219-650: The Valley". On his Home Truths BBC radio show, Peel once commented about his own death: "I definitely want to be buried, although not yet. I'm 61 on Wednesday—just a working day for me, I'm afraid—so actually I should have a mile or two left in me, but I do want the children to be able to stand solemnly at my graveside and think lovely thoughts along the lines of 'get out of that one, you swine', which they won't be able to do if I've been cremated." Peel's funeral took place in Bury St Edmunds on 12 November 2004 and
3306-411: The air. One of the reasons why the offshore broadcasting stations of the 1960s were called "pirates" was because they operated outside of British laws and were not bound by the needle time restriction on the number of records they could play on the air. The BBC employed its own house bands and orchestras and it also engaged outside bands to record exclusive tracks for its programmes in BBC studios. This
3393-432: The album History (1992). Wainwright was a judge for the fourth annual AIM Independent Music Awards . The singer entered a period of deep depression following the death of his mother in 1997 and believed he could never write again. Retreating to his mother's cabin in the woods, he underwent therapy and gradually recovered, eventually recording Last Man on Earth in 2001. Wainwright and musician Joe Henry composed
3480-451: The breakfast show. Peel returned to England in early 1967 and found work with the offshore pirate radio station Radio London . He was offered the midnight-to-two shift, which gradually developed into a programme, The Perfumed Garden . Peel's show was an outlet for the music of the UK underground scene. He played classic blues , folk music and psychedelic rock , with an emphasis on
3567-403: The broadcast of the chart was cancelled due to a lack of votes. Topped by Nirvana 's " Smells Like Teen Spirit ", this Phantom Fifty was eventually broadcast at the rate of one track per programme in 1993. The 1997 chart was initially cancelled due to the lack of air-time Peel had been allocated for the period, but enough "spontaneous" votes were received over the phone that a Festive Thirty-One
Loudon Wainwright III - Misplaced Pages Continue
3654-403: The confessional "Hitting You" (about assaulting her), the duet "Father/Daughter Dialogue", and "I'd Rather Be Lonely". In 2005, Martha told The Guardian , "For most of my childhood Loudon talked to me in song, which is a bit of a shitty thing to do, especially as he always makes himself come across as funny and charming while the rest of us seem like whining victims, and we can't tell our side of
3741-581: The debut album by Bridget St John , which he also produced. The label released 27 albums by 18 different artists before folding in 1972. Of its albums, There is Some Fun Going Forward was a sampler intended to present its acts to a wide audience, but Dandelion was never a great success, with only two releases charting nationally: Medicine Head in the UK with "(And the) Pictures in the Sky" and Beau in Lebanon with "1917 Revolution". Having had an affinity with
3828-479: The divorce became final in 1973. In 1987, Milburn took her own life. Peel married Sheila Gilhooly on 31 August 1974. The reception was held at Regent's Park , with Rod Stewart as best man. In the 1970s, Peel and Gilhooly moved to "Peel Acres", a thatched cottage in Great Finborough . In later years, Peel broadcast many of his shows from a studio in the house, with Gilhooly and their children often being involved or at least mentioned. Peel's passion for Liverpool FC
3915-434: The end, you hear the sound of a tear falling on to a string of her guitar. I used to listen to it as a child and cry my eyes out". Wainright's son, Rufus, was the inspiration behind two of Wainwright's songs: "Rufus Is a Tit Man" (referring to his breastfeeding) and "A Father and a Son", a retrospective. Rufus has written the song "Dinner at Eight" about his conflicted relationship with his father. Martha and her father sang
4002-421: The first Ramones LP – it was identical to the first time I had heard Little Richard – the intensity was frightening! So I played five or six tracks on the next show and immediately I received mail from people demanding that I never play stuff like that again. Whenever that happens I always go in the opposite direction, so I played more and it was great! It was a classic case of changing courses in mid-stream and in
4089-432: The mainstream was such that young hopefuls sent him an enormous number of records, CDs, and tapes. When he returned home from a three-week holiday at the end of 1986 there were 173 LPs, 91 12"s and 179 7"s waiting for him. In 1983 Alan Melina and Jeff Chegwin, the music publishers for unsigned artist Billy Bragg , drove to the Radio 1 studios with a mushroom biryani and a copy of his record after hearing Peel mention that he
4176-520: The music for the Judd Apatow movie Knocked Up in Henry's home studio. Some instrumentals were used as background score for the film while other songs appeared on Wainwright's 2007 Strange Weirdos which Henry produced. In 2007, Henry released Civilians , which was described as "a rich, acoustic affair that returns us to Henry's rootsier sounds". The final track on the album, "God Only Knows,"
4263-546: The music for the 2007 Judd Apatow film Knocked Up . In addition to composing the soundtrack, Wainwright appeared in the film in a supporting role as the protagonists' obstetrician . He has also composed music for the new theatre production of Carl Hiaasen 's Lucky You , which premiered at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe . Wainwright's first marriage, to singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle , ended in divorce. During their marriage, they had two children: Rufus and Martha , both of whom are musicians. Wainwright later had
4350-541: The nearby village of Burton . He was educated as a boarder at Shrewsbury School , where future Monty Python member Michael Palin was his contemporary. In his posthumously published autobiography, Peel said that he was raped by an older pupil while at the school. Peel was an avid radio listener and record collector from an early age, firstly of music offered by the American Forces Network and Radio Luxembourg . He recalled an early desire to host
4437-470: The new music emerging from Los Angeles and San Francisco. As important as the musical content of the programme was the personal – sometimes confessional – tone of Peel's presentation, and the listener participation it engendered. Underground events he had attended during his periods of shore leave, such as the UFO Club and the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream , together with causes célèbres like the drug busts of
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#17327981867224524-429: The night, leaving him standing there waiting for me. But the show must go on, so I dried my tears and went down the stairs and on to the stage". Studio albums Joe Henry Joseph Lee Henry (born December 2, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer. He has released 15 studio albums and produced multiple recordings for other artists, including three Grammy Award -winning albums. Henry
4611-412: The only available women in the early 1960s were in high school. In 2012 a woman stated that she had a three-month affair with Peel in 1969, when she was 15 and he was 30. She said they had unprotected sex; this was shortly after Peel discussed contracting a sexually transmitted disease . The relationship resulted in a "traumatic" abortion. She stated that, "Looking back, it was terribly wrong and I
4698-494: The press and of which he disapproved. Chinnery was evidently somewhat surprised by Walters' reply that in recent weeks they had been playing little else. In a 1990 interview, Peel recalled his 1976 discovery of the first album by New York punk band the Ramones as a seminal event, At that time almost all the new bands comprised of people who had previously been in successful bands who had broken up then reformed.... Well I played
4785-521: The programme was the inclusion of tracks, mostly of exotic non-Western music, drawn from the BBC Sound Archive ; the most popular of these were gathered on a BBC Records LP, John Peel's Archive Things (1970). Night Ride also featured poetry readings and numerous interviews with a wide range of guests, including his friends Marc Bolan , journalist and musician Mick Farren , poet Pete Roche, singer-songwriter Bridget St John and stars such as
4872-413: The regular " Peel Sessions ", which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist in the BBC's studios, often providing the first major national coverage to bands that later achieved fame. The annual Festive Fifty countdown of his listeners' favourite records of the year was a notable part of his promotion of new music. Peel appeared on television occasionally as one of the presenters of Top of
4959-460: The song appeared on Scar and was featured in an episode of The Sopranos . Henry and his sister-in-law recorded a duet, "Guilty by Association," on the charity album Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation , and collaborated on the songs " Jump " on Confessions on a Dance Floor , "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You" on Hard Candy , and "Falling Free" on MDNA . In the early 2000s, Henry
5046-496: The sound that completes his verbal approach." Scar , released in 2001, featured jazz musicians Marc Ribot , Brian Blade , Brad Mehldau and saxophonist Ornette Coleman on "Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation." According to AllMusic 's Thom Jurek, the album is a "triumph not only for Henry—who has set a new watermark for himself—but for American popular music , which so desperately needed something else to make it sing again." 2003's self-produced Tiny Voices album
5133-563: The story to the Echo . While working for the insurance company, Peel wrote programs for punched card entry for an IBM 1410 computer (which led to his entry in Who's Who noting him as a former computer programmer ), and he got his first radio job working unpaid for WRR (AM) in Dallas. There, he presented the second hour of the Monday night programme Kat's Karavan , which was primarily hosted by
5220-409: The story. As a result he has a daughter who smokes and drinks too much and writes songs with titles like 'Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole'." Regarding "Hitting You", Wainwright has said, "I would never forget that event, that incident... hauling off and whacking my kid...it's not something I would ever forget. There was an interesting song there". Martha had originally presumed that "I'd Rather Be Lonely"
5307-624: The third season of the series M*A*S*H . Reflecting upon his career in 1999, he stated, "You could characterize the catalog as somewhat checkered, although I prefer to think of it as a tapestry." In 2017, Wainwright released his autobiography, Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, and a Few of My Other Favorite Things . He is the brother of singer Sloan Wainwright and has four children, including musicians Rufus Wainwright , Martha Wainwright , and Lucy Wainwright Roche . He has been married and divorced twice, including to folk singer Kate McGarrigle . Wainwright
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#17327981867225394-474: The title Margrave of the Marshes . A collection of Peel's miscellaneous writings, The Olivetti Chronicles , was published in 2008. At the age of 25, while residing in Dallas in 1965, Peel married 15-year-old American girl Shirley Anne Milburn. The marriage was never happy, with reports that she was often violent towards him. Although she accompanied Peel back to England in 1967, they were soon separated and
5481-400: The treatment he has received, and that his prognosis for now is very encouraging. John Peel John Robert Parker Ravenscroft OBE (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), better known as John Peel , was an English radio presenter and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original disc jockeys on BBC Radio 1 , broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004. Peel
5568-480: The windows open at his basement studio, but also put microphones on them." "But there was this singer-songwriter environment, this post-Dylan fallout, of people who think that pages of your diary set to music are songs, and that the more 'honest' songs are, the better they are. And that's the greatest misconception of American popular music: that if you're being honest, you're being entertaining." In June 2014, Henry released his thirteenth album, Invisible Hour . It
5655-411: Was 14 and it was a disaster, and 'I'd Rather Be Lonely' was about that year. He really crossed the line there". In her memoir, Stories I Might Regret Telling You , Martha wrote that, when she heard the song's key lines, "You're still living here with me / I'd rather be lonely" and realized that the song was about her, "A part of me wanted to jump to my death from my tiny seat. Or, better yet, take off into
5742-517: Was Henry's first recording on Epitaph's Anti- label. AllMusic's Jurek described this album as "the sound of....electric guitars in an abandoned yet fully furnished Tiki bar in Raymond Chandler 's Los Angeles." Henry's wife talked him into letting her send Madonna , who is her sister, a demo of his song "Stop," which was reworked and recorded as " Don't Tell Me " (from Madonna's 2000 album Music ). Henry's own tango -tinged version of
5829-512: Was about an old girlfriend and was shocked when Wainwright told an audience that it was about her. She revealed that she "always felt terribly sorry for the poor woman I thought it was about because of the line: 'Every time I see you cry you're just a clone of every woman I've known'. Then one time I was on tour with Loudon and he said to the crowd: 'I wrote this song about my daughter'. I had no idea. We lived together for one year in New York when I
5916-672: Was an inaugural member of the Independent Music Awards' judging panel to support independent artists. After producing the Grammy-award-winning album Don't Give Up on Me by Solomon Burke , Henry produced additional records and in 2006 opened up a home studio where he often collaborates with recording engineer Ryan Freeland and Los Angeles-based musicians such as Jay Bellerose , Greg Leisz , David Piltch, Patrick Warren and Keefus Ciancia. In September 2006, Henry and Loudon Wainwright III began composing
6003-464: Was attended by over 1,000 people, including many of the artists he had championed. Eulogies were read by his brother Alan and fellow DJ Paul Gambaccini . The service ended with clips of him talking about his life. His coffin was carried out to the accompaniment of his favourite song, the Undertones ' " Teenage Kicks ". Peel had written that, apart from his name, all he wanted on his gravestone were
6090-715: Was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina , the son of Martha Taylor, a yoga teacher, and Loudon Wainwright Jr. , a columnist and editor for Life magazine. His great-great-grandfather was the politician and diplomat A. Loudon Snowden . His father was not a professional musician, but he played the piano and wrote some songs, exposing his children to musicians such as Tom Lehrer and Stan Freberg , whom Wainwright later cited as influences. Wainwright grew up in Bedford, New York , in Westchester County. Among his sisters
6177-655: Was born in Charlotte, North Carolina , the state where his parents, whom he described as devout Christians, were also from. He grew up in Oakland Township, Michigan , and attended Rochester Community Schools. He graduated from Rochester Adams High School , then graduated from the University of Michigan . Henry moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1985 and began performing in local music venues. He released his first album Talk of Heaven in 1986. The album earned him
6264-409: Was compiled and broadcast. Peel wrote that "The Festive 50 dates back to what was doubtless a crisp September morning in the early-to-mid Seventies, when John Walters and I were musing on life in his uniquely squalid office. In our waggish way, we decided to mock the enthusiasm of the Radio 1 management of the time for programmes with alliterative titles. Content, we felt, was of less importance than
6351-468: Was described by occasional stand-in presenter John Walters as being "about people who had fridges called Renfrewshire". Peel also made regular contributions to BBC Two's humorous look at the irritations of modern life Grumpy Old Men . His only appearances in an acting role in film or television were in Harry Enfield 's Smashie and Nicey : The End of an Era as John Past Bedtime, and in 1999 as
6438-458: Was hired because the BBC "had no real idea what they were doing so they had to take people off the pirate ships because there wasn't anybody else". Peel presented a programme called Top Gear . At first he was obliged to share presentation duties with other DJs ( Pete Drummond and Tommy Vance were among his co-hosts) but in February 1968 he was given sole charge of Top Gear. He presented the show until it ended in 1975. In 1969, after hosting
6525-573: Was hosted by Robert Klein and broadcast on November 15, 1975. He performed "Bicentennial" and "Unrequited to the Nth Degree". Wainwright has said that, like many of his contemporaries, he was inspired musically by seeing Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. He was one of many young folk singers tagged as the "new Dylan" in the early 1970s, a fact that he later ruefully satirized in his song "Talking New Bob Dylan" from
6612-806: Was hungry; the subsequent airplay launched Billy Bragg's career. In addition to his Radio 1 show, Peel broadcast as a disc jockey on the BBC World Service , on the British Forces Broadcasting Service ( John Peel's Music on BFBS ) for 30 years, VPRO Radio3 in the Netherlands, YLE Radio Mafia in Finland, Ö3 in Austria (Nachtexpress), and on Radio 4U, Radio Eins (Peel ...), Radio Bremen (Ritz) and some independent radio stations around FSK Hamburg in Germany. As
6699-481: Was intended to be demos of 13 new songs. Those demos became his 15th studio album, "The Gospel According To Water", which was released on November 15, 2019. Henry has been described as "a modest-selling 'critic's darling' with a reputation for pushing the envelope" and who writes "songs [that] don't fit into an easily defined box" and instead is influenced by folk, blues, jazz, rock and country. Henry married Melanie Ciccone in 1987. They have two children. Melanie
6786-530: Was never charged with any offences. The journalists Sarah Woolley and Fiona Sturges, in The Independent , cite Peel's first marriage to Milburn in 1965 as an example, as Milburn was aged 15 and Peel 25 when they married; this was legal in Texas at the time. Peel told The Guardian in 1975, regarding his relations with young women, "All they wanted me to do was abuse them, sexually, which, of course, I
6873-554: Was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock and progressive rock records on British radio. He is widely acknowledged for promoting artists of many genres, including pop , dub reggae , punk rock and post-punk , electronic music and dance music , indie rock , extreme metal and British hip hop . Fellow DJ Paul Gambaccini described Peel as "the most important single person in popular music from approximately 1967 through 1978. He broke more important artists than any individual." Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for
6960-618: Was only too happy to do." He told The Sunday Correspondent in 1989, "Girls used to queue up outside. By and large not usually for shagging. Oral sex they were particularly keen on, I remember. [...] One of my, er, regular customers, as it were, turned out to be 13, though she looked older." He jokingly added that he "didn't ask for ID". An interview originally published in The Herald in April 2004 stated that he admitted to sexual contact with "an awful lot" of underage girls. He said that
7047-458: Was perhaps manipulated." In July 2022 a petition was launched to rename the "John Peel Stage" at the Glastonbury Festival , because of the accusations. In 2023 the stage was renamed "Woodsies". Emily Eavis , co-organiser of the festival, said the name change "was not related to a recent petition". On 25 October 2004, during a working holiday in the Peruvian city of Cusco , Peel suffered
7134-463: Was recorded at his LA home studio, The Garfield House, in 2013 with his regular band of musicians (Jay Bellerose, Jennifer Condos, Levon Henry, Greg Leisz, John Smith, and David Piltch). Guests providing backing vocals on the album included The Milk Carton Kids and Lisa Hannigan . Paste magazine described it as "11 impossibly beautiful songs" and "Joe Henry's masterpiece". In October 2017, Henry released Thrum. In June 2019, Henry recorded what
7221-455: Was recorded by Joan Baez in 2003 and Gov't Mule in 2005. For his 1996 album Trampoline , Henry incorporated guitarist Page Hamilton of Helmet and a reviewer at Trouserpress called the album "idiosyncratic broadmindedness." 1999's Fuse was recorded with producers Daniel Lanois and T Bone Burnett . The album was called an "atmospheric marvel" by one reviewer and Ann Powers of The New York Times wrote: Henry has "found
7308-422: Was reflected in his children's names: William Robert Anfield Ravenscroft, Alexandra Mary Anfield Ravenscroft, Thomas James Dalglish Ravenscroft, and Florence Victoria Shankly Ravenscroft. Thomas, now better known as Tom Ravenscroft , also became a radio DJ. At the age of 62, in 2001, Peel was diagnosed with diabetes following many years of fatigue. Peel has been accused of sexual misconduct, although he
7395-481: Was the first record he ever bought. Between 1995 and 1997, Peel presented Offspring , a show about children, on BBC Radio 4 . In 1998, Offspring grew into the magazine-style documentary show Home Truths . When he took on the job presenting the programme, which was about everyday life in British families, Peel requested that it be free from celebrities, as he found real-life stories more entertaining. Home Truths
7482-450: Was the reason why Peel was able to use "session men" in his own programmes. Sessions were usually four tracks recorded and mixed in a single day; as such they often had a rough-and-ready, demo-like feel, somewhere between a live performance and a finished recording. During the 37 years Peel remained on BBC Radio 1 , over 4,000 sessions were recorded by over 2,000 artists. Many classic Peel Sessions have been released on record, particularly by
7569-406: Was used in a " TCM Remembers 2008" TV commercial. Bonnie Raitt 's 2012 album Slipstream , which Henry produced, contained versions of two songs from Civilians. In 2009, Henry released his ninth solo record, Blood from Stars which incorporates orchestral blues with guitarist Marc Ribot , pianist Jason Moran and his son, Levon Henry, on saxophone. The album focuses on facets of blues with
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