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Where do Radio 1 DJs go when they’ve outlived their usefulness to Radio 1? If we put ourselves inside the psyche of your average Radio 1 DJ, the moment they leave the station is one on a par with discovering their first grey hair or the realisation that they make noises when they bend down. Leaving Radio 1? YOU’RE OLD! That’s pretty public shaming and in the early 90s, it would become very pertinent in terms of the station’s reinvention into something that would get me acting my age and listening to it rather than listening to Radio 2, which I did through my teen years up to my 19th birthday in 1995. In fact, I think I may have still had Radio 2 as my station of choice at the point where Steve Wright joined them, at which point I made my excuses and started listening to Radio 1. In the 21st Century, a number of the DJs I fell in love with on mid-90s Radio 1 ended up doing stints on Radio 2: Chris Evans, Mark Goodier, Simon Mayo, Jo Whiley and Mark Radcliffe are the most obvious examples. Even the specialists in 1995/96 found their way there eventually; take a bow Dave Pearce and Trevor Nelson.
The procession of talent to Radio 2 was not a new or sudden event. One look at the photograph of Radio 1 disc-jockeys taken in 1967 at the launch of the station shows faces that are more automatically associated with Radio 2: Terry Wogan, Jimmy Young. And as the station ploughed on through its “classic” period, so many of the names associated with it at that time eventually found homes at Radio 2: Ed Stewart, David Hamilton, Alan Freeman, Janice Long. Even now, you can still find Tony Blackburn, Johnnie Walker and Gary Davies spinning tunes and hosting flagship shows. But one man who was not allowed to rock up to a Radio 2 studio and open his record box was John Peel. That’s not to say that Peel didn’t brush against Radio 2 from time to time, but his contributions seem to have been restricted to narrating documentaries, though I remember The Law Game which Peel was a regular panellist on during the early 80s when his profile was expanding thanks to his TV appearances on Top of the Pops and The Late, Late Breakfast Show.
Peel never had to look for an alternative radio home, though there must have been periods such as the mid-80s or the arrival of Matthew Bannister and Trevor Dann where he possibly readied himself to type up his CV and hawk himself around. If Radio 1 ever had let him go, it’s unthinkable that he would have gone to Radio 2 - certainly not in the cosy incarnation that I first started listening to in the mid-80s, or even possibly around 1993-94. No, I suspect that if he had ever needed a new outlet to play music on, he would have moved to Radio 3 given that from time to time on his playlists, tracks would appear that would not be out of place on a Petroc Trelawny running order. John Fahey’s Revelation is a supreme example of this.
Throughout his life, Fahey appears to have approached playing the acoustic guitar as a way of
climbing inside his country, local community, the world at large and God Himself. Fahey’s work encompasses folk, Delta-blues, gospel, roots and world music. So devoted was he to acoustic blues that several of his earliest works featured songs credited to an early 20th Century Blues pioneer called Blind Joe Death, a pseudonym that Fahey went under. One of his Blind Joe Death compositions missed the cut on this blog when Peel played it on 8 March 1992. In attempting to tip his hat towards his formative influences, he found himself hailed as a pioneer in American primitive guitar. In the knowingly, mythological sleevenotes to his 1964 album, Death Chants, Break Downs & Military Waltzes, this is referenced as “a way in which [Fahey] could express the intensely personal, bitter-sweet, biting, soul-stirring volk [sic] poetry of the harsh, elemental but above all human life of the downtrodden Takoma Park people.”
Revelation is the opening track from his 1989 album, God, Time and Causality. It’s a slide guitar led piece of Delta-blues based on Charley Patton’s 1929 recording of You’re Gonna Need Somebody When You Die which quotes from the Book of Revelation. Later in 1992, Fahey would release a new LP with one of the all time great album titles: Old Girlfriends and Other Horrible Memories.
Video courtesy of Awkadan.
How many of these guys would have playlisted John Fahey on Radio 2?
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