“Teenage dreams, so hard to beat” (the inscription on the gravestone of DJ John Peel, it’s an excerpt of the lyrics of his favorite song, the Undertones – teenage kicks)
No one has been more influential in the pop music industry than two British radio DJs, Jimmy Savile and John Peel. The blog has already dedicated two pages to them, but I believe that it’s not enough. For your memory, Jimmy Savile, the true soul of Top of the Pops, was a sexual maniac, more precisely: pedophile, necrophile, abuser and rapist of young boys, and so on. Well, I feel it’s time to dedicate a second, new page to John Peel, the man who launched psychedelic rock all-over the UK, punk rock globally, and made German electronic music a worldwide success. Even if Mr. Peel was not a sexual maniac, like Mr. Savile, I can’t affirm that bad impulses, and bad habits have been absent in his lifetime. Thus, the page is dedicated to some obscure aspects of Mr. Peel’s personality, in order to attempt to catch some eventual connection between his musical tastes, absolutely fundamental for everyone who loves pop music, and some bizarre aspects of his psychology.
The earliest manifestations of the dark side of Mr. Peel are perhaps bound to the period during which he worked at radios in the USA, as a disc-jockey and a journalist. However, possibly, bad thoughts started to torment his mind before, when he was a teenager, after that he had been a victim of sexual rape at school. Mr. Peel didn’t become a homosexual, but, as he wrote in his self-biography, forced a 13-year-old girl to oral sex. Successively, in the year 1965, he married an American girl, Shirley Anne Milburn, who was only 15. A divorce followed in the year 1973, and some years later Mrs. Milburn committed suicide. Back to the UK, he abused and made pregnant Miss Jane Nevin, who was 15 too. As I have deduced, Mr. Peel’s sexual life came back to normality in the year 1974, when he married Miss Sheila Gilhooly, from whom he had two boys and two girls. I can also add that, even if Mr. Peel was not addicted to recreational drugs, he was a notable drinker of wine, since the years spent in the USA. He didn’t stop drinking after the diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes, at the age of 62, despite of a medical warning, and died three years later.
The inscription on the gravestone of Mr. Peel, reported at the beginning of the article, was chosen by himself. It’s a clear demonstration that teenage sins have deeply shaped his mind, and that regrets and remorse never abandoned him. At this point, I can evidence and underline the two main features of Mr. Peel’s musical tastes: by one side, his incredible openness to everything recalling the freshness of a teenager; to the other side, the many contradictions of his psyche, continually fighting between opposite impulses.
In conclusion, the energy of internal conflicts has made John Peel the mentor of many new musical genres, such as EDM and drum ’n’ bass. In Italy, Germany, and Austria, there are many aficionados of a sub-genre of EDM, named “cosmic disco”. I’m sure that, without the contribution of John Peel, cosmic disco would never have been “invented”. The mix of the page is an application of that conviction. All of the tracks of the playlist have been promoted by the great British DJ.
File name is “John Peel’s cosmic waves, by Max Look DJ (July 2025)”, about 1 hour and 23’ of the cosmic pop launched by the legendary John Peel. I am responsible of the compilation of the playlist, and of having mixed the tracks on the beat.
Cosmic radio, the playlist:
Spiritualized – ladies & gentlemen we are floating in space (1997)
Captain Beefheart – big eyed beans from Venus (1972)
Spizzenergi – where’s captain Kirk (1979)
Lift to Experience – falling from cloud 9 (2001)
David Bowie – life on Mars? (1971)
M.A.S.S. – hey gravity (2004)
Field Mice – missing the moon (1991)
Trans Global Underground – Sirius B (1993)
Derrick Morgan – moon hop (1970)
Pink Floyd – set the controls for the heart of the sun (1968)
Legendary Stardust Cowboy – paralyzed (1968)
Passage – XOYO (1982)
Wedding Present – flying saucer (1992)
Tangerine Dream – Phaedra (1974)
Misunderstood – I can take you to the sun (1966)
Grateful Dead – dark star (1969)
Ash – girl from Mars (1977)
Only Ones – another girl, another planet (1978)
Little Feat – rocket in my pocket (1977)
Primal Scream – higher than the sun (the Orb 12”, year 1991)
Red Guitars – good technology (1993)
Dawn of the Replicants – science fiction freak (1998)
Spacemen 3 – hypnotized (initial cut, 1989)
Sonic Youth – silver rocket (1988)
