Record Collection

(Related page: John Peel's Record Box)
"I have bought far, far too many records, even having two rather artfully chosen collections stolen in their entirety, It is unknown when these occurred. Apparently he left his entire collection, "along with everything else I own" (16 July 1967), in California when he returned to England in 1967. According to the first interview he gave to Melody Maker, in September 1967, it included 800 LPs. But, as he mentioned on the Top Gear of 27 July 1969, he eventually had it shipped over from the US, after which it was held in Customs for a month. Years later he was able to regale listeners with items he had 'borrowed' from the radio stations he worked for. In 1985, his car was broken into when he was in Amsterdam. and still spend between £25 and £30 a week on the blamed things. Much of this money is squandered in minuscule specialist shops physically and spiritually at several light years removed from the glossy houses where cowed customers line up to buy whatever is currently the subject of extensive television advertising." (Record Shops, Punch, 1980-01-16, reprinted in Olivetti Chronicles, Corgi edition, p. 343.)
Peel was a self-confessed vinyl junkie who filled Peel Acres with all manner of obscure and one-off recordings. His preferred format was vinyl: he was never a fan of compact discs, and would only purchase a CD of an album if there was no vinyl equivalent. He once incurred the wrath of his family and show staff by spending hours in Groningen searching for a record shop that turned out to be directly opposite the hotel where he was staying. 11 January 2000. He would frequently beseech listeners to send him copies of records he did not have and beg friends and acquaintances going on holiday to exotic parts of the world to bring him back recordings from those places. He was loath to part with any of them, instituted a card index system in 1969 to catalogue them, and even had a shed built at his home to accommodate part of the groaning mountain of ephemera.
In a 1972 Disc & Music Echo column, Peel tried to explain how his his obsession with collecting and cataloguing records owed something to his star sign (the column was entitled "I'm still a Virgo"):
THERE are disadvantages to having a very orderly nature. Friends tell me it's all because I'ma Virgo and, while there's nothing calculated to make me snatch my hat from the stand and head for the wide open spaces more swiftly than some citizen who says "Hi man, what's your sign?," I must confess there seems to be something in what they say. "You like making lists, don't you John?" they say...... 
He went on to describe in detail his filing system, and how records "become part of the Peel Archive". He also instituted a star rating system to help decide whether he would play tracks on his radio shows. Peel described this on his 28 May 1979 show: * = 'I might play it to you', ** = 'I should play it', *** = 'I must play it' and **** = 'A live classic'. On occasion, Peel put more than 4 stars on tracks: Teenage Kicks had 44 stars on the singles cover.
Despite all this, it appears his appetite for amassing recorded music remained undimmed and that he could never have enough: for example, he was put out on hearing that Mike Read was given an entire collection by a fan.
"What I want to know is, why doesn't this happen to me?" (12 February 1980)
Moreover, his obsession did not go unnoticed by others, even at the start of his BBC career. Writing in the November 4. 1967 issue of Intro magazine, Pete Roche said that "I was round at John Peel's place in Fulham the other day, listening to some of his three million LPs". On the Top Gear of 31 December 1967, JP remarks that he is short of money and the show's co-presenter Tommy Vance observes that Peel spends some of his earnings on "the most way-out album collection in London". Much later, he told his listeners:
"I('ve) got a very small part in a film....called Five Seconds To Spare....The part I play (I don't know what on earth gave them the idea for this) is that of a grumpy bloke who spends most of his life filing records at a radio station. What an imagination." (07 February 2000 (BFBS))
According to The John Peel Centre For Creative Arts (JPCCA), the collection comprises over 26,000 LPs, 40,000 singles and thousands of CDs. As the Pig's Big 78 feature of his later shows demonstrated, Peel was also a collector of 78s; when he began buying records in the early 1950s, the shellac 78 rpm single was still the dominant format. He was also known to possess cassettes and 8-track tapes, but these don't seem to have been included in the existing catalogue of the DJ's collection.
===The Space / John Peel Archive===
In April 2012, an online virtual museum (The Space) was created with the purpose (in part) of outlining Peel's collection. It was organised and funded by the Arts Council and the BBC: the driving force behind the project were Sheila, Eye Film And Television and the JPCCA. Copyright difficulties precluded direct access to the music: instead, at the rate of 100 LPs a month, chosen alphabetically, were highlighted by specially filmed video interviews with the artists concerned and a limited online listening facility provided via Spotify. In addition, previously unseen Peel footage, including home movies, was provided to view. The project ran for 26 weeks until the initial grant ceased, after which further funding was sought.
Supplementary information on the project was released via other sites:
*YouTube | Blog | Flickr | Soundcloud | Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest
At the end of February 2013, johnpeelarchive.com resumed the online release of details of the collection, with the first 100 LPs by artists whose names start with numbers. Material originally released via TheSpace can now be found at the JohnPeelArchive site.
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Elsewhere, John Peel Archive has collaborated to explore different aspects of Peel's record collection at a range of events, including exhibitions and Classic Album Sundays interviews with artists on landmark releases. 
In April 2016, Nothing Leaves The Archive was a double 7” single of four tracks by four different producers, featuring music sampled from items in Peel’s record collection.
On 14 June 2022, a limited number of rare records and other items from Peel's collection were put up for auction at Bonhams, London. 
== See Also ==
*David Bowie: In 2012, in an online documentary for TheSpace website, Spiders From Mars bassist Trevor Bolder and BBC engineer Nick Gomm recalled Bowie's historic fourth Peel session, which introduced material from the upcoming Ziggy Stardust LP. The following year, the John Peel Archive site released details of Peel's collection of Bowie singles.
*Record Collection: V&A LPs
*Record Collection: Classical
*Record Collection: Comedy
*Record Collection: Opera
*Record Collection: Spoken Word
*Record Collection: Auction
*Rare, Precious Or Beautiful
*Nothing Leaves The Archive
*Pop Quest
*The Collection (Peel Acres)
*Disc & Music Echo: Peel Columns
*Sounds
==Links==
*EADT24 article
*Can It Really Be Happening?: JPCCA introductory article
*John Peel Archive on Twitter
*Guardian feature
*The Independent article
*Radio Times article
*Feargal Sharkey article (from The Sun)
*Behind The Amazing John Peel Digital Archive (fastcocreate.com)
*Gizmodo: Inside the Project to Immortalize John Peel’s Record Collection
*Mixcloud: Slow Thrills: Plundering the John Peel Archive
*BBC News: John Peel's online record collection re-launched
*(Rolling Stone, 17 May 2022): Rare items from John Peel’s legendary archive to go up for auction
;Footnotes
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Category:Discography
Category:Record Collection