Pete Townshend’s John Peel lecture
Firstly I’m honoured to have been asked to do this first lecture in the name of John Peel. John and I were never close friends, and I know he was not always an unconditional Who fan, but through his long-time producer John Walters – who was a great friend to me and to Who drummer Keith Moon – I followed John Peel’s career with the sense of a family insider. I don’t want to kick off this series of annual lectures with any po-faced intellectualism. Nor do I want to talk about pop music as art (hard for me because music as art is my favourite subject). Neither do I wish to try to make this lecture amusing, or light-hearted or even ironic in the tradition of the sixties and post sixties pop era Peely and I shared. I don’t want to try to celebrate John Peel, nor make this into any kind of memorial. That’s all been done. So what do I want to do?
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