Hundreds of thousands of people have descended on Worthy Farm in Somerset this weekend to celebrate Glastonbury’s triumphant return, after a three-year absence owing to the pandemic.
More than 3,000 acts are slated to perform in what is the festival’s belated 50th anniversary year. And a number of those artists will take to the stage in a tent named after a Merseyside legend.
Beneath the iconic yellow and blue canopy of the John Peel Stage, rising stars such as Griff, Yungblud and Holly Humberstone will pick up their microphones this weekend. The stage has always been renowned for giving new artists a proving ground, with Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine and George Ezra making their breakthroughs in the intimate venue.
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Formerly known as the New Bands Tent, the stage was renamed in 2004 after DJ and presenter John Peel, who was a great friend of the festival and a champion of up-and-coming talent.
John - whose full name was John Robert Parker Ravenscroft - was born in Heswall, in Wirral, in 1939. Over the course of his career, John cemented himself as a firm favourite among BBC Radio listeners and also presented Top of the Pops, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004.
Despite reaching lofty heights in his glittering career, John never forgot his Merseyside roots. In August 1974, the DJ married Sheila Gilhooley wearing Liverpool colours and proudly walked down the aisle to LFC anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
When the couple’s four children came along, each of their names gave a nod to their dad’s devotion to his football team: William Robert Anfield, Alexandra May Anfield, Thomas James Dalglish and Florence Shankly.
John endorsed new bands on his radio shows and in the mid-70s, brought punk into the mainstream by playing music from The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and The Clash, among many others.
The DJ was always on a quest for new and obscure music and his playlists became increasingly eclectic, taking in genres such as hip hop and reggae. He also helped to uncover legendary artists like The Smiths and Billy Bragg, who performed in his infamous ‘Peel sessions’.
While working as a DJ in the USA in the 1960s, John managed to bluff his way into a midnight press conference following the shooting of American president John F Kennedy by claiming to be a reporter for the Liverpool ECHO.
He was also deeply affected by footballing tragedies which took place during the 1980s. In 1985, John and his wife attended the European cup final at Heysel, where 39 Juventus fans lost their lives. The disaster made such an impact on John that he didn’t attend matches for several years.
Just four years later, in the aftermath of Hillsborough, John opened his radio show with Aretha Franklin’s rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, after which he burst into tears live on air.
John was awarded an OBE for his services to British music in 1998 but in October 2004 he died suddenly at the age of 65 from a heart attack while on a working holiday in Peru. His death had such a profound impact that London's Evening Standard boards that afternoon read "the day the music died".
John was one of just a few thousand attendees at the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre, which sowed the seeds for the world-renowned festival we know today. The New Bands Tent was posthumously renamed in his honour and, as the curtain rises at Worthy Farm again this weekend, his memory very much lives on.
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