Image by Zetkin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Before there were influ­encers, there was John Peel. The BBC radio DJ and jour­ney­man music writer’s tastes helped define lis­ten­ing habits for gen­er­a­tions — from his ear­ly cham­pi­oning of Pink Floyd and Cap­tain Beef­heart to his ear­ly cham­pi­oning of The Smiths and Nir­vana, to… well, most every­thing he played, wrote about and record­ed in his leg­endary John Peel ses­sions from the 1960s until his death in 2004.

For some­one with such influ­ence, Peel had a sin­gu­lar­ly hum­ble atti­tude about his own impor­tance and that of music tastemak­ers gen­er­al­ly. In a 1970 inter­view for Radio Times, “Peel plays down the role of DJs as celebri­ties,” notes the John Peel Wiki, “and is quot­ed as say­ing among oth­er things, ‘Some disc jock­eys don’t realise the essen­tial insignif­i­cance of their role.’”

His was an atti­tude shared by few in the music busi­ness. One per­son who comes to mind, pro­duc­er and musi­cian Steve Albi­ni — an ear­ly cham­pi­on of too many bands to name — likes to sim­i­lar­ly exempt him­self from the process, treat­ing his opin­ions about music as inci­den­tal to the vital expe­ri­ence of mak­ing music itself. In an inter­view the year after Peel’s death, Albi­ni rumi­nat­ed on this qual­i­ty in Peel:

Before he died, John Peel said some­thing that I thought was real­ly pro­found. He said when he gets a record from some­body and he does­n’t like it, he assumes that it’s his prob­lem and that the band would not have made that record if there was­n’t some­thing valu­able about it.

Of course, John Peel had his opin­ions about music — once say­ing in 1978, for exam­ple, that he wished the Rolling Stones had bro­ken up in 1965. He even had his opin­ions about Steve Albi­ni, whose bru­tal three-piece 80s band Big Black ranked at num­ber 15 for their Songs About Fuc&ing on a list Peel made of his 20 favorite albums. The list, below, should be read with all kinds of caveats.

In no way would Peel ever assert that these 20 records are the “20 best” of any­thing. These are the albums that rose to the top for him, for rea­sons he declined to spec­i­fy, at a par­tic­u­lar point in time 1997 when The Guardian asked him for his opin­ion. Peel him­self found these exer­cis­es “ter­ri­bly self-indul­gent” notes Jon Den­nis in brief com­men­tary on each album on the list. Nar­row­ing down one’s favorites was a par­tic­u­lar­ly painful expe­ri­ence for some­one who lis­tened to so much music, and Peel did­n’t val­ue his own tastes over those of his lis­ten­ers.

For exam­ple, in his “Fes­tive 50,” a fifty-song roundup of his lis­ten­ers’ top three songs of the year each Christ­mas, Peel resist­ed the urge to insert his picks and coun­ter­bal­ance what he saw as an over­abun­dance of “white boys with gui­tars.” (Peel was a big pro­mot­er of reg­gae bands like Misty in Roots, who come in at num­ber 5 below, as well as var­i­ous oth­er world musics on his radio show.) He admit­ted that com­ing up with his three top songs in any giv­en year was close to impos­si­ble: “I could­n’t get any few­er than a list of 250.”

1. Cap­tain Beef­heart & The Mag­ic Band: Trout Mask Repli­ca (1969)
2. Vel­vet Under­ground: The Vel­vet Under­ground and Nico (1967)
3. Ramones: The Ramones (1976)
4. Pulp: Dif­fer­ent Class (1995)
5. Misty In Roots: Live At Counter Euro­vi­sion 79 (1979)
6. Nir­vana: Nev­er­mind (1991)
7. Smiths: The Smiths (1984)
8. Neil Young: Arc Weld (1991)
9. Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence: Are You Expe­ri­enced? (1967)
10. Wawali Bonané: Enzen­zé
11. Pink Floyd: Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967)
12. Dread­zone: Sec­ond Light (1995)
13. Four Broth­ers: Mako­roko­to (1988)
14. Dave Clarke: Dave Archive One (1996)
15. Big Black: Songs About Fuck­ing (1987)
16. PJ Har­vey: Dry (1992)
17. Richard & Lin­da Thomp­son: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974)
18. Elas­ti­ca: Elas­ti­ca (1995)
19. Hole: Live Through This (1994)
20. Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones (1964)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Archive of 1,000 “Peel Ses­sions” Avail­able Online: Hear David Bowie, Bob Mar­ley, Elvis Costel­lo & Oth­ers Play in the Stu­dio of Leg­endary BBC DJ John Peel

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

Stream 935 Songs That Appeared in “The John Peel Fes­tive 50” from 1976 to 2004: The Best Songs of the Year, as Select­ed by the Beloved DJ’s Lis­ten­ers

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you were an Eng­lish boy grow­ing up in the 1960s, and your dad met the Queen mum, you’d come away with some pret­ty heavy duty brag­ging rights.

What if your dad didn’t just meet her, but com­mand­ed her atten­tion for a full three min­utes… an event you wit­nessed on the tel­ly, along with 21.2 mil­lion oth­ers?

That’s what hap­pened to young Declan Patrick McManus, or Elvis Costel­lo as he’s more com­mon­ly known these days.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his musi­cian father Ross’s calyp­so-inflect­ed, Tri­ni Lopez-inspired ren­di­tion of Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Ham­mer” at the Queen’s annu­al Roy­al Vari­ety Per­for­mance was over­shad­owed by anoth­er act in the evening’s line up: The Bea­t­les.

This was the per­for­mance where John Lennon famous­ly solicit­ed the audience’s par­tic­i­pa­tion on “Twist and Shout”:

For our last num­ber, I’d like to ask your help. The peo­ple in the cheap­er seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’d just rat­tle your jew­el­ry.

https://vimeo.com/151903948?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=47853706

So, Ross McManus played for the Queen Mum (and Princess Mar­garet) and all lit­tle Declan got was a great anec­dote for his 2016 mem­oir Unfaith­ful Music & Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink and a thought­ful sou­venir:

Even­tu­al­ly I couldn’t pre­tend that I real­ly cared whether he’d… shak­en hands with the Queen Mum. I blurt­ed out:

“Did you actu­al­ly meet The Bea­t­les?”

It had obvi­ous­ly been a long night or an ear­ly morn­ing, as my Dad wasn’t that talk­a­tive. He mum­bled some­thing about them being very nice lads. Then he reached into a jack­et slung over the back of his chair and pulled out a sheet of thin air­mail paper and hand­ed it to me.

I unfold­ed it, and there were the sig­na­tures of all four of The Bea­t­les on one page. I’d seen repro­duc­tions of their sig­na­tures in enough mag­a­zines and fan club lit­er­a­ture to know that these appeared to be the real thing.

The ink seemed bare­ly dry.

What I did next will bring tears to the eyes of those who make a fetish of such objects, but I had only a small auto­graph book and the paper was too large to be mount­ed in it. 

I care­ful­ly, if not so very care­ful­ly, cut around each of the sig­na­tures, lop­ping off the e of the “The” in “The Bea­t­les” and past­ing the four irreg­u­lar scraps of paper into my album.

McManus the Elder took anoth­er crack at “If I Had a Ham­mer” when he and oth­er mem­bers of the Joe Loss Orches­tra were invit­ed to reprise their roy­al per­for­mance in the 1965 short The Mood Man, excerpt­ed at the top of this page.

Clear­ly, the acorn didn’t fall far from this tree!

Father and son seem more like twins here:

the horn-rimmed specs…

The vibra­to…

That vin­tage style!

(Speak­ing of which, Costel­lo con­fides that his father was oblig­ed to wear long johns under his off-white suit “after the tele­vi­sion direc­tor claimed that his flesh could be detect­ed through the thin mate­r­i­al … under the tele­vi­sion lights, which would be bound to scan­dal­ize the roy­al par­ty.”)

The two also shared a will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment with assumed names. Ross McManus found suc­cess in Aus­tralia with a cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ “The Long and Wind­ing Road” as “Day Costel­lo” — sur­name com­pli­ments of his grandmother’s maid­en name. (Oth­er han­dles include “Hal Prince” and “Frank Bacon and the Baconeers.”)

Elvis Costel­lo spent enough time in his old man’s orbit to rec­og­nize the dis­em­bod­ied hands play­ing the con­ga drums in the open­ing shot shot of McManus’s “If I Had a Ham­mer“ — Bill Brown’s, tak­ing a bit of a busman’s hol­i­day from the bari­tone sax­o­phone.

And he acknowl­edges his own per­son­a’s debt to his dad, cit­ing the sec­tion where  he “lip-synchs the hell out of the num­ber, mim­ing ‘ham­mer of jus­tice’ for all it’s worth”:

The close-ups that come on the repeat­ed line, “It’s a song about love between my broth­ers and my sis­ters” are eerie to behold for the sim­i­lar­i­ty of our facial expres­sion at about this age, and espe­cial­ly when singing par­tic­u­lar words.

Where my Dad holds the advan­tage over me is in his dance moves. 

Those are steps that I am yet to mas­ter.

Costel­lo also notes that his father gave him a bit of a pro­fes­sion­al leg up in 1973, when he got him hired for back­ing vocals on a musi­cal ad for R. Whites Lemon­ade:

For some rea­son, the pro­duc­er asked my Dad to deliv­er the song in a mock Elvis Pres­ley voice, while for the back­ground part, they want­ed “R. Whites” punched out so that it sound­ed like the “All right” on a Swing­ing Blue Jeans record. I sup­pose the adver­tis­ing peo­ple thought the kids would dig it… giv­en that my Dad and I could eas­i­ly approx­i­mate a suit­ably nasal Mersey sound, we cut the parts in a cou­ple of takes. It wasn’t exact­ly the big time, but there was still a thrill to hear­ing your voice come back off the tape, even if you were singing some­thing far­ci­cal. 

The ad made a last­ing impres­sion. If there’s a club for British peo­ple who watched TV in the 70’s “secret lemon­ade drinker” may well be the pass­word. (Costel­lo, under­stand­ably, was not pleased when a tabloid’s brass decid­ed it made a fit­ting head­line for his tal­ent­ed, well-known father’s obit­u­ary: “Secret Lemon­ade Drinker Dies.”)

The first Secret Lemon­ade Drinker ad’s pop­u­lar­i­ty jus­ti­fied var­i­ous sequels over the years, par­tic­u­lar­ly when fans got hip to the 19-year-old Costello’s involve­ment.

He was, in fact, more involved than many would real­ize.

As he recalls in his mem­oir, the orig­i­nal record­ing ses­sion turned into an impromp­tu cast­ing ses­sion for an alter­nate, albeit far hard­er to find online, take:

The ad men took a look around the stu­dio and decid­ed to cast this sec­ond ver­sion of the com­mer­cial from the musi­cians on the ses­sion. The drum­mer and hip­pie gui­tar play­er cer­tain­ly looked the part, but the pianist and bass play­er were old­er more con­ser­v­a­tive­ly dressed and didn’t real­ly fit the bill. Giv­en our then more fash­ion­able hair­styles, my Dad and I were recruit­ed to mime the key­board and bass parts, and we spent the day tak­ing and retak­ing the thir­ty sec­ond clip, lip-synch­ing the “R. Whites / All right” back­ground part with as much ani­ma­tion as we could man­age by take forty six.

Behold!

Costello’s rela­tion­ship with his father — also the only son of a musi­cian — is a prime top­ic of his 688-page mem­oir.

It’s not only easy, but worth­while, to truf­fle up online evi­dence of Ross’s record­ing career. There’s even a rare, ear­ly 80s duet between father and son…

For some intel on Costel­lo’s moth­er Lilian’s influ­ence, read his mov­ing trib­ute from ear­li­er this year, writ­ten short­ly after her death.

h/t to read­er Greg Kotis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See the First Ever Video of Elvis Costel­lo Per­form­ing, Sum­mer 1974

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

Elvis Costello’s List of 500 Albums That Will Improve Your Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.