Peel is in good spirits, making comments and telling jokes between the records
He mentions that his friend “young Vincent Tseng, of whom some of you may have heard before” is in the studio. He says “hello John” live on air and asks JP to dedicate a track to his brother.
Mentions he was in Manchester yesterday and says he got lost on the M6, driving back in the fog – he also talks about the sound the road surface makes and explains his idea of “orchestrated highways" .
Peel mentions one of his all time favourite songs is "She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune" by Jesse Lee Kincaid, which he heard in the USA but was never released in the UK. He then plays Hearts And Flowers version of the tune.
Stephen Peet was a filmmaker who worked for the BBC and kept recordings from the BBC including radio programmes and documentaries from the 60's. Most of these recordings aren't full shows, but snippets of various programmes. This recording from the collection has twenty minutes of a Peel show heavily edited that includes parts of Peel's interview with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. Parts of the recording weren't clear, but the version on File 5 is easier to follow.
After the Bobbie Gentry track, Peel talks about an unusual experience he had when staying with firends in Oklahoma. He also isn't sure whether Gilbert's Disappear is a new single or session track.
Peel seems to have problems playing Tyrannosaurus Rex's record (and remembering the LP title), but manages to play it. It also seems fair to assume that Peel, at the time a close friend of Marc Bolan and keen supporter of his work, had an advance copy of Tyrannosaurus Rex's My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair... But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows album before its release in July 1968.
He also plays Tiny Tim's version of Al Dubin and Joe Burke[1]'s "Tiptoe Thru' The Tulips With Me", originally recorded by singer-guitarist Nick Lucas, who can be seen performing it in the 1929 colour film Gold Diggers Of Broadway (a recently restored extract from the film, with Lucas's version of the song, may be found on YouTube[2]). Tiny Tim's fame proved to be short-lived, but Peel raves about the God Bless Tiny Tim LP here ("astonishing....hasn’t been released here yet but it should be...") and recommended it in his International Times column.
Small Faces #1. Recorded: 9 April 1968. Repeat, first broadcast 14 April 1968
Tim Buckley #1. Recorded: 1968-04-01. Repeat, first broadcast: 07 April 1968. Tracks issued on Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit, 1991) and later Buckley compilations.
R. Dean Taylor: Gotta See Jane (7") Tamla Motown (JP: "that’s not to say that that the other records released by this company aren’t good, it’s just not my cup of tea, or cup of meat as Dylan says")
Tim Buckley: Coming Home To You (Happy Time) (session)
Pentangle: Travellin' Song (7") Big T · (“they have an LP out in the not too distant future”, says JP, and says he’s written the sleevenotes. Claims - wrongly - that this single is from the LP.)
Small Faces: If I Were A Carpenter (session) (“I like Tim Hardin’s version very much indeed, but this is nice”. Mentions P.P. Arnold is on the session)
(JP: '...like that, I had to stay in the tornado shelter you know, it was a question of whether to close the shutters on top of it and boil to death or leave it open to get eaten by snakes, you know cause I don't like snakes, I don't search out for their company, but it's very nice anyway and I like Bobbie Gentry. This is the latest single, is it, the latest single, I can't remember, anyway Vincent wants me to play it for his brother and it's Gilbert with the Keith Mansfield Orchestra and I think it's rather nice, some family discord going on here, it's called Disappear.')
(JP: 'That's Gilbert with Disappear with the Keith Mansfield Orchestra, you have to forgive me if I sound less orientated, that's if it's the right word, than ever.' The result of being stuck in West Bromwich at 4 a.m., he says)
(JP: 'I wonder if it's possible to rewind the BBC back to 2 o' clock or start again, Tyrannosaurus Rex with their LP, which is now called, undecided after a group meeting, it's called My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows, which sounds better than what I said.')
(MJ: 'That was River To Another Day by the Love Sculpture, a lovely live performance of a beautiful song John)
(JP: 'Thank you very much, we're talking to Mick Jagger and Brian Jones.')
(BJ: 'Hello')
File 4 begins
(JP: 'About the new single which is released this coming Friday and it's their first single in quite some time. The A-side is called Jumpin' Jack Flash and the B-side is called Child Of The Moon, tell us about the Jumpin' Jack Flash Mick.')
(MJ: 'It's a groover, nice up tempo groover is how I would describe it, yes Brian what do you think?')
(BJ: 'I think it's a nice riff pattern from Satisfaction, I dig it in the same way as Satisfaction like instead of the duh duh der der, it's sort of duh duh der der der... it's a bit different but it has the same basic sort of funky quality.')
(JP: 'I'm glad you explained that. It's obviously though since less Satanic Majesties, which was very complex, this back to me is very simple, is there a particular reason for that?')
(MJ: 'Yes Their Satanic Majesties was an album which might have been very complex, this is a single, but this is one track what we're doing at the moment, isn't like we are making an LP like this, you know, I mean some of the LP would be in a way very complicated in a way totally different, but I mean this is one track, and it has to be very basic.')
(JP: 'I think we'll talk more about the LP after we heard this, as I say, it is released this coming Friday and it's called.')
(JP: 'That was Jumpin' Jack Flash from the Rolling Stones which is released this coming Friday as I said three times now, uhm we were talking before we played it, the LP which is coming out which you didn't produce, it was produced by Jimmy Miller, what sort of different things will there be on the LP?')
(MJ: 'We always try and make the LPs different from each other, we try, this one has a very different concept to it, just a little more reflective of the state of our heads at the moment, which is, er, more together, I’d describe it... ...I'm very pleased about the album, it's not coming out yet, so lets keep to what we're going to talk about now, which is coming out this Friday.')
(JP: 'The B-side is Child Of The Moon, on initial hearing, I probably prefer it to Jumpin' Jack Flash.')
(MJ: 'It's on the same record so.')
(JP: 'I always prefer B-sides.')
(MJ: 'Yes well you do, you're the underdog fighter aren't you?')
(JP: 'All I have to do is turn it over and I'll find it there.')
(MJ: 'It's sort of a electric country opus on which Brian plays a soprano saxophone very nicely.')
(BJ: 'Yep the funny thing is it sounds like one of those long Bach trumpet things ..'it has done in the studio, it does seem to on the initial pressings, I don’t know what it’s going to sound like on the radio”).
(MJ: "From Nashville, Tennessee Bach”)
(JP: 'Anyway this is your Bach country Baroque mid-tempo shuffler, it's called Child Of The Moon.')
(JP: 'It's Child Of The Moon, which is the B-side to the latest Rolling Stones single, thank you very much for coming along.')
(MJ: 'Thank you over to you in Germany, where the weather I hope bit better than it is here' - he's making fun of the kind of remarks made by the presenters of Two Way Family Favourites, the Sunday afternoon family request show for those with relatives serving abroad in the British armed forces)
4) BBC Radio 1 (Top Gear) interview - Brian Jones & Mick Jagger - 15th May 1968 (NOTE: Interview was recorded on 15th May 1968, but was broadcast on 19th May 1968)