Liverpool (city)

(This page is about the city in north-west England. For the football team of the same name, see Liverpool.)

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Liverpool is a city in Merseyside, England. In 2014, the city local government district had a population of 470,537 and the Liverpool/Birkenhead metropolitan area had a population of 2,241,000.

Links to Peel

"I was always very, very proud of being associated, in my own mind at least, with Liverpool. I mean, people in Liverpool didn’t think of me as being a Liverpool person at all, but I thought of myself as being a Liverpool person because that’s where I like to be and that’s where I worked and that’s where my father worked, and my mother and father both came from there, and so on. So I thought of myself as a Liverpudlian.And the people of Liverpool have always I think thought of Liverpool in rather the way that people living in Italian city states did sort of a couple of hundred years ago – as being whether they liked it or not part of a greater whole but actually really not being, not because they were compelled to be. And so there was this incredible independence about Liverpool were it was obviously geographically part of England, but everybody knew that really in their heart of hearts that it wasn’t at all."

Liverpool FC

(Main article: Liverpool)

Liverpool Music

(Related article: Liverpool: Sessions)

Peel’s Merseyside background gave him his start in radio – as a “Beatles expert” for KLIF in Dallas – and he remained keen to promote music from Liverpool, where he had bought his first record and also attended his earliest gigs. In September 2004, he was still touting a local musical hero of the 1950s, Billy Fury, as the only “credible UK rocker”.[1]

On 15 April 1997, Peel cheerfully claimed:

"There are a couple of ways of getting records played on this programme that are pretty much near certainties. One is to have a song with the word Pig in the title, and the other is to come from Liverpool."

Generations of bands from the Liverpool area benefited from this apparent positive discrimination, in the form of airtime for record releases and sessions, from Liverpool Scene in the late 60s to Ladytron and Clinic in the early 2000s. Thirteen artists on the city’s Probe Plus label were booked for sessions,[2] including Half Man Half Biscuit. Other long-term local favourites included The Farm and Wah!, whose 1980 debut single Peel described as “further proof that Liverpool is the cultural center of the globe.”[3]

Nevertheless, the DJ did concede, reluctantly, that there were times when Liverpool’s northern neighbour, Manchester, had the musical edge. In 1987, looking back at the post-punk years – and the emergence of the Fall and Joy Division – he told John Walters:

“I resented the fact that the best and the most interesting bands seemed to be coming out of Manchester. I’m afraid this is something that is still true.”[4]

In later years, Peel’s most-cherished songs came to include “Does This Train Stop On Merseyside?” by Amsterdam, which he first heard on a promotional album issued by Liverpool club The Picket as part of its fight against closure. With lyrics alluding to the historic events and landmarks of the city,[5] the song appealed to both his sentimental side and enduring local pride. On 10 December 2003, he admitted:

“It’s now reached the point at which it makes me cry every time I hear it.”[6]

See Also

• Chambre Hardman & The Lost City Of Liverpool: Peel-narrated documentary on celebrated photographer of the city.
• Rock Family Trees: The Mersey Sound
• Rock Family Trees: The New Merseybeat

Links

• Liverpool Echo (10 Feb. 2014): Who topped our poll of the 100 Greatest Merseysiders?: Peel at #6 (up from #36 in 2003), with Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit at #10 (up from from #57).