Tom Ravenscroft on John Peel: ‘I want to bring his record collection back to life’

Ravenscroft, who hosts a weekly show on London dance music station Rinse FM having left BBC Radio 6 Music in May after 16 years, isn’t short of records from which to choose. We are in the Suffolk house where he was raised – a pink thatched cottage in the middle of nowhere – and where his mother, Sheila, still lives. Until his death in 2004, it was also the home of Ravenscroft’s father, John Peel (born John Ravenscroft), the broadcasting giant whose Radio One show, spanning 37 years, was a riot of sonic possibilities.

Peel championed everything from punk to happy hardcore, dub to death metal to electronica, and was instrumental in shaping the careers of the Smiths, New Order, the White Stripes, the Fall, Nirvana and the Bhundu Boys, to name a few. Little wonder he was the recipient of thousands of records from would-be superstars, most of which are kept in several rooms in this house or in the garden’s two enormous barns. In one, containing only bikes and 12-inch singles, squirrels have exploited a hole in the roof, endangering the contents of Ravenscroft’s favourite space.

“It’s great in here because there are lots of labels I know,” he says, reaching for a record by Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango that, like every other disc in the barn, has Peel’s star rating scribbled on the sleeve (“Very few have five stars”). “But I just attack it like a child and pick up things that look nice. Sometimes I’ll go for something if the cover looks really German. Two funny-looking German men – I will always take that. This project is considerably more childish than it should be.”

The project in question, already under way, involves Ravenscroft and producer Paul Sheehan sifting through Peel’s 120,000 records to gather enough music for a weekly one-hour show, The Sheds at Peel Acres, on subscription platform Patreon. “We want it to be like a jukebox,” he explains. “A snapshot of what is here. We want to dust the collection off and bring it back to life. It’s just sitting there, slightly forlornly.” Fittingly, the songs will be picked randomly, honouring Peel’s spirit of adventure and disdain for commercial considerations. Ravenscroft shares those traits with his father (“I just want to hear someone playing me something they love”) and adores many of the sounds Peel celebrated, particularly 1990s drum’n’bass (“the noisy stuff”) and Zimbabwean artists such as Thomas Mapfumo. But he never listened to Peel’s radio show.

“My mum would always have it on in the background, but I was a teenager doing teenage things, not tuning in to my dad. It’s your parents, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what they do. It was more a case of ‘Dad’s not here – let’s go wild’.” And now? He sighs. “I keep meaning to listen. I’ve got boxes of his shows. Maybe, weirdly, it’s too soon. Maybe I’d find it too sad.”

Ravenscroft was 24 when his father died, and employed as a production assistant in TV. Two years later, he made a podcast with a friend who once produced Peel’s show, giving airtime to unsigned acts for Channel 4’s short-lived digital radio. Eventually, this led to his job on 6 Music where, echoing his father’s role on Radio One, he was the patron saint of up-and-coming bands. Yes, he profited from nepotism, he admits.

“You can’t deny it. It’s 100% true. There’s no point in me saying: ‘Well, I’m quite good at it’, because anyone can get good at something if they’re given the opportunity.” We return to the house, to Peel’s old study, where a Soviet Lenin pennant dangles from the ceiling and where he would listen to records “24/7”, saving his rejects for his young son. One day, Ravenscroft hopes his father’s entire collection will be stored in a place open to the public. “It can’t stay here for ever, can it?” he says, gazing at the records lining every wall.

But if that were to happen, he would miss the gems he has recently unearthed – among them albums by otherworldly folk guitarist John Fahey and Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green – and the oddities that “look awful but turn out to be great”. “Like this,” he says, holding up a single (The Beale vs Craig David), its sleeve featuring a photograph of a man with a drawn-on beard sitting at a table surrounded by beer.

What he never wants to hear again, though, is the song synonymous with his father’s career. “I’ve had enough of Teenage Kicks,” he says. “Every time a band come to me they’re like, ‘We want to play something for John’ and I’m like…” He stops and pulls an embarrassed face. “‘Oh God! I know what’s coming next.’

The Sheds at Peel Acres will go out weekly on Patreon from 7 July. Patreon.com/TheShedsAtPeelAcres

Photographs by Ali Smith for the Observer New Review