Glasgow: what an excellent place this is – John Peel

As you may have guessed from the name, Glasgow Music City Tours is rather fond of Glasgow and music, especially when the two are combined. Part of what this blog aims to do is evoke memories of not just the great gigs which have happened here but also the people who supported the city’s music. Below is an excerpt from a John Peel interview done by Damien Love in late 1995.

Scottish bands

We’ve illustrated it with an early video from Belle and Sebastian. John Peel often cited Belle and Sebastian as one of his favourite Scottish bands and they were one of the few to perform at Peel Acres, the DJ’s home studio. Belle and Sebastian play the SSE Hydro tonight. We’ll have a review on site next week. Here’s John Peel talking about Glasgow: ‘Unfortunately, I don’t get up to Glasgow as often as I would like, and every time I go there, I think: what an excellent place this is. ‘All of the places you’d want to go to are within walking distance of each other. How do I say this without being insulting? Glasgow does have that kind of faintly village feel, in the sense that you keep bumping into the same people. ‘It’s just nice the way that you’ll bump into people in pubs and they’ll buy you a drink, and then you’ll all go for a Chinese meal. What’s the name of that really big place at the bottom of Sauchiehall Street, and there’s a kind of back room? You have to go along a long corridor, and there’s a huge bloke who kinda meets you at the door?

Good place to be

‘As soon as I walked in there, he started berating me for playing such crap on the radio. It’s just small stuff like that that makes you think: yeah, this is a good place to be. ‘If I could think of an excuse to get up to Glasgow again, I’d be up there like a shot. I’m so disenchanted with London, if I could think of some sensible way of doing regular programmes from Glasgow, I should be very happy to do so…’