The Perfumed Garden (radio show)
Encyclopedia
The Perfumed Garden was the title given by John Peel
to his 1967 late-night programme on the British
pirate radio
station, Radio London
. After several years of work in US commercial pop radio, Peel joined the station in March 1967, on returning to the UK from California. As well as various slots on Radio London's usual three-hour daytime shows, he was allotted the midnight to 2 a.m. programme, then called London After Midnight.
His experience of the Los Angeles music scene had made him more aware than most of his colleagues of the dramatic changes taking place in pop music in 1966-7. These were accompanied by significant changes in 1960s youth culture, with the fashion-led teenage consumerism of the mid-60s Swinging London
era being challenged by the more reflective, less materialistic outlook of the San Francisco hippies. Peel, having had first-hand experience of the emerging hippy scene - he had seen many of the new bands and performers in California - found himself in the right place at the right time, with a parallel movement developing in London under the influence of the Beatles. The period saw the emergence of the underground papers International Times
and Oz
, and of music venues such as the UFO club. He was intent on reflecting the emerging new directions in his programmes and, within the existing Radio London framework, adapted his playlists accordingly. The Perfumed Garden began quietly, in May 1967; the name-change (which had nothing to do with the celebrated erotic book
, he maintained) occurred when Peel realised that no-one else on the station was listening to its late-night programmes, the after-midnight slot being unpopular with DJs and advertisers alike.
Departing from the station's heavily commercial "Fab 40" playlist, Peel began broadcasting a mixture of folk
, blues
, psychedelic and progressive rock
tracks that he happened to like, announcing them in a shy, laconic drawl which contrasted sharply with the fast-talking, upbeat presentation of most pirate radio disc-jockeys. The first the Radio London management knew of his programme was when it began to gather glowing reviews in the music press - and when the station's London office received an appreciative letter from The Beatles
' manager Brian Epstein
.
The Perfumed Garden also attracted a remarkable audience response, appealing to a specific segment of the British pop music audience - often school, college and university students whose cultural horizons had been broadened by the new educational opportunities of the 1960s. This audience was ready for a more varied musical and cultural diet than that provided by commercial pop pirate radio, most of which was still aimed at housewives and younger teenagers. Peel's listeners sent in letters and poems very much in the spirit of the times, and with a strong sense of identification with what The Perfumed Garden represented; for many, the programme was an introduction to the music and beliefs of the flower power
era.
Peel continued his show until anti-pirate legislation
forced the station to close in August 1967. While it is questionable whether he would have been allowed such freedom had Radio London's closedown not been imminent, the station allowed him an extra hour's broadcasting (from midnight to 3 a.m.) in its final week, and the final Perfumed Garden, on 14 August 1967, lasted all night, from midnight to 5.30 a.m. Peel's emotional farewell, in which he assured his listeners of his love and promised that the Perfumed Garden would return "in some form", was evidence of the close bond he had established with his audience. Indeed, he soon began a regular Perfumed Garden column in the London underground newspaper International Times
; while some keen listeners organised a Perfumed Garden listeners' group to keep the spirit of the programme alive.
With many other ex-pirate radio DJs, Peel was snapped up by BBC Radio 1
, when it began broadcasting in autumn 1967. He was not universally popular, his outlook and musical tastes being at variance with the station's chart-based ethos; but with the support of some influential producers and BBC managers he was eventually able to establish himself. Much to the chagrin of his rivals, Peel frequently won DJ popularity polls in the music press - due to the loyalty of his committed listeners.
His early BBC programmes, being restricted to two or three hours per week, were less free and personal than the Perfumed Garden; listener input, in particular, was greatly reduced, but its influence was still apparent in Peel's presentation style and in his musical choices. The 1968-69 Night Ride programmes incorporated poetry, guests, and world music from the BBC archives as well as a wide range of music, from rock, folk and blues to occasional classical and avant-garde pieces. They can be seen as a development of the Perfumed Garden idea, especially in their spoken word content (on his Radio London shows, Peel had regularly featured the work of the Liverpool poets
alongside music tracks and listeners' letters), and also as a British equivalent of late-60s underground
American FM radio; but Peel's Night Ride did not attract support from the BBC management. Peel and his guests incurred their displeasure by making a number of controversial statements, and it was taken off after 18 months. However, Night Ride can be seen in retrospect as well ahead of its time, its eclectic musical content foreshadowing programmes such as BBC Radio 3
's Late Junction
, which only began thirty years later.
The Perfumed Garden served as a model for many other UK radio rock shows of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its influence can be heard, for example, in the early BBC programmes of Bob Harris
, and in the late-night shows of Hugh Nolan and Terry Yason on Radio Geronimo (broadcasting from Radio Monte Carlo at weekends in 1969-70). During the hippy era, many DJs tried to imitate Peel's gentle monotone, although none could match his flair for language, or his ability to surprise his listeners.
Although the more whimsical side of the Perfumed Garden - the fascination with sparrows, hamsters and other small creatures, his sympathy for the childlike fantasies expressed in some listeners' letters - caused Peel some embarrassment in his later years, the social concern which accompanied his hippy idealism remained constant throughout his career. (On the Perfumed Garden programme, he publicised Peace News
as well as the underground papers Oz
and International Times
). Time and again he championed the underdog and lent his support to unfashionable or difficult performers.
He continued to broadcast in a similar, uniquely personal style until his death in 2004, encompassing more than thirty years of changing fashions in pop music — and completely ignoring convention. Unlike other DJs, he did not remain preoccupied with the music of his youth, and he rejected opportunities to branch out into television, show business or arts broadcasting. He remained loyal to Radio One, constantly in search of new musical styles, and committed to a young audience - a commitment which determined the course of his career, and which can be traced back directly to the imaginary community he created through the Perfumed Garden.
The BBC presenter, Bob Harris
, said the show was unlike any other in its format.
broadcast four half-hour excerpts from his final Perfumed Garden show from 23-27 October. These recordings are part of a "reconstructed" version of the complete show. The best available off-air recordings of the programme have been edited together and digitally cleaned up (although the sound quality is still very tinny), and the musical items have been replaced with CD or LP versions.
See also:
Robert Chapman: Selling the Sixties (London 1992), pp.122-131 ( describes and discusses the Perfumed Garden, within the context of 1960s pirate radio history)
On the programme's effect on its listeners, see: Monni (Aldous): What is the Perfumed Garden? In: Gandalf's Garden
, Issue 2, August 1968. Reprinted (in edited form) in: John Peel with Sheila Ravenscroft, Margrave of the Marshes, London 2005, p.242
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
to his 1967 late-night programme on the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
pirate radio
Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation...
station, Radio London
Wonderful Radio London
Radio London, also known as Big L and Wonderful Radio London, was a top 40 offshore commercial station that operated from 16 December 1964 to 14 August 1967, from a ship anchored in the North Sea, three and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England...
. After several years of work in US commercial pop radio, Peel joined the station in March 1967, on returning to the UK from California. As well as various slots on Radio London's usual three-hour daytime shows, he was allotted the midnight to 2 a.m. programme, then called London After Midnight.
His experience of the Los Angeles music scene had made him more aware than most of his colleagues of the dramatic changes taking place in pop music in 1966-7. These were accompanied by significant changes in 1960s youth culture, with the fashion-led teenage consumerism of the mid-60s Swinging London
Swinging London
Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...
era being challenged by the more reflective, less materialistic outlook of the San Francisco hippies. Peel, having had first-hand experience of the emerging hippy scene - he had seen many of the new bands and performers in California - found himself in the right place at the right time, with a parallel movement developing in London under the influence of the Beatles. The period saw the emergence of the underground papers International Times
International Times
International Times was an underground newspaper founded in London in 1966. Editors included Hoppy, David Mairowitz, Pete Stansill, Barry Miles, Jim Haynes and playwright Tom McGrath...
and Oz
Oz (magazine)
Oz was first published as a satirical humour magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a "psychedelic hippy" magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London...
, and of music venues such as the UFO club. He was intent on reflecting the emerging new directions in his programmes and, within the existing Radio London framework, adapted his playlists accordingly. The Perfumed Garden began quietly, in May 1967; the name-change (which had nothing to do with the celebrated erotic book
The Perfumed Garden
The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi is a fifteenth-century Arabic sex manual and work of erotic literature....
, he maintained) occurred when Peel realised that no-one else on the station was listening to its late-night programmes, the after-midnight slot being unpopular with DJs and advertisers alike.
Departing from the station's heavily commercial "Fab 40" playlist, Peel began broadcasting a mixture of folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, psychedelic and progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
tracks that he happened to like, announcing them in a shy, laconic drawl which contrasted sharply with the fast-talking, upbeat presentation of most pirate radio disc-jockeys. The first the Radio London management knew of his programme was when it began to gather glowing reviews in the music press - and when the station's London office received an appreciative letter from The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' manager Brian Epstein
Brian Epstein
Brian Samuel Epstein , was an English music entrepreneur, and is best known for being the manager of The Beatles up until his death. He also managed several other musical artists such as Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Cilla Black, The Remo Four & The Cyrkle...
.
The Perfumed Garden also attracted a remarkable audience response, appealing to a specific segment of the British pop music audience - often school, college and university students whose cultural horizons had been broadened by the new educational opportunities of the 1960s. This audience was ready for a more varied musical and cultural diet than that provided by commercial pop pirate radio, most of which was still aimed at housewives and younger teenagers. Peel's listeners sent in letters and poems very much in the spirit of the times, and with a strong sense of identification with what The Perfumed Garden represented; for many, the programme was an introduction to the music and beliefs of the flower power
Flower power
Flower power is a slogan used by the American counterculture movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a symbol of passive resistance and non-violence ideology. It is rooted in the opposition movement to the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in...
era.
Peel continued his show until anti-pirate legislation
Marine Broadcasting Offences Act
The Marine, &c., Broadcasting Act 1967 c.41, shortened to Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, became law in the United Kingdom at midnight on Monday, August 14, 1967 and was repealed by the...
forced the station to close in August 1967. While it is questionable whether he would have been allowed such freedom had Radio London's closedown not been imminent, the station allowed him an extra hour's broadcasting (from midnight to 3 a.m.) in its final week, and the final Perfumed Garden, on 14 August 1967, lasted all night, from midnight to 5.30 a.m. Peel's emotional farewell, in which he assured his listeners of his love and promised that the Perfumed Garden would return "in some form", was evidence of the close bond he had established with his audience. Indeed, he soon began a regular Perfumed Garden column in the London underground newspaper International Times
International Times
International Times was an underground newspaper founded in London in 1966. Editors included Hoppy, David Mairowitz, Pete Stansill, Barry Miles, Jim Haynes and playwright Tom McGrath...
; while some keen listeners organised a Perfumed Garden listeners' group to keep the spirit of the programme alive.
With many other ex-pirate radio DJs, Peel was snapped up by BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
, when it began broadcasting in autumn 1967. He was not universally popular, his outlook and musical tastes being at variance with the station's chart-based ethos; but with the support of some influential producers and BBC managers he was eventually able to establish himself. Much to the chagrin of his rivals, Peel frequently won DJ popularity polls in the music press - due to the loyalty of his committed listeners.
His early BBC programmes, being restricted to two or three hours per week, were less free and personal than the Perfumed Garden; listener input, in particular, was greatly reduced, but its influence was still apparent in Peel's presentation style and in his musical choices. The 1968-69 Night Ride programmes incorporated poetry, guests, and world music from the BBC archives as well as a wide range of music, from rock, folk and blues to occasional classical and avant-garde pieces. They can be seen as a development of the Perfumed Garden idea, especially in their spoken word content (on his Radio London shows, Peel had regularly featured the work of the Liverpool poets
Liverpool poets
The Liverpool Poets are a number of influential 1960s poets from Liverpool, England, influenced by 1950s Beat poetry. They were involved in the 1960s Liverpool scene that gave rise to The Beatles, during a time when the city was termed by US beat poet Allen Ginsberg "the centre of the consciousness...
alongside music tracks and listeners' letters), and also as a British equivalent of late-60s underground
Underground music
Underground music comprises a range of different musical genres that operate outside of mainstream culture. Such music can typically share common values, such as the valuing of sincerity and intimacy; an emphasis on freedom of creative expression; an appreciation of artistic creativity...
American FM radio; but Peel's Night Ride did not attract support from the BBC management. Peel and his guests incurred their displeasure by making a number of controversial statements, and it was taken off after 18 months. However, Night Ride can be seen in retrospect as well ahead of its time, its eclectic musical content foreshadowing programmes such as BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
's Late Junction
Late Junction
Late Junction is a music programme broadcast on three nights a week by BBC Radio 3. Billed as "an eclectic mix of world music, ranging from the ancient to the contemporary", the programme has a wide musical scope. It is not uncommon to hear medieval ballads juxtaposed with 21st century electronica,...
, which only began thirty years later.
The Perfumed Garden served as a model for many other UK radio rock shows of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its influence can be heard, for example, in the early BBC programmes of Bob Harris
Bob Harris (radio)
Robert Brinley Joseph "Bob" Harris, OBE , known as "Whispering" Bob Harris, is British radio host who currently works for BBC Radio 2, presenting music two nights a week...
, and in the late-night shows of Hugh Nolan and Terry Yason on Radio Geronimo (broadcasting from Radio Monte Carlo at weekends in 1969-70). During the hippy era, many DJs tried to imitate Peel's gentle monotone, although none could match his flair for language, or his ability to surprise his listeners.
Although the more whimsical side of the Perfumed Garden - the fascination with sparrows, hamsters and other small creatures, his sympathy for the childlike fantasies expressed in some listeners' letters - caused Peel some embarrassment in his later years, the social concern which accompanied his hippy idealism remained constant throughout his career. (On the Perfumed Garden programme, he publicised Peace News
Peace News
Peace News is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union , and from 1990 to 2004 was co-published with War Resisters' International.-History:Peace News was...
as well as the underground papers Oz
Oz (magazine)
Oz was first published as a satirical humour magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a "psychedelic hippy" magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London...
and International Times
International Times
International Times was an underground newspaper founded in London in 1966. Editors included Hoppy, David Mairowitz, Pete Stansill, Barry Miles, Jim Haynes and playwright Tom McGrath...
). Time and again he championed the underdog and lent his support to unfashionable or difficult performers.
He continued to broadcast in a similar, uniquely personal style until his death in 2004, encompassing more than thirty years of changing fashions in pop music — and completely ignoring convention. Unlike other DJs, he did not remain preoccupied with the music of his youth, and he rejected opportunities to branch out into television, show business or arts broadcasting. He remained loyal to Radio One, constantly in search of new musical styles, and committed to a young audience - a commitment which determined the course of his career, and which can be traced back directly to the imaginary community he created through the Perfumed Garden.
The BBC presenter, Bob Harris
Bob Harris (radio)
Robert Brinley Joseph "Bob" Harris, OBE , known as "Whispering" Bob Harris, is British radio host who currently works for BBC Radio 2, presenting music two nights a week...
, said the show was unlike any other in its format.
Tribute broadcast
In 2006, as part of a John Peel tribute marking the second anniversary of his death, BBC 6 MusicBBC 6 Music
BBC 6 Music is one of the BBC's digital radio stations, was launched on 11 March 2002 and originally codenamed Network Y. It was the first national music radio station to be launched by the BBC in 32 years....
broadcast four half-hour excerpts from his final Perfumed Garden show from 23-27 October. These recordings are part of a "reconstructed" version of the complete show. The best available off-air recordings of the programme have been edited together and digitally cleaned up (although the sound quality is still very tinny), and the musical items have been replaced with CD or LP versions.
External links and references
- BBC 6Music: Keeping it Peel: What Was The Perfumed Garden?
- An Audio Tribute to the late John Peel Comments about and even copies of Peel Sessions
- BBC Radio 1 tribute web site.
See also:
Robert Chapman: Selling the Sixties (London 1992), pp.122-131 ( describes and discusses the Perfumed Garden, within the context of 1960s pirate radio history)
On the programme's effect on its listeners, see: Monni (Aldous): What is the Perfumed Garden? In: Gandalf's Garden
Gandalf's Garden
Gandalf's Garden was a mystical community which flourished at the end of the 1960s as part of the London hippie/underground movement, running a shop and a magazine of the same name. It emphasised the mystical interests of the period, and advocated meditation in preference to drugs...
, Issue 2, August 1968. Reprinted (in edited form) in: John Peel with Sheila Ravenscroft, Margrave of the Marshes, London 2005, p.242