Book About Legendary BBC Broadcaster JOHN PEEL To Be Published Next Spring

Elius Books (pronounced Elyus Books) of Liverpool are to publish a book about late BBC broadcaster John Peel in his memory. It will be published in the spring of 2005 and will be made up of contributions from people who worked with him and also his fans. It will be a wide-ranging publication, and upbeat in style. Commissioning of the publication is underway, but no details as to who has written about John Peel will be given until closer to the publication date, which is to be announced. There will be pictures in this publication.

For updates and a sneak preview of the cover of the book, please visit www.elius-books.co.uk. "There is much work to be done as you can imagine, but we are confident that when the book is published you will be surprised by its appearance, and also what it contains," the publishers said in a statement. "We very much hope that those fans of John Peel will purchase a copy, details of which can be seen on the web site."

Veteran BBC broadcaster John Peel died of a heart attack on Oct. 25 at the age of 65 while on holiday in Peru.

Peel, whose radio career spanned 40 years, was BBC Radio 1's longest-serving DJ and in recent years had also presented "Home Truths" on Radio 4.

Peel's show featured the famous "John Peel sessions", in which bands —including such extreme acts as NAPALM DEATH and CARCASS — were invited to record exclusive tracks for the program in a BBC studio.

More recently, Peel wrote the introduction to "Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore", written by longtime extreme metal journalist Albert Mudrian, which revisits critical moments in the history of the grindcore and death metal genres.

In an interview with B92.net, Peel spoke about his love of extreme music. "I quite like death metal because it's just so extreme and so grotesquely tasteless," he said. "I think bad taste is quite important. You get these people who will occasionally write to the BBC and complain when I've played death metal and there was this case in America where some woman was murdered by this couple that were into black magic and Satanism but then you say, 'Well, how many people have been killed in the names of the authorised and established religions?' — a great many more. So the idea that you object to these things because they've got these silly Satanist lyrics is just nonsense I think. There was a track that even I drew the line at playing. It was quite a good track too but it was called 'Kick the Pregnant', and I thought, that's a step too far, I'm not going down that road. I quite like, you know, bad taste and so death metal is a good area for me."