13. Grinderswitch
There can only be one last song! As a deejay you have to have something to end the night and I just stole it from John Peel. He always started the show and ended it with this one. And the reason for this is, every time I heard the Peelie show, I knew I was in for something special. The way some people feel about the Match Of The Day theme tune, which has no effect on me whatsoever, I feel about this. It’s a great track to use when it’s time to put the lights up. It’s terrible when you put the lights up and there’s no music! But this is a beautiful track and the memories of all the tracks I ever heard that came from John.
And I remember the terrible day he died; after John went it was devastating for everyone. Just before this time, Peelie had played a Fall track, ‘Blindness’. A great Fall track, one of the really great ones. I remember going into the record shop to buy the Fall album which had ‘Blindness’ on. And I remember thinking, that is the last time I will ever do this, buy a record because I heard a track on Peelie. And I was welling up when I walked in the shop. In fact even now I feel emotional now thinking about it. How many important moments happen in your life when you heard something, you loved it and then you’ve done something else, like a chain reaction? I could have picked ‘Blindness’ for this last track. I love The Fall, I have watched them hundreds of times. Mark was definitely a very intelligent man. We were supposed to do a TV programme together about architecture but he didn’t turn up. He was “otherwise engaged.” I had to do both sides of the interview, and talk about both the architecture of Manchester and the architecture of Glasgow. I remember thinking, “ach I always wanted to meet him”, but afterwards thinking, maybe it’s right that I didn’t. [Laughs.]
