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30th September 1967 - in answer to the popularity but predominant silencing of the pirates, the BBC did away with the Light Programme and Tony Blackburn launched Radio 1 with 'The Move' and 'Flowers In The Rain'. To commemorate the 35th birthday of 'Wonderful Radio 1', we feature a vast array of archive presenter photographs of people like DLT, Simon Bates, Steve Wright, Jackie Brambles and more ... and we feature items of text and scanned images from Radio 1's very first magazine, from around 1975/1976.
An excerpt from the Radio1 magazine in turn taken from the Radio Times
Rock on Radio 1 written by John Peel for the first Radio 1 Magazine. 'I'm quite certain that each and every one of you has pinned on your bedroom wall, right there over the damp patch and next to the travel posters of Tahiti and the Exclusive Three Colour Action Pictures of the Rollers, a Radio 1 Calendar. And I expect that you've often wondered, as you pick your way lovingly through the sparkling snaps of your favourite DJs, who the chap can be who doesn't comb his hair over the bald bits. Well it's probably me. It might be Annie Nightingale though, but I doubt it. My job is to present Rock on Radio 1, and this I do every night of the week from 11.00 to Midnight. You probably thought that Radio 1 stopped with Dave Lee Travis and started again with Noel Edmonds - but it doesn't.
John Peel (1976) Annie Nightingale (1976)
For an hour a night it is quietly stoked up again and, hot on the heels of such rare and heady delights as Stanley Black and His Concert Orchestra Presenting Golden Melodies From The Great London Shows Of Yesteryear, I can be heard droning away and introducing selections from records you don't like the look of in W.H. Smith's on Saturday afternoon. Funnily enough, a lot of these records are pretty popular - the Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, that sort of thing - but I know that if they were played during the day-time they'd probably wake up the baby and give the canary fits.
Actually, Johnnie Walker (he's the very thin one) plays a few of these records on his hour and three-quarters in the afternoon, and pretty bracing they sound too. You can also hear Rock, as we call it (although I have no clear idea why) on Alan Freeman's show on Saturday afternoon on Radio 1. Alan's the one with the kind face and the hair parted about an inch and half from his collar. Alan's programme is three hours long, and in between the records by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Yes, Black Sabbath, and the other rock giants, he plays snatches from the popular classics. What a funny little chap he is, to be sure! We all laugh at him behind his back.
Dave Lee Travis (1976) Noel Edmonds (1976)
You may be wondering where Rock came from and why, if it is so popular as I claim it is, you don't hear more if it. Well, way back in 1967, when men were men and women were women and persons were individuals wanted by the authorities for eliminating from their enquiries, popular music sort of split in two. On one side you had the frolicsome pop singles and achingly lovely ballads, on the other, the area of perhaps rather more thoughtful music known first as 'Underground Music', then as 'Progressive Music', now simply as 'Rock'. Most of the people who like it wear ex-Army greatcoats and you wish they wouldn't stand so close to you at the bus-stop. They're actually rather nice if you get to know them. Not as nice as the Wombles perhaps, but still nice. The music isn't all that bad either. I'm afraid some of the musicians have beards and drink beer though. Perhaps that's why you don't hear them on the radio a lot - except late at night when decent people are tucked up in bed with cocoa stains on their chins.
Another reason you don't hear a lock of Rock on Radio 1 is that much of the music comes on LPs rather than singles, and we DJs are frightened of playing the wrong track - or playing the right track at the wrong speed. Also some of the records are terribly long and this means that we can't read out requests for all at 19, Artillery Mansions, and tell you about our little boy, Kevin, for minutes on end.
Well, I'd better go now. If you ever feel that you'd like to hear some of this 'Rock' music stuff, you can always, as I have observed above, listen to Johnnie Walker or Alan Freeman. You could even try staying up to hear my programmes. If they weren't so confoundedly noisy they'd probably help you to sleep better on your Donny & Marie pillow case.
Johnnie Walker (1976) Alan Freeman (1976)
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