When Annie Nightingale the BBC's first female DJ spun her first "disc" on the fledgling Radio 1 in 1970 the Beatles were still together and Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were still alive. Hendrix, she says, was "a charming lovely man". Morrison was "a pretentious prat".
Forty years later she's still on there, having navigated prog rock, punk, new wave, hip-hop and every facet of dance music to be acknowledged as the station's breakbeat queen. A pensioner bossing dance culture: how does she do it? "I just love a massive tune," she says as she takes us through some of her favourite music moments ...
Oh Well by Fleetwood Mac was the first ever record I played on the radio. A few records later I accidentally stopped a record mid-song and left 30 seconds of dead air live on radio. No one had shown me how to use the equipment. At first I wasn't even sure that the BBC trying to do "youth" was a good idea. I thought about trying pirate stations like Radio Caroline but living out at sea with a bunch of blokes? Hmmm, I think I would have found that quite challenging.
The first movement I encountered was prog: 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson captures that for me: a great, great record. But a lot of progressive rock had terrible values: dry ice, 15-minute guitar solos, gatefold album sleeves. Yes, I mean you, Yes! It's no wonder there was a reaction to get music more intense and personal and back to the small clubs.
Gary Gilmore's Eyes by the Adverts sums up punk for me. Gilmore was a murderer and they conjured up this amazingly haunting lyric. I went to see them on Hastings Pier and it was intense, sweaty, shouty and dangerous. Later I was asked to host the Old Grey Whistle Test. PiL played the show and I said – totally meaning it – it was among the best live performances I'd ever seen. John Lydon says to me: "Don't be so fucking patronising!"
The Vapors, Blondie, Talking Heads … New wave to me was even better than punk in lots of ways; amazing music and characters. Ian Dury & The Blockheads wrote amazing tunes you'd never get away with now: Spasticus Autisticus or the song about nicking porn mags, Razzle In My Pocket. I went to interview Ian once at his flat which he called Catshit Mansions in the Oval. His neighbour stuck her head out of the door and said, "If you're running some sort of record label in there I'll have the council on you!"
One day a record plugger brought in Rapper's Delight by Sugarhill Gang for me and I knew it was something amazing. And for once, John Peel didn't discover it! Even now when you listen to that it's hard to believe that Eminem evolved from those beginnings. The early-80s are only a decade past the peak of prog rock, and the landscape's becoming unrecognisable.
In the mid early-80s there was the Smiths and ABC, the Human League and underrated acts like Prefab Sprout. By the mid-80s it had all gone a bit Stock Aitken & Waterman; that was the only time I seriously questioned whether I wanted to do the job.
I guess Weekender by Flowered Up is my acid house anthem. While punk was nihilistic and exclusive in a way, the acid house lot wanted people to join their party. Instead of gigs we had raves in fields; the breweries were up in arms because ravers wanted water! I had a six-day rave at my house in 1992 because I'd got so into it. Andy Weatherall, Flowered Up and Primal Scream were there. I remember getting up and going to work in the middle of it, and then coming back and carrying on!
When drum'n'bass came along you had the power and invention of these hyper rhythms that just blew me away. There's a reggae influence in there which I like. In the mid-90s I was living on a crack-infested council estate in Westbourne Park in London. I'd open the door in my nightie and this bloke would hand over the latest Shy FX 12-inch.
By the late-90s, people were confidently announcing that speed garage was dance's saviour. Rip Groove by Double 99 got a massive response on my show and led the way to where we are now. Speed garage was spoiled because the major record companies tried to force it with endless Greatest Hits packages.
Basement Jaxx's Where's Your Head At? reminds me of 2002 – a very eventful year. I got Caner Of The Year from Muzik magazine and an MBE from the Queen. Before I went to Buckingham Palace I'd seen a picture of Prince William on his gap year in Chile playing on some decks. I said to the Queen, "Your grandson likes DJing." And she gave me this stern look and said, "Probably", and that was it! I think she thought I was a nutter.
The early noughties were dominated by new-school breakbeats. The stickers for Adam Freeland's We Want Your Soul are all over Radio 1 to this day. I took that to the playlist meeting knowing it was an exceptional record. Not just beats but lyrics too: "You're free to do as we tell you!" It has that thoughtful, clever, anti-establishment feel of punk allied to incredible beats.
So we're at the end of the first decade of the new millennium and I'm still a DJ! How did that happen? Tinie Tempah's Written In The Stars will be massive. When I think about being around from the Beatles to Tempah, I think this country's incredible for its ingenuity. The whole story of British youth culture has happened in the life of one queen. Amazing!
