On this date in 1973, Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting was featured on John Peel’s Radio 1 show. The only slight problem being that the tracks were played backwards.
Over the years it’s often been repeated the Fripp and Eno appearance was a special radio session. Not true. It was simply the then-recently released album supplied to the station on reel to reel tape.
In a typically eclectic show which also featured Jack The Lad, Thin Lizzy, Pink Floyd, Queen, Nucleus and others, Peel’s faux pas was caused by the tape supplied having been stored ‘tail out’, as was normal recording studio practice, as opposed to ‘head out’, the standard used by broadcasters.
The incident has grown into one of the many legends about the DJ and his show. As quoted in John Peel’s posthumously published autobiography, Margrave Of The Marshes
"(Peel) realised that no-one at the station actually listened to the show...This first became apparent to him when no-one complained about the various cock-ups he made. Later in his career John would become notorious for these spontaneous errors; there was one infamous occasion in 1973 when he played tracks from Robert Fripp and Brian Eno's No Pussyfooting backwards, though only Eno called to point out this mistake."
