ANDY PEEBLES DJ BEHIND JOHN LENNON´s FINAL INTERVIEW, DIES AGED 76

ByBeatles Magazine

Mar 23, 2025 #John Lennon

Andy Peebles, Pop radio DJ and presenter who recorded the last interview with John Lennon in 1980, who has died suddenly aged 76, was for 14 years a disc jockey on BBC Radio 1, where he presented shows across the schedule, switching between mornings, afternoons and evenings.

In 1981, three years after joining Radio 1, he settled into a Friday evening spot with a programme combining music and a preview of the weekend’s sporting action.

But the interview with which Peebles had made his name, in December 1980, was with John Lennon, and was the last given by John, who had just released Double Fantasy, his first album in five years.

With his second wife, Yoko Ono, John spent more than three hours talking to Peebles at the Hit Factory recording studio in New York, before they and the BBC team spent several more hours eating at a Mr Chow restaurant.

John spoke about the break-up of the Beatles a decade earlier (once they gave up touring, the occasional session in a recording studio “had [just] become a job”), acknowledged for the first time that Yoko was co-writer of his solo hit Imagine, and enthused about making future LPs.

Asked about his privacy and why he had settled in New York, John said: “I can go right out this door now and go in a restaurant. Do you want to know how great that is? Or go to the movies. I mean, people come up and ask for an autograph or say ‘hi’, but they won’t bug you.”

Two days later, on 8 December 1980 – as Peebles flew home – John was fatally shot by M.D.Ch. outside his apartment at the Dakota building next to Central Park. The DJ said he turned down offers of “grubby money” from tabloid newspapers to discuss his meeting with Lennon, but he broadcast a tribute on Radio 1 with John Peel alongside him. The interview then ran in the five-part series John Lennon: 1940-80, which began a month later and was followed by a full transcription in the book The Lennon Tapes.

Peebles began at the BBC in London with a weekday evening show in 1978. The following year, after a short run on the breakfast show, he switched between afternoons and mornings over the next few years until his daily shows ended in 1981 and he began his long-running Friday evening programme.

At Radio 1, he also revived Soul Train at weekends (1987-92) and made special programmes on Paul McCartney, Elton John and David Bowie (an interview recorded in New York during the weekend of his Lennon meeting).
Like most Radio 1 DJs, he also hosted Top of the Pops on BBC One, but only intermittently over five years (1979-84).

He is survived by his wife, Anne (nee Swarbrick), whom he married in 2001, his stepdaughter, Sarah, and his sister, Jenny.

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