Bobby Gillespie

"It could be any Curtis Mayfield record, really. When I hear his voice, it just lifts me up. His music puts me in the space to create. It’s quite rare, that mix of fragility and toughness. It’s there from day one with a song like It’s Alright by the Impressions, and it’s there on his late music too, this incredible ability to sweeten the message with beautiful melodies. He’s a complete inspiration as a songwriter, musician and arranger. Curtis lives!"

"My favourite Wailer. Bob [Marley] was the poet, Bunny [Wailer] was the mystic, but Tosh was the radical. It’s militant music with no compromise, born out of struggle but filled with empathy for the oppressed. Tosh was a wounded boy who knew injustice and his music transforms that personal experience into something universal. And it says, fight back!"

"It made me feel alive in a way I’ve never felt since. It was an energy hit that awakened something inside of you that you didn’t even know was there. It articulated my rage as a working-class kid on a council estate. It started me on the path, and I am eternally grateful to the Pistols for that."

"Aftermath is one of my favourite Stones albums because it's the first record Mick and Keith wrote all the songs on, there were no covers. It was recorded at RCA studios in Los Angeles in-between dates of their American tours. It has great tracks like 'Under My Thumb', 'I Am Waiting', 'Stupid Girl', 'Lady Jane' and 'Goin' Home'. It has incredible sounds like a distorted bass, which is almost like a pre-Public Image, post-punk bass sound. Also, Brian Jones plays the marimba, harpsichord, sitar and loads of other different instruments. It's a very interesting album and one of my favourites. It sounds more like an American record than an English one. It sounds like the Stones have finally found their voice. A beautiful record with a cool cover as well."

"It's such a beautiful record. What can I say? Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman from The Byrds did these soul songs like 'Do Right Woman', which was originally recorded by Aretha Franklin and they played it like a country rock song. Also, they took like 'Dark End Of The Street', which was written by Dan Penn, originally for the soul singer James Carr on Goldwax, a Memphis label, which they also recorded in the style of a country rock song. Country rock is often a dirty term, but to turn that into something else, that transformation was incredible. Gram's gentle, soulful voice completely slays me every time! I'm in love with Gram Parsons. I feel like I know him. When I hear him sing, his voice fills me up and makes me feel loved. Admitting that you're broken and sad that a woman left you, feeling vulnerable was rare in music, apart from maybe soul and blues. But rock music was so macho. Gram turned up and wrote these beautiful original songs. It's okay to admit you're weak, it's okay to admit you have a broken heart. A huge influence on me and Primal Scream. Also, when I got married to my wife Katy England, I had Alexander McQueen design for myself and my wife a suit with satin lapels and hemmed embroidery in the trousers and jacket with roses, in tribute to Gram Parsons."

"So it's spring, early summer in 1977. I'm a teenager that's started school. I read a book about a punk. I know something's happening. I heard 'God Save The Queen'. I started buying records like The Stranglers' 'Peaches' and The Clash's first album. I remember looking at the cover of the latter at a record store at the bottom of my street called Soundtrack Records. I remember looking at the three guys on the cover with brutally shorn hair, tight drainpipes and wearing shirts with Paul Simonon having a Union Jack stitched on over the pocket. There was also a photo of the Notting Hill riots with the police fighting the Rasta youth. Earlier that year I watched a documentary with my father about the Notting Hill riots at the carnival. I found it really inspirational because I just love seeing the youth rise up and take on the cops. It was a pre-punk moment of seditious confrontation that I found totally inspiring. Just seeing people saying ""fuck you"" to the system is always inspiring to me. In terms of the Clash album itself, the song titles even sound great, such as 'I'm So Bored With The U.S.A.', 'White Riot', 'London's Burning' – I was like, ""Fuck!"" before I'd even heard the record! It totally blew my mind and I ended up buying the record. For a long time I'd stood outside the record store and looked at the sleeve! This album was basically everything I was waiting for. It was my rock & roll. Previous to that, I'd heard rock songs on commercial top-40 radio stations, such as Deep Purple, The Who and Rolling Stones, but it felt like a different generation's music. So with The Clash, I finally found my thing. The songwriting on the Clash album is amazing. 'Remote Control' lyrically was about big business and not liking the things you do. You got no money, you got no power, they think you're useless and that's exactly how you feel. I thought, ""Fucking hell"" when I heard it back. You still felt as a kid scared of going into the adult world when you left school. The song wasn't rock bravado or being macho but about being a young person going out into the world for the first time feeling powerless, which was empowering because when you relate to something, you feel stronger. 'Hate & War' was another song that took the hippie ideal of love and peace and turned it on its head by saying: ""There ain't no love and peace, this is the '70s, it's fucking hate and war here."" Punk rock was my portal and pathway to being a creative person. And the first Clash album was everything to set me on my way. Even now, I feel quite emotional talking about this. It's the most emotional record the Clash made because there's something really pure about it. I also think there's a humanism that the Clash have that the Pistols didn't, as the latter were just pure rage. For those reasons, this record is my life."

"I think this is the first Byrds album I owned. I bought it because it had all the singles on it. When I was a kid I didn't have a lot of money so I'd probably go and buy a band's greatest hits album, just to give a taste of the band – I love singles and greatest hits albums. I love this record because every time I hear it, it's joyous, it's transcendental and it makes my spirit soar. Whenever the Beatles and Byrds released 45s, they were all in mono because they were more powerful in terms of mixes. I watched repeats of Ready Steady Go! in the mid-'80s and was entranced by performances of 'Mr Tambourine Man', and also when The Beatles covered it too. The Byrds helped us dream away the greyness and bleakness of Glasgow and the repressiveness of Thatcherist Britain. The Byrds are better than The Beatles for me. I'm more of a Stones guy myself, but The Byrds just portrayed this image of beautiful Californian transcendent sound. That run between '65 and '67 in this compilation of A-sides and B-sides is unbeatable. I almost don't want to use this word, but it's a perfect record and basically formed the foundation of Primal Scream."

"There's A Riot Goin' On is an abstract, nihilistic, urban death funk record. Sly documents the times better than anybody – 1971: the whole civil rights movement has been crushed by the murders of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and the whole American state dismantled the Black Panther party. Sly Stone documents the dread and the suffocation of those times. His music before that was transcendent and joyous with stuff like 'Everyday People', which was basically life-affirming music. Then from about 1969, '70, he starts to become darker with these new funk sounds. Even the hit single from the record, 'Family Affair', is dark. He would have never written that four years prior. It was like the utopian idealism of the '60s had gone and America was almost at war with itself. But Sly never made this a political record – his aim was to put the American flag on the cover with no writing on it. The lyrics were internalised, it was kind of like a closed-off, looking-inward record. There's no reverb on this record and it's completely dry. There's no real joy in the record."