"I was very privileged to grow up when Biggie was coming from being an underground rapper to people knowing him as the B.I.G and the legend that he became. The same with Tupac; the East Coast West Coast rivalry, Bad Boy against Death Row - it was amazing to be around for that. “I loved what Puffy had done with Biggie, because he got him to start using these huge samples from Motown records and R&B artists. He became a little more poppy in that sense, but Biggie still retained his earthy, Brooklyn swagger. “I was playing “Mo Money Mo Problems” in the clubs, at a young age. I was probably about 16 at the time, sneaking my way into clubs and because Flash was 10 years older than me, I kinda styled it out. He was playing in a community nightclub in Southampton, where my dad was one of the board members. When I went down there, I'd kinda get squeezed to get in there, but the mic was basically free. ""One time I jumped up on the mic and started ad-libbing around what Flash was playing and I think he was 'Who's this kid with the audacity to do that?' He probably secondly thought 'Wow, that's Craig, and Craig's dad pays my wages! So I need to calm myself as to how I react to this!' And then thirdly, I think he thought I was talented. “He took me under his wing. I'd get to play that little set at the end of his set, and he'd let me emcee for him for the night. So that song brings back all those memories"

"The amazing thing about this song is that I heard this album after I had seen and heard Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers play it live at Max’s Kansas City, and it was basically the same group doing the same songs. “I think it was 1977 or 1978. I was 15 and I went for an Easter break vacation from high school, it was my first trip by myself; I had an older brother living in New York City and my family was living at Wisconsin at that time. I went and stayed with him and he was into all the punk stuff that was going on. He looked to see what was playing he said ‘Johnny Thunders is great and he’s playing at Max’s Kansas City.’ “It was the most exciting experience I ever had with rock and roll. I think it’s because the music appealed to me, I’d never heard it before, I never heard any recording or anything about this Johnny Thunders, any of the songs or anything. I think it’s also because of the age I was, because being fifteen everything was this great discovery in the world of music for me at that time, particularly with all things of rock and roll. “Punk music was this thing that just hit me; it hit me in a perfect place, and of course there’s a great variety. That live show is riveting and inspiring in every way. With the music, the sound, guitar and then the attitude, the swagger and the craziness of it. Everything was appealing to me. I felt that this is what I wanted to do, and this confirmed it."

"He was a kind of blues/country artist from America - obviously Scottish lineage - and I remember, the first time I heard a bit of his music was a long time ago when I was very young. It was a cover of 'Sweet Dreams' by Patsy Cline; it was an instrumental version and I thought it sounded amazing. I'd just bought an acoustic guitar, and I heard it on the radio and remember thinking… I'm gonna preface this by saying we live in an age where I'm sick of seeing so many people saying, "I'm glad the guitar solo is dead, anybody can play like that" No they fucking can't! I see so many idiots in indie bands try to play solos and they can't fucking do it, because they haven't got the bravery to do it. They haven't got the fucking blood and guts to do it. You have to spill your guts if you want people to believe a guitar solo. That's why I always go for people like this; you can tell, if a Roy Buchanan song comes on, in any obscure station on the world, as soon as the solo comes you know it's him. And that's a really special gift to have. Not many people have that; as soon as he plays one note of a solo, you know it's him. It's beautiful. He always starts off a solo in a beautiful manner, almost slightly depressed, and then it just goes apeshit and he really loses it. It's almost like the guitar's having a fit. He goes from beautiful to really disturbed in one solo. I remember I went to see The Departed in the cinema and this song, his version of 'Sweet Dreams', came on in the end, and I was like, "Fuck me I forgot to buy a Roy Buchanan record!" I meant to buy one 20 years ago and I never did. I went out the next day and bought Roy Buchanan's entire back catalogue. The best one is just called Roy Buchanan. There's some beautiful stuff on it. There's one song called 'The Messiah Will Come Again', with a spoken word intro, and you can tell it's him doing it, and it's just beautiful. There's an old Phil Lynott and Gary Moore song called 'Parisienne Walkways', and you can see it was inspired by this song. I challenge somebody to listen to this song and not actually rethink their prejudice against expression on the guitar."

"What killer pop songs, just killer fucking pop songs. It’s all over the place and I remember looking at it as a kid, just looking at the cover, it’s like a cartoon and at third grade I would play that record again and again. 'Lovely Rita' is probably my favourite song. I remember I had a crush on this girl and at that age you don’t know what girls are about and this song had something to do with my crush on this girl. I don’t know how, but it did, so it brings back memories of a more innocent time in my life for sure. It’s so ingenious and a pure band effort where all the band were listening to each other. I know from reading about that record later that there were a lot of battles but I think the band were at its zenith in terms of allowing each other’s input. Guns was also a band where everybody respected everybody else’s musical opinion - Appetite was a record that was a serious group effort. We didn’t have any away to record ourselves, we didn’t even have a PA, Axl would be singing lyrics into one of our ears while we were playing really loudly in this little room, so the only time we got to hear these songs properly was when we played live –in front of three people sometimes - 'cos there were monitors on stage. Then you’d realise that songs like 'Rocket Queen' were way too long and be shaving them. By Illusion we had a big rehearsal place with a PA and could record ourselves on cassette and hear what we were doing. And we had time, and if you don’t let time get away from you time can be a really great thing if you know how to manage it."

"He's a Swedish multi-disciplinary artist. I chose that to represent all of my friends, composers and people that I know who make extraordinary experimental work. On one hand it is a drone, and it's a really fantastic drone. It's a copper pipe on a pillar driven by it's own amplification - it's a fantastic sound. The other part is a reading of an autopsy of a Dutch queen when she dies. It's an old autopsy so it's got this great formality: it talks about the 'colouration' of the skin. The poetry is in the age of the language. It's something that's absolutely fascinating but it also has no relevance, all it is is about it. It's a composition, it's a piece of imagination. One could mention 'The Gift' by The Velvet Underground. I remember the first time hearing that and it was split in stereo and thinking: 'God that's extraordinary'. Why do I not always sing my own lyrics? It seems to fit better to me. It's the proof that sometimes it's a good idea not to think about things too carefully. The way things roll is sometimes good. It's a funny thing to Wire, it's not what we thought about, it was a practical solution to a time when we were in need of writing material. I never learned to play the guitar, and it turned out to be an incredible device, this distancing, which threw it into interesting spaces. It gives it a theatrical quality that's not drama theatrical, but theatrical in the same way as you'd have with someone like Pinter, where you'd have very normal speech but because of the context that you put things into, suddenly you have something that's quite peculiar."