"When I was about thirteen an older friend of mine made me a tape of DC hardcore. Making tapes is a lost art and I still do it, but you can get USB’s now that look like tapes. He made me a tape because I only knew Minor Threat and they were like a gateway drug for me. “This was the first song on there, it’s from the split record Void did on Dischord Records with The Faith in 1983. It’s funny, when Freddie was talking about what he liked and didn’t like, when you’re that age you’re constantly navigating through the sea of songs you actually really connect with and the ones you think you should like, because they make sense with the identity you’re trying to cultivate for yourself and I was floored by ‘Who Are You?’ “It’s everything that’s great about Punk Rock and everything that’s great about music when you’re a kid, that rage and that anger and also feeling completely misunderstood by everyone in your house, your family, your school or your hometown. I read that Kurt Cobain put this in his top 50 songs of all time and of course that makes sense, it’s a song about being misunderstood and that’s what Nirvana came to represent for another generation. “It’s Punk Rock at its best and like The Stooges song for Freddie, this really taught me that it’s not what you play it’s how you play it, as long as you’re being authentic, and Punk Rock is just authentic rock isn’t it? I was in a punk band and my first shows were in Southampton above a pub for this DIY collective called ‘STE’ - which stood for ‘Southampton, Totton and Eastleigh punk collective.’ Students got in for a quid and under 16’s got in free. It was great, there weren’t many women, but other than that it was a great way to ply your trade. “I’ll play it to you and when you hear the opening you’ll see what I mean. It’s this intro, this riff, it still excites me now, it’s just so brutal and the song’s a minute long. It’s so direct and to me it’s weirdly poppy as well, maybe I’m alone in thinking that, but it was a song that was really easy to connect with. It’s filled with rage and it’s one of those songs that you want to turn up so your parents can hear who you are and see where you are in your life."

"You asked for albums, but albums are already a bit away from pop because of they're a more serious proposition, so all of these are albums that I own on vinyl, and because I'm of a certain age that's what I think of as a record. We didn't have a big record collection in our house when I was growing up, but my mum had three Beatles albums, Sgt Pepper, Revolver and Abbey Road. Even though I was a kid I could tell that Sgt Pepper and Revolver sounded like music that had happened a while ago, but Abbey RoadM sounded more modern. It still does sound quite modern, because on second side where all the songs run into each other, that's quite a thing, not many people had done that since and not many have since. There's an art to an album. If you've got an album that's got a shit song on it, especially if it's in the middle of a side, you're not going to play it as much because you know you're going to have to get up and skip that track. That's what I've tried to do with these, it's records that I don't mind putting on then you can relax or talk to people or whatever, but you know you're not going to get some kind of fucking horrible shitty stinker of a song on it. Abbey Road - I was young at the time, 10, 11, 12, whatever, and the track that ends side one, 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' that was mind-blowing to me, the way it went on and on and on at the end, with this big synthy wooshy noise. I've since found out its Ringo playing this machine that sounds like wind that you get in classical orchestras. It was a psychedelic experience in a living room in a normal part of Sheffield in the early 70s, where, you know, psychedelic experiences weren't that common. I'll always remember it, that song in particularly took me somewhere. And that's the end of that side - if you had Abbey Road on CD it wouldn't be right, it only really works as a statement if you listen to it for ages and then it suddenly stops and then you're left in silence for a while until you can be bothered to get up and start again. I started with this because it plays with what an album can be. It's great.
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