"Following on nicely from “Just What I Needed”, I went to see my Dad in Florida and he had the 12” of “Stand and Deliver” which had “Beat My Guest” on the B-side. “I was into rap at that time, Run DMC and that kind of stuff, so for a ten-year-old it was ‘What the fuck is this?’ I was blown away. I was floored by the riff and “Beat My Guest” has the ultimate guitar riff, it’s so badass. I was into the make-up as well because I was into KISS too, so I thought that was cool. I was mesmerised by the whole look. “My Dad was always one step ahead of me. I remember being with him in Michigan once, we had this cottage we’d go to with my grandparents and he joined us one year, which was really fun. He was looking in the paper to see who was playing in Detroit - which was two hours away - he found out The Dead Kennedys were playing in some tiny little club and he left to go and see them. “I remember thinking my Dad was the coolest, I was ‘What the hell does that mean? He’s into some weird shit.’ He taught me everything. He spoke to me about music, but he doesn’t play music. I acquired a lot of his records when my parents split up, he gave me that Adam Ant record and I was bawling on the plane. “The next time I went to visit my Dad I’d discovered more Adam and The Ants and I wanted to talk to him about all of these other songs I’d heard, but he was already onto the next thing, which was Devo."

"I would say that David Bowie had the biggest single influence on all music that came out of the time period when I started at the beginning of the 1980s. And all other bands in that modern music zone were influenced most by David Bowie. Throughout the seventies we could safely say that he pretty much owned it. If The Beatles owned the sixties, Bowie owned the seventies. I could have picked any one of his albums. I thought about Hunky Dory which I have played most, or Ziggy Stardust... which was the first album I ever bought. I thought about Station To Station which changed things as his influences morphed and then the whole Berlin trilogy which were extraordinary records. I decided on Aladdin Sane as I think it is the ultimate glam album. Musically, it was fuelled with seventies energy. Mick Ronson’s guitar work is spectacular, the tracks all have an anxiety to them – songs like ‘Cracked Actor’ and ‘Panic In Detroit’ really had an edginess. The singles ‘The Jean Genie’ and ‘Drive-In Saturday’ were probably not even the best tracks on the album – ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ is my favourite track on the album – but had an attitude. You could taste the air they were recorded in. It was the album that turned Bowie into an absolute superstar worldwide. I played it a lot when I was a kid and it was one of those records that made me want to be in a band. Also, it’s by far the greatest cover of the 1970s. The image of the flash across Bowie’s face really resonates. It’s held up – I see that the V&A museum are having a big show of Bowie’s career and memorabilia (and so they should) and the image they are using to advertise it is the front cover of Aladdin Sane."

""This is by far the most important record for me. I heard it when I was 16. I was in a boarding school for boys, which was like a Victorian prison. One evening, I was told by the housemaster – who hated me – to take a phone call. It was my mum, who tells me that my dad was on the verge of dying and was having an operation that night. The operation may save him, but he is old and he might not wake up from the anaesthetic. I am told that I couldn't go home and that I just have to wait it out. At ten o'clock, the boarding school have 'lights out'. I am lying on my bed, in a state. I'm not going to be able to sleep, so I sneak through the corridors, down through the study to the one thing that redeems my life, which is the stereo system. Horses is there and I have no idea why I put it on. The first track I play ['Birdland'] is about a father dying, and a long, black funeral car and a boy standing watching. It is a nine-minute improvisational piece about Wilhelm Reich dying and his son, Peter, helping his father through the death process. This song shook me to the core, partly because it was improvised – it has no structure of verses or a chorus – and is just this rambling poem of desperation and longing. I think, from that moment on, I subconsciously knew I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be somebody who could write a song that a boy or girl 5,000 miles away could hear and be moved so much that it would change his or her life. Therefore Horses became my template, probably by chance, because something so powerful happened to me on the night I first heard it. I then bought tickets to see her play and my parents banned me from going. I had to run away from home to go and see her show, and I was quite a good boy, so it was an unusual act for me. I had a couple of amazing things happen later in my life. Lenny Kaye, who had been a guitar player in her band, became the godfather to my eldest son. He also produced James' first record [Stutter]. Then, after Patti had been retired for a while, Lenny rang me from Detroit and told me that Patti was going to do her first gig in 15 years. He said that she might play for ten minutes or two hours. It was a wake as her husband and brother had just died. I flew to Detroit and I sat in front of her with about 150 people in a church, while she sang and read poetry, whilst crying, for three hours. It was her first gig in 15 years and afterwards I carried her guitar to the car and sat next to her and we talked. After that concert, I needed nothing more from Patti Smith. It had come the full circle of the apprentice sitting with his teacher. In fact, I did get more from her. She curated the Meltdown festival. She invited me to sing one night – it was a night of singing songs about lost children. I was the only man singing on that night. I sang with Tilda Swinton, Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses, Tori Amos, Sinéad O'Connor, Yoko Ono, Marianne Faithfull and Patti Smith. It was one of the most incredible musical nights of my life. I got to play with the great icons of the last 20 years – the women who have changed what it is like to be a woman in rock & roll on every level. It was a great honour and quite awe-inspiring. It completed the completion. No other album comes close to Horses. I became a singer three years later because of Horses. It is why I write songs that are naked and that wish to reach out and change people's lives, rather than any of the other million reasons people become singers."