"People say Lee Mavers is mad or a tortured artist but he isn’t. He’s just lazy. Well, either that or he doesn’t want to tarnish the reputation of what he knows he’s already achieved. I’ve got two CDs worth of unreleased stuff which would knock you out. It should have been released as an album but it won’t see the light of day. But you see them when they reform and they’re still playing the same set as they were in 1986. You feel like saying to them, 'For fuck’s sake…' When I see him I say, 'Hey Lee, when are you going to release your second album?' And he goes, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll do it when I’ve finished the first one…' He’s still trying to nail his first set of songs right after 27 years. So I’ve come to the conclusion he’s either shit-scared of ruining his legacy or he’s just a lazy cunt. All that said though, this is a wonderful album and I do get a great kick out of playing this to people round the world – Americans in particular – to people who have never heard of them. They’re always, 'Wha… What the fuck?' Even though it’s a standard form of guitar rhythm and blues, it’s totally unique. Nobody has done it as good as him since. His lyrics are great, his voice is amazing and the whole vibe of The La's is amazing. Bands from Liverpool used to be really busy but there came a point after the 1980s where unless it was something happening in Liverpool, they just didn’t give a fuck. Liverpool is an island. It bears no relation to what’s going on musically anywhere else at all. I’ve got one scouser in my band and three on my crew and they don’t give a fuck. They don’t care what’s going on in London, they’re still going on about the dockers’ strike. They’re still annoyed that The Beatles left to go to London! [puts on old school scouse accent] 'I’m not havin’ it la, they went shite when they left Liverpool. You ask anyone. They did nothin’. After they left The Cavern, they were nothin’.' And now Liverpool bands get to a certain stage and then they back off because that means you have to move to London and they don’t want to. Liverpool has also suffered for not having a great record label or TV station like Factory or Granada. In more modern times they’ve been in the shadow of Manchester because of that. But that is also their strength. There is no other band of musicians in the world I would sooner play with than a band of scousers. They’ve all got it. And they’re all stoned from breakfast to bedtime. People in Liverpool got Oasis before anyone else did. We played all our early gigs with The Real People. Most people thought we were a Liverpool band."

"Punk rock changed my life. In 1976 in grim old England – grey days, Thatcherism, strikes, power cuts, unemployment through the roof – it was pretty bad out there. There are similarities to now, I suppose. I was a little kid and I would get up to go to school and it would be freezing as we didn’t have any power. I wondered what was going on. You needed something in life to shake things up and this punk rock movement seemed to come out of nowhere. There was glam rock which was fading by 1975, Bowie had changed identity again and then – bang – in came the Sex Pistols. It wasn’t just them – there were all these bands, The Clash, The Buzzcocks, Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Damned. But, I chose the Sex Pistols’ album as I do think they were leading the race. They had Malcolm [McLaren] and Vivienne [Westwood] who were behind the scenes helping paint the picture – two of the greatest creative people of that time period. They had the most extraordinary image. The Pistols were so stylish. Everyone says it is anti-style but actually it was complete high fashion; their first show was at Central Saint Martins for God’s sake. The whole thing, to me, was incredibly stylish which of course I loved having grown up with glam rock. There was something about punk – it really did upset your parents. All kids need something at some stage that is theirs and doesn’t belong to their parents. Every generation needs to rebel and punk rock really was that. It tore up the rule book. Before that were all these technical bands like Pink Floyd, Yes and Genesis – some of which are amazing – but at the time was all too complicated. Emerson, Lake And Palmer had too many notes. Punk rock just had a few chords and it was raw and you could feel the nerves. That’s the first time I realised that maybe I could be in a band. I remember going with John Taylor to Birmingham Barbarella’s to see a punk band – maybe Generation X – and I was stood watching the guitarist play and I knew all of the chords. I went home and got my guitar out and played the chords. I could play the song. That was an epiphany – I realised I could do it. I could never have done anything like that to a Genesis track. I’ve chosen the Sex Pistols album as I think it is the most significant one but I would say I almost chose The Scream by Siouxsie And The Banshees because it is a brilliant record – so enigmatic and different – and I played it so much. Siouxsie was so unique. In fact punk bands were unique, even if they had the same energy. I loved the Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP and then the album, which Malcolm Garrett designed and went on to do all of our stuff for the first five years. We got him because of Buzzcocks."