"The Cure were my gateway drug – a year or two later I discovered the Legendary Pink Dots, because I had a boyfriend who was really into them. That blew my mind. It was an entirely new way of being into a band, because they weren't well known. And the music touched me in a place that the Cure couldn't ever dream of reaching. Part of that had to do with the intimacy and depth of Edward Ka-Spel's songwriting, but also the fact that this was a band that no one in my high school had heard of. They were really, really special – they were my band. I became a devotee. If I could wish anything on any teenager, it's that they could get to have a relationship with a band like that, because the Legendary Pink Dots made me so incredibly happy. I really considered them a holy band. Going to see them live was like going to church. They're highly underappreciated band, and I wander around proselytising them all the time. But it's difficult to know where to start, because they have like 900 records. It's overwhelming. I counted the amount of Pink Dots records I have, and it's well over 50, with all the side projects and all the Edward Ka-Spel solo stuff. They're music putter-outers. In one life-changing experience when I was 18 or 19, I not only got to meet them, but they were staying at the house of a friend of mine and I was able to go over to the house after the show and hang with the band. It was my fantasy come true. This really is biopic stuff. I couldn't have scripted my life any better. My friend knew I was a musician and that I had a demo tape, and he said to the Legendary Pink Dots, 'You should hear her stuff.' And they said, 'Sure, put it on.' I nearly shit myself. It was the moment of judgement. This had been my favourite band for years, I couldn't believe I was even in the room with them, and this guy told me to go grab my demo tape so they could listen to it. It was unbelievable. So we sat there, in what was the longest ten minutes of my life, and we popped the tape in and played two songs, and they were like 'Yeah, sounds really good.' And then about half an hour later, I was on the porch sharing a cigarette with Edward Ka-Spel and he looked and me and said 'You know, I think your songs are genuinely really good, and I don't say that to everybody.' In that moment I legitimately decided that I could do this, because I felt like I'd been given transmission from the master. That one little moment of encouragement took me so far, and I always remember that when I'm talking to my own fans."

"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."