"Reverend Maceo Woods was really the way I discovered gospel music. I was in the Bahamas recording with Talking Heads, the first album I did with them [More Songs About Buildings And Food] and I used to listen to the radio in my little apartment I had there before we started recording, and I'd tune into these distant mainland American stations and one morning I tuned into this song, which was called 'Surrender To The Wheel'. I thought, ""Wow! What does that mean?"" and those words kept going round in my head, it sounded so sort of Inquisition and medieval or on the other hand, cosmic. Surrender to the cosmic wheel of things. Anyway, I didn't record the song but I could remember the chorus, so I remember going into shops singing it to people and finally someone said, ""Oh, that's not 'surrender to the wheel', that's 'surrender to His will'!"" [repeats in affected accent] ""His weeyill!"", and that's how I bought this album. I loved this album so much, and in particular this one singer on it, this voice that just drove me insane. That was was Doris Sykes. So after buying all the Reverend Maceo Woods albums I could get – and they weren't that easy to get – I started thinking that, really, the thing was Doris Sykes, that was what I was interested in. She has this real insane vibrato, it's just dizzy, kind of mad. It's like somebody who is completely gone [laughs]. Something that you only ever hear in Gospel music really, and in early rock & roll you hear it sometimes as well."

"1977. I'm a sixteen-year-old kid and glam rock has died. Disco has come in but this saved my life. Lennon once said to Bowie that glam rock was just 'rock & roll with lipstck' and if that's the case then punk was glam without the musicianship. It certainly wasn't disco and it sure as fuck wasn't overblown proggy stuff. They blew Yes and Genesis and all that stuff out of the water. They took us back to the three minute pop song. Punk songs were short and sweet. That first Clash record was amazing. There was a huge amount of melody on that record that nobody ever takes any notice of. Mick Jones was a huge Mott the Hoople fan - he was a member of the Sea Divers [the Mott fan club] and used to follow them around the country. 'Janie Jones' is brilliant; their version of 'I Fought The Law' is just outstanding, the best ever recorded. They might have written better songs on London Calling but, as an album, this was a breath of fresh air amongst the 70s stuff. I was still playing Diamond Dogs and Ziggy but this was like a newer version. When punk started kicking off it was brilliant, because they all came to Sheffield - more so than the glam bands. I could actually go and see them. I saw the Clash, the Ramones, Slaughter and the Dogs, Eddie and the Hotrods, Dr Feelgood - that whole intersection with pub rock. It was a lifesaver."