"I want the fortunate readers to know that contemporary sounds are not restricted to lighthearted pop. There's as much heaviness available as well. The celebration of punk might be bad in the grand scheme of things but what I'm saying is, you wouldn't catch me digging into my parents’ record collection. You wouldn't want to dare go there. 

The fact that I treasure my friendship, for instance, with Depeche Mode really catches people off guard. But under thorough analysis, Depeche Mode was super-heavy, particularly live. That bottom end, that can only be found through synthesisers. It's earth-shaking. At one point back in the States Depeche Mode was wrongfully tagged and people said, ""Oh, you like that disco-sounding stuff?"" Well it wasn't. It was heavy."

"This was the first Ramones song I heard. I was nineteen or twenty years old and I’d read about them in New Yorker Magazine and alternative music magazines like Village Voice and Trouser Press. They were getting all this press but they weren’t getting any radio play in Wisconsin, so you had to wait until it came into the record store to hear it and I was smitten the first time I heard ‘Blitzkrieg Bop.’ I bought their record and it just floored me in its simplicity, two minutes or a minute and thirty renditions of songs that were verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, end of song. The songs were super precise and cut down to the bare bone, they were pop songs and had a very crude simplicity to the recordings. I think I went through three vinyl copies of their first record. I’d get up in the morning and play it twice before I’d go to the university and then I’d come back at night and just blast it non-stop. We’d have these punk rock party nights just listening to The Ramones album and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ always set the tone for me, it’s an incredible song. We’d bring all our friends over, get kegs of beer, clear all the furniture out of our living room and jump up and down and slam-dance. The first Ramones record is the greatest punk rock record of all time, it inspired The Sex Pistols, it inspired everybody. A thousand punk rock bands were formed after they saw The Ramones, they were the first true originals to do that and I’m still a huge Ramones fan."

"As a teenager in the late 70s I wasn't really interested in contemporary pop music or punk-rock, I was listening to stuff from 10 years earlier. This was a big record for me. Sometimes when I'm singing – it occurred to me last night in Istanbul – I realise there's a certain kind of vocalising I do that takes its cue from Leon Russell. He sang in a southern accent but it was very blown-out and exaggerated, very free and loose. I got this record as a gift for playing in the baseball team at junior high – I loathed sports but there weren't enough people to complete the team. So the coach said, have as many records as you want, just please be on the baseball team. I was like, all right I'll do it."

"Discharge do write short pop songs. They're like punk rock haiku. I love Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing and still listen to it regularly. To me it's not only a great punk rock record it's also a very psychedelic record, which may not seem normal to most people. Of all the records I ever listened to while tripping on acid, this is the one that sounded the best. You'd think with the lyrics and the cover that it would be a scary proposition. It was more like getting wrapped up in the sound. The guitars sounded like they were in a hall of mirrors, there are so many layers bouncing back and forth. You can almost kind of view the whole record as one long song, or a piece with these little movements. I've obviously thought about it way too much while tripping on acid! From that era - the early 80s - I was really into Discharge, Crass, Zounds, some of the other Crass bands, but a lot of the other stuff like Peter And The Test Tube Babies seemed really dumb to me and weak. I didn't get into Oi! bands. They'd tend to have these dumb singalong choruses and chanting and the guitar parts always seemed to be like ""the box"" - a four-fret pattern. Of course I loved a lot of the earlier UK punk rock bands. That's a problem with these lists where you have to think of thirteen albums. I can't fit The Damned in there, I can't fit Pere Ubu. I could but I'd have to take something out and all these records are equally important to me. It's like choosing between children or favourite grandparents!"

"This reminds me of my dad. He was into liberation drum circles in the Matabele community in Zimbabwe and he worked with people from that community. This is a record from the Ndebele language. Nothembi is an amazing guitarist and it's a rocking album with amazing synths as well. I've been playing this quite a bit over the past year. I almost got to play with her but she didn't turn up. My dad used to listen to Thomas Mapfumo - who supported The Stone Roses at Spoke Island - and I thought this was really funny [at the time] - I should have asked my dad to come along to that gig! My influences for music were more down to my big brother and sister and my mam was into different music again. It's inevitable that you are influenced by people around you. I'd get Anglo-American punk rock and pop music from my brother and sister but my dad wasn't into that; [for him] reggae was acceptable and maybe Welsh language pop. He didn't engage with music to the point where he had influenced my sound whereas my brother and sister's records influenced me directly."

"A year after the punk gig debacle, when the school banned me from organising outings to gigs, I went to the housemaster about an Iggy Pop gig in Manchester. I explained that Iggy wasn't technically a punk and had been around ten years longer than punk music. I asked him if I could organise a trip to see the show and, very reluctantly, he agreed to me taking five people, as long as I could find a teacher to drive us there. I tried every single teacher in school and everybody turned me down, except the school organist, Mr Parks. God bless him. He had been in a boarding school himself, went to Cambridge and then back to playing classical organ for a choir at another boarding school. He had no experience of life and when he talked to you, he would never look you in the eye. He was a very damaged, sweet human being. And I persuaded the poor fucker to take us to see Iggy Pop at Manchester Apollo. Iggy, fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, who was playing the Lust For Life tour. We knew when we got there that we had to ditch Mr Parks quickly or he would yank us out of the gig. We got the venue and we ditched him. Iggy came on, covered in blood and with a devil's tail between his legs, fucked out of his mind, and throughout the show, his own security would pick him up off the floor and prop him against the mike. He would crawl into the audience and the bouncers were so terrified that they were attacking anyone. I was punched in the face for the first time, aged 16, at a gig by a bouncer who was trying to get away from a blood-covered Iggy Pop. The gig was jaw dropping. It was real, it was primal and Iggy was a force of nature. He looked like the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He looked like Nureyev on bad acid. I am not gay – I wish I was, or at least bisexual – but I fell in love. It was profound and it was beautiful – and Iggy, of course, created punk music. Afterwards, we made our way back to the car, thinking ""we are grounded for fucking life"" and that we might be expelled. We found Mr Parks and for the first time he looked me in the eye and said, ""That was incredible – I have never seen anything like it. Musically, it was very simple, but it was the most exciting thing I have ever seen in my life."" The man wouldn't stop talking all the way back in the car about this revelation. So, Iggy saved my life and probably saved Mr Park's life too. I have met Iggy. I have met James Osterberg, too – which is very different to meeting Iggy Pop – a few times. He is the most articulate, intelligent man. He was reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot when I first met him. He is witty, gawky and very worthy of my love. I could have chosen a number of his albums, including The Idiot and Lust For Life. I wouldn't choose the more obvious one, Raw Power, because I don't like the production. Fun House is raw, fucked-up and has some astonishing moments and it has primal Iggy all over it. For years, Iggy garnered little respect. As a devotee, seeing him get respect in recent years has been great. I am very happy that the world has recognised him for the artist that he is."