"If you're listening to prog like Gong then you're going to bump into Magma. They make their own language on their records, so we made our own words for Magma albums. A number of Magma albums would pop up in various friends' record collection, and each one was quite different. On Üdü Wüdü there's an 18-minute track called 'De Futura', which is like a suite and it moves to different tempos and it's got all these cross rhythms in it; it's an overwhelmingly transcendent record. There was a rock disco that we used to go to in Manchester in the 70s and you could take your own records and we used to take this record. You'd see these rock fans freaking out to it. It was a curious time in Manchester because you had the punk thing, but all these other oddball things like Magma and Earth, Wind And Fire were standing beside each other. It wasn't as tribal as it's been made it out to be. You'd go up to a free festival in Rochdale that was called the Deeply Vale festival and all these subcultures would be represented there, because all of the sub-cultures would be big enough to stand on their own two feet. But at this disco in Manchester, you'd hear Bowie and Roxy Music, and Magma, probably some Genesis and some Sex Pistols."

"I’ve always loved Del. He was my first hero when I was young. When 'Runaway’ came out I was only 13 or 14. I had to have my own rock star. Well, they weren’t called ‘rock stars’ then – they were all pop stars. But my sisters had had Elvis – and I loved Elvis of course – but you had to have your own hero, you know? So Del Shannon was my one. But there’s a great story about Del and ‘Runaway’. He’d made the record and he was on the road and someone had sent him a copy of the record and he put it on his record player, played it and went, ""what the fuck?!"" It was semitone faster than it should have been! And he phones up his manager and he says, ""what the hell have you done to my record?"" And the manager said, ""oh, we sped it up because we thought it was too slow."" And that’s how it is to this day. It’s in B flat minor instead of A minor. Which is amazing and it sounds better when it’s sped up. I’ve slowed it back down to see what it sounded like when it was originally done and it doesn’t sound as good as the sped-up version. You can tell that his vibrato is really fast and you can tell it’s sped up."

"""AM is one of my favourite records of the last ten years. I've always liked the fact that Arctic Monkeys sidestepped the indie scene and reinvented themselves as a rock band. I think Alex Turner gets a lot of unfair flak but he's a phenomenal songwriter, one of the best of our generation, and this record in particular has some incredible songs on it. People like rockstars until they don't like rockstars, and then if you're a rockstar you'd better fucking duck. He's always just been himself, and luckily himself is just rock & roll through and through. I'm incredibly jealous of his mind, he's a great guitarist but as a lyricist it's incredibly frustrating to be alive at the same time as him. As a rockstar he just has it, and luckily he's not put too much of a foot wrong yet. As far as I'm concerned he can do no wrong, and I'm putting that all on his lyrics. It's mental that he can squeeze a line like ""She's got a Barbarella silver swimsuit"" into a song and make it relevant, make it just feel new, yet he's referencing things from such a long time ago, probably from before he was alive. He has an understanding of pop culture and is a master of manipulating it to do whatever he wants. As a lyricist myself it's quite amazing to see."""

"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!"