"One of the bands that I watched in a backyard party that made me decide I wanted to be a musician had played the song '2112'. I heard that weird pedal effect at the beginning and thought, ""Are you kidding me?!"" That was the opening of a whole new world. I lost track of them after Permanent Waves when I started doing my own thing, but you can't ignore their legacy. Alex Lifeson is another with a really bizarre approach to guitar playing. It sometimes seems that his solos don't have a direction because they are like spurts of energy, almost like solar bursts. It's all so progressive to the point that when they do a comparatively straightforward song, it almost seems like they are dumbing things down – something like 'Working Man' for example, which is a simple rock track. But generally they are progressive rock at its very best and bands like Dream Theater owe a lot to them. Although Megadeth has progressive elements, I'm not a huge fan of pure prog as such. I respect the players because they are so talented, but to me it might feel like you're in a straitjacket. Incidentally, people have referred to Rust In Peace as being a progressive record, but in truth it was just where we were at the time. In fact I always saw it as a thrashy little metal record, as opposed to sounding like early Genesis or King Crimson where you dropped acid and went, ""Whoa dude…"" Not that I've ever done that, I should add…"

"I just saw Nik Turner on Sunday night. He’s doing good. We have a strange history with him and Hawkwind. In 1971, in COUM Transmissions, we somehow managed to con this benefit concert for a commune that had been busted for drugs that Hawkwind were headlining, and got the second slot on the bill. None of us had ever played anything, except me on drums, and it was the era when everyone was trying to have the biggest drum kit, so we borrowed drum kits from some of the other bands involved. We got a dwarf on guitar who’d never even seen a guitar before. We had someone from Bridlington on a surfboard on a bucket of water as the vocalist, who just told jokes because he was actually a comedian. Cosey was dressed as an English schoolgirl with a starting pistol, firing in the air, and her own whips. Nik Turner and Lemmy and everyone remember Cosey! Then in ‘92 or ‘93, Hawkwind came to tour the West Coast, and Nik called me up and asked if I wanted to play keyboards for Hawkwind. I said “of course!”. We got to San Francisco and Jello Biafra was there and he came running into my dressing room and said, “Gen! I love Hawkwind!” I thought he was kidding, but he was serious and said it was his dream to sing ‘Silver Machine’ with Hawkwind. So we got him to join in on backing vocals on ‘Silver Machine’. He was thrilled."

"It was 1991/2 when the Spin Doctors had their relatively brief moment of huge fame, and their first album went triple platinum. I actually first saw them on The David Letterman Show in the early days of that, and was intrigued by the bouncy, very New York, educated and musicianly sound of the band, who were clearly great players. They were very much a product of that era when very good, very musically aware, very elegant musicians got together to make very direct rock music in a way that sounded so fresh and unlike the other stuff that was going on. They were musos, not a bunch of kids in a garage. They were guys who really knew about time signatures, rhythms and arrangements and had great ability with their instruments. And the singer, Chris Barron, brought a freshness in delivery that worked extremely well on The David Letterman Show and in the few videos they did at the time. I actually went to see them live in the UK and I met them, at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall or somewhere. The guitar player was a very charming guy, a bit of a fan and very pleased I came to the gig and went backstage to say hi, whereas the bass player and drummer gave me the cold shoulder, as if I was from a previous generation, like an earlier episode of Star Trek. For basically a three-piece with a singer they made a very cohesive noise."

"One of the classic albums. Played it to death. I was pissed off when it came out, it was when the Bunnymen had just split up and it would have inspired me with the band. When he gets it right, Michael Stipe, he’s just brilliant. It’s not that kind of American music that makes you feel queasy like The Eagles, it’s more indie. When you go to America and see some of the natural beautiful vastness of the country, it moves you onto your kneecaps, the prairie beauty of it. ‘Find The River’ - when I heard that it was instant choking up. I went up to my missus at the time and didn’t know if I could speak. I wrote ‘Nothing Ever Lasts Forever’ after it. I don’t know if it was inspired by it. It made me like a type of American that I’ve never liked, the Mark Twainy kind. For some reason it connected with me, but the last thing I’d like to do is buy a pair of dungarees and go net fishing in a stagnant pond. But each to their own – Stipey obviously does it. The videos and the bit in ‘Man In The Moon’ where he does the little shuffle and the Elvis “hey baby” - when I saw that I thought, you twat, you’ve got it completely right, and here’s me hacking about with some half-baked solo songs. And they were half-baked, some of them from Mysterio. But after Automatic they did too much and a lot of it wasn’t up to that standard."

"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."