"Electro 1 represents the kickstart of that kind of music for me and a whole crew of mates. We were 13 or 14, this arty, conscientious little urban crew of kids just roaming around. It was fun, it was exciting because the music was really hard to get hold of, there was only one pirate radio station, I think it was Tim Westwood that did it. You had to tune into it on a Thursday at 4 o’ clock. They would play all these kinds of tunes, but no one else was into them. No one was into hip hop. Everyone else was into that gothy fucking angular stuff, whereas I didn’t know who The Smiths were until about four years ago. We were kind of early pioneers, well, not pioneers, we were rubbish Chiswick kids, trying to be a bit urban, adopting some of the clothes but quite naively. We all looked like total pricks. I always got it wrong and wore a chef’s hat or something. I was like the dude in the band that never looked quite right, the Gary Barlow one who doesn’t fit the clothes that the stylist’s picked out."

"I included this one because sometimes you can read things into records that aren't necessarily there. In the mid-80s I had my first proper girlfriend, we had an on/off thing for ages and then we finally split up. On the Thursday before, she gave me this Marianne Faithfull LP, so in the aftermath of the split I listened to it and heard lots of like 'ooo she's sending me a message through the songs'. I got to know the record quite well, I wallowed in the self-pity. I happened to meet her in Sheffield about 20 years later, was speaking to her and I mentioned to her about that record and she just said 'I knew we were going to split up and it was on offer at WH Smiths, it was only three quid so I just thought I'd get you that'. She'd never listened to it and wasn't making any points or comments to me at all. It shows how you as a listener bring a lot to any record. I didn't tell Marianne Faithfull the story when I worked with her... I should do shouldn't I?"

"It's another record that I grew up with. Whenever I listen to it I'm transported back into my bedroom when I was 16. Again, I love its mystery and how it doesn't let you know what it's about. It was hard to choose between this and Closer, and though there are some tracks on Closer that I really love, this did it for me, tracks like 'She's Lost Control' and 'New Dawn Fades'. I think it's a groundbreaking record, and I suppose like The Smiths, they became more relevant after they split up than when they were around. They inspired so much modern music and sound incredibly relevant now. If you heard Joy Division now in 2011 and had never heard them before, you wouldn't think it was dated. The production is great. There are lots of mistakes on there, it's really nicely under-produced. Even though there's this bleak, icy electronic feel to the music, it's not programmed or anything, it's very human."

"Of all the people who were a direct influence on Oasis, the line goes back to the Sex Pistols, whether that’s Joy Division/New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses or Factory Records, and if they hadn’t played those two gigs in Manchester who knows what would have happened? And on that album you’ve got Lydon or Johnny Rotten with that voice going on about the Royal Family and boredom and the rest while you’ve got Steve Jones just hammering it out like a pub rocker or like someone who’s into Slade or The Small Faces rather than punk rock, and between those two things you’ve got it. Every time I listen to it I think that if it came out tomorrow it would fit right in, it wouldn’t feel dated. Way back at the start of Oasis we did a radio session for Mark Radcliffe and during ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ Liam out of nowhere sang ‘Sunshi-i-ine’, you know, with about ten extra syllables and when it went out on the radio I remember thinking, ‘Fuck me, that sounds great.’ And when we came to record I was like, ‘Sing it like you did on Radcliffe again, like Lydon.’ It was his idea, I just pushed him toward it."

"It is the British version of the album I am talking about [the US release would include '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'] and mostly because of the cover, which I think is probably my favourite ever picture of The Stones. If we are on that subject, it says quite a lot about Mick Jagger as a frontman that he was secure enough to be only third from the front on the cover of the early records. When you look at Out Of Our Heads it looks like Brian Jones' or Keith Richards' group. Mick is just peering in from the side. That's how cool Jagger was - most singers are always pushing people out of the way so they can be at the front. Out Of Our Heads is often entirely overlooked within The Stones' catalogue. I love it because before that, on the previous albums, they were attempting to recreate the music of their heroes in an almost academic manner, with only a certain amount of success. What gave those early records credibility was that they were aficionados and experts and that was something, besides The Beatles, which was exciting to British kids. However, they hadn't really put their own mark on their music. Out Of Our Heads moved away from blues into what then was called rhythm and blues. They were much better at appropriating that style, than they were pure blues music. There are more chords, less rootsy themes and [the songs are] more about 'finding a girl and losing a girl' and so Jagger is more believable on that album. Overall, musically, the songs just suited their style better. Out Of Our Heads is a band just about to hit their stride and about to turn into their own songwriting machine. There is almost no other record like it. I think you could argue that if you want to really discover what The Velvet Underground were inspired by, it is probably Out Of Our Heads. Not just in terms of how the band look, but the evidence is there in the version of Marvin Gaye's 'Hitch Hike', which obviously the Velvets chopped on 'There She Goes Again' - and I used on 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'. There was a point where I was into The Stones more than any other band on the planet. I found out everything there was to find out about them - about the band, about Andrew Oldham and how they made their records. That investigation was really good for me. When I formed The Smiths, they were probably the biggest influence in terms of the politics and the blueprint for a band, including the dynamic between the guitarist and the singer. When I was trying to get The Smiths together, I took the behaviour of Andrew Oldham and Brian Jones in their resourcefulness, desperation and ingenuity as the MO of The Stones as a working unit, as a source of inspiration - which was a pretty unusual thing to do in 1982."

"Around 1983 or '84, pop music stopped doing it for me. It was getting a bit clean. There was still a lot of good stuff, but I think it was The Smiths... I wasn't obsessed with them the way Sice was and a few other people I knew, but listening to them made you want to find something else. Then, when The Jesus And Mary Chain came out that was it. My brother brought their second single home and I wasn't sure at first. It was such a racket. It still is. But it was 'You Trip Me Up' that really did it for me - I was sold. This beautiful marriage of... it's not nice feedback, controlled feedback like you'd get off The Who. It's awful. But the core of what's going on - the song - is so lovely. And they looked fantastic, like The Beatles in Hamburg. They looked like a gang. It just seemed like they were blowing everything away and starting again. I went to listen to the Velvets after I'd heard this, and the Velvets did it... it was either noise or it was a great melody. They never really did the two together, whereas the Mary Chain managed to marry the two. The video is just fantastic. They're walking around somewhere in the Mediterranean, sitting on the beach in full leather gear with their massive guitars. After hearing the Mary Chain, that was all I wanted to listen to - bands who did that. They were a big band. They were in Smash Hits, which is hard to believe."

"Some people would say that The Smiths never really recorded one great album and that they were more of a singles band and I kind of see what they mean. I do really like Meat Is Murder, which is a weirdly psychedelic record with really long tracks. They really did the legwork with that album. But I remember before The Queen Is Dead came out it was an event… they were about to release their first album as a big band. I remember hearing the first single, ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, and they had moved on. And then I got it and… the cover was awful… just a piece of shit. But then I played it and it starts with that sample: 'Oh take me back to dear old Blighty…' And it was, 'Fucking hell…' Just astonishing. One of the best openings to an album ever. And that’s before you get to ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’. They could have had the photograph outside of Salford Lads Club as the front cover but then Morrissey is wearing a really daft jacket. It’s brown with black love hearts on it. Very strange. I remember seeing them on that tour when they came to the G-Mex. They came on stage to 'The Queen Is Dead' and Morrissey was carrying a placard that said, 'Two pale ales please'. He had a white blazer on and shades and, fuck me, he looked like Elvis."

"I have a weird relationship with David Bowie. There's a part of me that didn't want to include him out of bloody-mindedness, not out of any disrespect to him but because I get sick of talking about David Bowie, what with all those comparisons we drew. People said that Suede were like a mixture of The Smiths and Bowie, when actually there are all these other comparisons that could have been made. But I can't get away from the fact that he is a huge influence on what I do, and you can't get away from the fact that he simply is one of the greatest artists of all time and he made some of the greatest music of the 1970s, and six or seven unbelievably good records. Low is just one of them, I could have chosen Hunky Dory, Space Oddity, Scary Monsters, Young Americans. But I've chosen Low because I love the mystery of it, even though it's not his best song album - there's no 'Quicksand' or anything like that. You can tell that he's shifting, and looking for something else. My favourite track on it is 'Warszawa', with its amazing Wagnerian stirring in the music. Suede's 'Europe Is Our Playground' had a sense that it was a version of that. I love the way Low doesn't explain itself, and that it's a really odd record. I love the chronology of it, the fact that three of my favourite records ever were all made around the same time: Low, Never Mind The Bollocks and Music For Airports."