"Say what you will, nobody is trying to show off here, it's just solid songwriting. The great thing about almost every song on that record is that you can pick up an acoustic guitar and just play it and sing along. Joe [Elliott] singing the melody, he doesn't sing the highest and his voice doesn't rip up the most, it just sticks to the melody. It's great rock sensibility. The melodies aren't too bluesy, it's just a really solid record, and ten million other people must have thought so too because they bought it. But the interesting thing for me about that record is how honest it sounds, yet how unlike rock bands it was recorded. We took Def Leppard out with us and they told us the story of how their producer Mutt Lange would get them in the studio and the record was totally fabrication, by that I mean they would put down the drum track, then the computers would move the drum track so it really felt in time. Then he would ask Phil or someone to play one note - so instead of chords they'd be doing one note at a time. Then the chords would come from different tracks so you could control it, one note at a time. That record took two years. I've never heard of anybody doing that before or since. You can argue that it makes it sound different or better, but then there are great punk bands that go and bang things out in a day. There are no rules! Led Zeppelin I was recorded in 18 hours. The Beatles' first two records were done in 24 hours. But you can't argue with Mutt Lange's success."

"Following on nicely from “Just What I Needed”, I went to see my Dad in Florida and he had the 12” of “Stand and Deliver” which had “Beat My Guest” on the B-side. “I was into rap at that time, Run DMC and that kind of stuff, so for a ten-year-old it was ‘What the fuck is this?’ I was blown away. I was floored by the riff and “Beat My Guest” has the ultimate guitar riff, it’s so badass. I was into the make-up as well because I was into KISS too, so I thought that was cool. I was mesmerised by the whole look. “My Dad was always one step ahead of me. I remember being with him in Michigan once, we had this cottage we’d go to with my grandparents and he joined us one year, which was really fun. He was looking in the paper to see who was playing in Detroit - which was two hours away - he found out The Dead Kennedys were playing in some tiny little club and he left to go and see them. “I remember thinking my Dad was the coolest, I was ‘What the hell does that mean? He’s into some weird shit.’ He taught me everything. He spoke to me about music, but he doesn’t play music. I acquired a lot of his records when my parents split up, he gave me that Adam Ant record and I was bawling on the plane. “The next time I went to visit my Dad I’d discovered more Adam and The Ants and I wanted to talk to him about all of these other songs I’d heard, but he was already onto the next thing, which was Devo."

"I was only ten when it came out, but I knew there and then that this was the best music ever, that album. Obviously, child of the seventies, I had grown up on quite luridly sentimental and cheesy music [laughs]! Because you didn't really see punk on the television or hear it on the radio, I never really noticed it, but I did hear how it affected pop music, which is new wave, synth-pop, Elvis Costello and Blondie and stuff like that. In amongst all that, you had Gary Numan and The Human League. It was a breath of fresh air, definitely. I can see myself in my dressing gown watching Top Of The Pops. Obviously, 'Don't You Want Me', which they casually put at the end of the record, is one of the ultimate pop hits of that era and it seemed to be number one for just ages, which was fine by me, because I loved the video as well. Also one of my favourite records, I couldn't put it in this list because it's just a single, is 'Pop Music' by M, which kind of sums up that era for me completely. That's a great record, but he never made a decent album! Dare is, of all the albums on the list, it's probably the most complete - there's not a bad tune on it. They're just at the absolute pinnacle of their powers. It's not just about great pop music, because they were quite experimental still. It's not so much crazy experimental sounds, but it's really, really hard-edged and it doesn't let you off the hook. Nothing has really got a lot of reverb or delay on it, it's very, very clean. Some of the sounds go right through your head, piercing."

"This is his Los Angeles album, and what's funny about that is it's one of his most European records. On the 'Station To Station' song he even sings "the European cannon is here", and it's ironic that he recorded it in the Hollywood hills while doing tons and tons of cocaine. It's odd when you talk about these really iconic artists, whether it's Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones, there's always that debate about which is their best album, and usually there's some degree of consensus. With David Bowie most of my music cognoscenti friends will go with Low, but for me Station To Station is the weirdest, most subtly strong David Bowie album. It doesn't have the ambient beauty of Heroes or Low, but it's almost as if he was trying to make a conventional record, but it ends up sounding even stranger because it's trying to be conventional. And that's why I picked it. In a way it reminded me of some of the Roxy Music albums being made around this time, like Manifesto in that was these very strange artists trying to be a little more normal and ending up making something even more disconcertingly odd. How he could make this amazing record when he was constantly out of his mind on cocaine, and also the courage of having the first song on the record nine and a half minutes long, but the music on 'Station To Station' doesn't even get going for the first few minutes. When I was growing up Bowie really had this otherworldly mystique. There was so many different David Bowies, there was glam Bowie, European Bowie, then later on there was dance album Bowie. There was an assumption that whatever he was doing was phenomenal because he was David Bowie. To be a celebrity name-dropper one thing that amazed me was that I lived across the street from David Bowie for a while in New York and we had BBQs together, we went on tour together, and one of my most treasured memories, if I'm on my death bed this might be the thing that I think of. One morning David Bowie came over to my apartment and we were sitting on my couch at 10 in the morning drinking tea, and I played 'Heroes' on acoustic guitar and he sung along. Even if I end up getting married, having children and a family life, my favourite memory will be playing 'Heroes' on acoustic guitar with David Bowie."