"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."

"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."

"Now I’m in New York, in a band with Chris Frantz and his girlfriend, Tina [Weymouth], and we didn’t have a super-duper plan. I had ambitions to be a fine artist and show in galleries, but I was also writing songs. This club, CBGB, had opened around the corner, and there were bands like Television playing, and Patti Smith was doing poetry readings. We thought, If we learn some songs, we can play there. I had a day job as what was called a “stat man” for a company that designed Revlon counter displays. So I worked in a little dark room in the middle of this office—which meant I had a little radio in there, and I could listen to music. And nobody else would bother me. Bowie was on the radio a little bit, and he was a huge influence for a lot of people. I was aware of all the Ziggy Stardust stuff, and then him moving onto the Berlin stuff. Somewhere around this time, in the late ’70s, after we made our first record, we met Brian Eno, who had worked with him on Low, and that was very cool for us. In 1980, I went with Toni Basil to see Bowie in The Elephant Man. He was reading the collected speeches of Fidel Castro at the time, and he gave me the book and said, “You might enjoy this.” I dutifully read it. Castro could really ramble on. Really ramble on."

"""As I already had Raw Power and knew what The Stooges were about, it was big news that Iggy Pop was putting out his first solo record under his own name. The generation before me who were forming bands - people like Siouxsie and Lydon - had all been Iggy freaks from hearing about him via David Bowie's patronage. As was the case in the 70s, David Bowie was the provider of all the cultural information that moulded the decade. You found out about Burroughs through Bowie, you found out about Kraftwerk through Bowie and it was the same with Iggy Pop. There were rumours in the music press that David Bowie had been working on this record and when it came out it was a big deal. And it was amazing. Nothing sounded like it before and I don't think anything has quite managed to sound like it since. There is so much written about the Berlin period that there is no point in me going on about it, but I think of all the records of that time, this is the one that is most Berlin-like to me. I now know Berlin and have spent time there before it changed, and The Idiot does convey the atmosphere of being on the Berlin streets at 3.30 in the morning having been to various insalubrious establishments and looking for more action. Songs like 'Baby', 'Nightclubbing' and 'Dum Dum Boys' really capture that drunken, woozy, underground European atmosphere. It's a perfect record."""

"This was a difficult choice. I did want something that was a disco album and could have gone for The Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever - you don’t get much better than the songs on that particular album. But then I thought about Michael Jackson and what he did and how he changed things. Off The Wall is Quincy [Jones] at the height of his powers producing Michael Jackson as he is coming of age. Michael had the most amazing voice and a sense of rhythm that no-one had ever heard before. It’s really something. I listened to it about two or three months ago for the first time in quite a while and it is flawless. Off The Wall was the sound of [New York super-club] Studio 54. I was too young to go to Studio 54 when it first opened but I did go later when they reopened it briefly at the beginning of the eighties. I stood in the same room just imagining what it would have been like - it would have been a lot more fun in 1977. So, that album, which to me is a more interesting album than Thriller (although again another really great album), captured the spirit of a generation and moved dance music somewhere. This discussion could go on for hours if we had time, about what happened with disco and funk, bands like Chic and Sister Sledge who I’m obviously a huge fan of, but, for me, Off The Wall was the album that defined that period."

"Grunge was the first kind of music I discovered for myself without my parents. They were not very keen [laughs]. I was fifteen, the perfect age, when Nirvana broke, and I still listen to this record. I still listen to Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden too, but this still feels fresh to me, and has a real power. They captured that anarchy and rebelliousness of youth, but had songs that were like sing-a-longs, which really spoke to me. Plus the rhythms were incredible, like in ‘Breed'. I love the aggression of ‘Breed'. The rhythms of lots of metal, grunge and rock all really get me, actually. Adrian and I quite often used to come out of folk festivals and get into the car and stick Faith No More on. Like a cleanse!

Nirvana were different to the other bands around then because there was such a sad reflectiveness to them. ‘Something In The Way' particularly – Kurt's voice, and the way the song moves. Nirvana also remind me of being at the school disco. I had a friend that DJd at them, and me and my friends would be sitting down at the side, not interested, but he'd let us pick three songs to play. We'd always pick something off this album, get on the dancefloor for three minutes of headbanging, then sit down again [laughs]. I think the songs you loved as a teenager are songs you'll always have an emotional attachment to, as well. You're formed along with them."