"The reason I picked ‘Philadelphia’ is because of the relatively unsung brilliance of John McGeoch on the guitar during that period, the album The Correct Use of Soap is my favourite of anything that Martin Hannett produced and again, that it came from Manchester was a huge bonus. It’s a really subjective one, for myself and my girlfriend at the time Angie, who’s now my wife, it made a soundtrack to our spring when it came out in 1980, when I was working in a clothes shop. “Every song on the record is great and no one really puts a song across in the same way as Howard Devoto, one or two people have tried, but most people wouldn’t even bother, because it’s so idiosyncratic and impossible to pull off without sounding ridiculous. I can hear Alice Cooper in there and his effect on that generation in the delivery of the vocals. There’s also the literary influences in the concepts of the songs, which are really brilliant. Whether it’s Sartre, Dostoevsky, The Situationists or feminism, whatever kind of perversity is going on there, there was a really great, mysterious manifesto in the lyrics. “It was art school that managed to rock without the need for laptops, sequencers or extra musicians onstage. They could really play but they were delivering art rock music and that’s why they’ve inspired me, especially in my solo career, on the first two records The Messenger and Playland Magazine were a really big inspiration for me and the band. “John McGeoch is someone I’m more than happy to pay tribute to and it’s only really in later years that I’ve realised what a big influence he was. The fact that he joined Public Image Ltd made total sense to me, because the other guitar player of his generation who was as inventive as him was Keith Levene. He obviously had a bit of wanderlust in him as a guitar player too, and I can relate to that!"