"A year after the punk gig debacle, when the school banned me from organising outings to gigs, I went to the housemaster about an Iggy Pop gig in Manchester. I explained that Iggy wasn't technically a punk and had been around ten years longer than punk music. I asked him if I could organise a trip to see the show and, very reluctantly, he agreed to me taking five people, as long as I could find a teacher to drive us there. I tried every single teacher in school and everybody turned me down, except the school organist, Mr Parks. God bless him. He had been in a boarding school himself, went to Cambridge and then back to playing classical organ for a choir at another boarding school. He had no experience of life and when he talked to you, he would never look you in the eye. He was a very damaged, sweet human being. And I persuaded the poor fucker to take us to see Iggy Pop at Manchester Apollo. Iggy, fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, who was playing the Lust For Life tour. We knew when we got there that we had to ditch Mr Parks quickly or he would yank us out of the gig. We got the venue and we ditched him. Iggy came on, covered in blood and with a devil's tail between his legs, fucked out of his mind, and throughout the show, his own security would pick him up off the floor and prop him against the mike. He would crawl into the audience and the bouncers were so terrified that they were attacking anyone. I was punched in the face for the first time, aged 16, at a gig by a bouncer who was trying to get away from a blood-covered Iggy Pop. The gig was jaw dropping. It was real, it was primal and Iggy was a force of nature. He looked like the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He looked like Nureyev on bad acid. I am not gay – I wish I was, or at least bisexual – but I fell in love. It was profound and it was beautiful – and Iggy, of course, created punk music. Afterwards, we made our way back to the car, thinking ""we are grounded for fucking life"" and that we might be expelled. We found Mr Parks and for the first time he looked me in the eye and said, ""That was incredible – I have never seen anything like it. Musically, it was very simple, but it was the most exciting thing I have ever seen in my life."" The man wouldn't stop talking all the way back in the car about this revelation. So, Iggy saved my life and probably saved Mr Park's life too. I have met Iggy. I have met James Osterberg, too – which is very different to meeting Iggy Pop – a few times. He is the most articulate, intelligent man. He was reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot when I first met him. He is witty, gawky and very worthy of my love. I could have chosen a number of his albums, including The Idiot and Lust For Life. I wouldn't choose the more obvious one, Raw Power, because I don't like the production. Fun House is raw, fucked-up and has some astonishing moments and it has primal Iggy all over it. For years, Iggy garnered little respect. As a devotee, seeing him get respect in recent years has been great. I am very happy that the world has recognised him for the artist that he is."

"We start this list off with Surprise Vacation as they seem to be a logical stepping stone out of that period of 1950s blues favourites, and there's a similar lo-fi quality. In terms of today's contemporary recording processes, how do you undo modern equipment, backwards? Well, you start by avoiding getting too complex. At the same time you avoid purposely creating noise for effect. However there is some appeal to be found in this lo-fi bottom line. 

Let's include Ramones in this – who would have thought that after 40 years there would be attention bestowed upon the punk scene? That scene erupted with the exact opposite: they didn't want attention. They abhorred that as a goal. And ironically this celebration four decades later is being reflected in window-dressing for highbrow stores for menswear and womenswear. We've almost seen it turn upside down – but that's okay."

"Like I said, I think you're only as good as your last creative output, and I think Adore Life is even better than Savages' first album. I got to see them when they were touring this record live last summer as we shared a few festival bills, and they're just phenomenal. Their show absolute punk rock & roll, but dirgey in the way you feel you've drunk too much iowaska, yet you're just at a gig. Their music is hypnotic, it's trance inducing, and Jehnny Beth is just the embodiment of rock & roll, one of the few hopes we have in British music at the moment. What I love is that so many people got behind it, yet it's still such an uncompromising album. It's work to listen to this record, you're not going to put it on and immediately have a good time, and that's important. We need challenging records."

"I always wanted to get back to what we did with PiL [Publice Image Ltd], but I got caught up in other things. The Sex Pistols were back on the road and no regrets: those people are my mates. Then it was all the TV work, which I loved. I discovered that nature is not something to be scared of, and best of all, that animals seem to like me! They don’t want to put me on the menu.” Lydon reflects on his not-so-punk appearance on the reality TV show ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of here’ He continued: “But hearing this absolutely brilliant record, in particular Halleluhwah, which lasts an entire side, reminds me of what we were trying to do with PiL. Can is its own thing and so is PiL. The only way to file these records is alphabetically.”

"A lot of record shops were closing around this time, and I won’t use the internet to buy them. The internet is for porno, encyclopedias, and video games, of which I waste an awful lot of time on. So I slowed down in the purchasing around here and went back to old stuff like Kate Bush. On “Wuthering Heights,” her voice is almost hysterical but always in her own register. I find it very soothing for her to be squealing away up there, it’s fantastic. She’s a gift. I love PJ Harvey too. That’s one very interesting woman who doesn’t play the sex category. She strides in there at the level of any man, and I’m really proud for her in that respect, because that’s really what we wanted in punk—we wanted girls to be the equal to the boys, and she carries that great tradition. "

"I chose the second Elvis Costello record because it had the whole band and I saw those guys so many times in that period. The band was so excellent and the songwriting and the lyrics were so excellent, Elvis Costello was a singular talent in that period. Both Elvis and David Byrne were coming across with these songs that were so amazing – they were nodding backwards towards classic pop and yet they were doing new and innovative things with it, and the lyrics were so inspiring. They were both such inspiring lyric writers. In different ways both writing about alienation in modern society: Elvis is this vitriolic way and David Byrne in this meek Clark Kent kind of thing, but they were both railing against what society was becoming and what it was trying to make of its citizens and they were both of their ways very punk."