"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."

"It's another strange thing; you had to keep some records as secrets on the punk scene, but John Lydon was into [founding member of Van der Graaf Generator] Peter Hammill. There's an idea that people would hide their Genesis records and get out The Damned ones if people came round. I didn't hide mine, although I didn't play them to Ian when he came round. They're a funny band, Van der Graaf Generator. At the time, with Pawn Hearts, all of your mates would say: "Ooh, there's a track that's three days long… it's pixie stuff". But 'A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers' is completely overblown, like a nightmare with saxophones. I suppose it's the ultimate prog-rock album: it's really overblown, but still of the terrifying. I really like Peter Hammill. He's another guy who's really unique - he has a really individual way of singing, and it's very raw."