"I’d be hard pressed to choose from those early records, but 1999 was a big departure from the first three and that double album was a massive undertaking. Those records where you don’t know how the hell the writer did the thing are the ones that will always have a massive mystique and weight with me. Probably the casual fan of my bass playing or the rhythm section of Guns wouldn’t be able to pick up on it, but me and Steven really worked on this groove by playing along to Prince as well as Sly and the Family Stone. We would sit in the rehearsal room and crank the music on this ghetto blaster and just play along and emulate some of that stuff. It was ‘85 and no-one knew what was going to be next, there was a big question mark. Punk was sort of in its death throes, there was this – if you ask me – really bad metal that didn’t relate to anybody, then the rest of it was up to us, people who were our age 19, 20, 21, whatever and we knew it. So we tried to go a different route and that 1999 record was a big influence on me becoming a bass player."

"The first Damned record is a classic. These were some of our influences and bands that never really got a wider appeal and should have. Rat Scabies was on that record and was like a rebirth of Keith Moon, Brian James’ guitar playing was second to none, suddenly punk rock had our own Eddie Van Halen - sort of [laughs]. Just a shredder. Then there was Captain Sensible and Dave Vanian... everyone was a unique character, not just personally but as a player. I don’t think anybody could have beaten the Damned at that point in their carer. It was short-lived but maybe it was too ferocious to last with that line-up. After we did that record I was playing a gig in ‘94 with Steve Jones, we were playing the Viper Room every Monday night as the Neurotic Outsiders and Rat Scabies came to one of the gigs. Steve introduced us and Rat said, ""thanks for covering that song, I got the biggest publishing cheque I ever got"". But I didn’t know what to say, I was terrified of The Damned man, these are my heroes. I mean it was Rat Scabies, what the hell do you say to Rat Scabies?"

"Beans On Toast is a guy called Jay and he used to run a pub in North London called Nambucca. When I was playing [gigs] in North London, I started hanging out there. Jay had this tiny little guitar and knew basically three chords, and he used to write these fun little songs about stuff that happened to us the weekend before. This was happening during the point in my life when my writing was deliberately complex and I was trying to be obtuse and challenging and all these kinds of things, so to hear that kind of simplicity both lyrically and musically was so inspirational to me. And it was so direct that it felt kind of punk in a roundabout way. I’d spent years writing these obscurantist lyrics and suddenly, here was a guy writing songs about us and our adventures and our thoughts and feelings and foibles and all the rest of it. It just knocked me sideways. When my old band Million Dead broke up, Jay was the leading light for me in terms of what I was going to do next—quite a lot of my early songs sound quite a lot like Jay, for good reason."

"The ‘60s was such a powerful decade for music, but in the ‘70s it suddenly felt really old to me. If you’d have asked me about The Beach Boys and The Beatles at that point, I’d have called it a load of old tosh. I was looking for my thing and the new thing, and Bowie led me into The Velvet Underground, which led me into glam rock and the New York punk scene. I remember first seeing ‘Starman’ on Top Of The Pops and I’d never seen anyone who looked like David Bowie did - it was all sparkly and mad hair, but the song sounded amazing. The message of there being something out there for you really hit home with a lot of people who were my age, and it came at a time when everyone was searching for something that our generation could call music. Bowie had his moments as an artist, didn’t he? It’s a controversial thing to say, but I think Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory were the only great albums he did really. He had fantastic tracks from other albums - I love “Heroes” and I love “Ashes To Ashes”, they’re brilliant songs - but in terms of albums, it’s Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory that mean a lot to me.”"

"This was made right in the middle of the punk thing when everyone was trying to get more aggressive, and Brian Eno went away and not necessarily invented ambient music, but certainly popularised it. If I had to just listen to one song for the rest of my life it would be '1/1'. It's not just a mellow thing - I've listened to it in the morning and it's beautiful and I've listened to it last thing at night. I've listened to it as a stimulant and a calming thing, it does something very physical, very chemical to me. I'm always fascinated by how he made that track. Did he sit there and play it live for 17 minutes? Did he smoke some dope first? I've always meant to ask him, I'm always bumping into him and I always forget. I see him having coffee in a café near me and we always have a nice little chat. He's a lovely chap. I never let onto him how much of a fan I am because that would be weird and a bit distasteful. If I ran up to him saying, 'How did you do that track?!', he'd probably start backing off slowly."