"This song started the whole idea that punk rock can be married to soul and R&B music. This sort of started the whole idea of the record for me."

"A fantastic film by Dennis Hopper. A great portrait of punk-rock youth culture in the early eighties, in which, here again, you’re hypnotized by the performance and voice of Linda Manz."

"Kurt Cobain talked about punk a lot even though everyone spoke about Nirvana being a grunge band, which I found quite confusing at the time. So I asked a friend of mine’s uncle about what punk was and I went out and got the first Clash record and the Sex Pistols. I was kind of into that, and then the '90s American skate punk thing arrived in my life. It’s a complex record, but it’s a really fun, poppy record at the same time Green Day and The Offspring were the gateway bands and I got heavily into NOFX, Pennywise and all that stuff, but the record that really sticks with me is Everything Sucks. It’s fast, it’s hard, it’s heavy but it’s also melodic as well. It’s a complex record, but it’s a really fun, poppy record at the same time. I listened to it yesterday. It’s a masterpiece of punk rock. It was my gateway into underground punk rock"

"There's an idea of punk being an hour zero movement, but The Stooges had been going for ages and they were punk rock. The MC5 were punk rock. And Hawkwind… I think punk rock started because in every small town there was somebody who liked Hawkwind. I liked all the records on United Artists - it sounds stupid liking groups because of the label - but Hawkwind were on United Artists, and so were Can. They were fantastic; Tago Mago is another record like Neu!, because there's nothing else that sounds like it. Subsequently, there have been things that have tried to sound like it, but it was completely original. I used to make cassettes of Tago Mago and go and sit in a field - I don't know why - to play it there in the middle of the night, because it seemed like the best way to listen to it. I wasn't very old; 13 or 14, playing Tago Mago in a field on my own with a cassette player running out of battery. The cows didn't mind."

"I think Hanin [Elias] from the band was a Bikini Kill fan so she sent it to me. They mixed punk rock with electronic music and it was the first time I'd heard that done. So definitely that inspired Le Tigre, and I was listening to it while I was making the solo Julie Ruin record, in 1997. It inspired me to get into electronic music because I was like, "Oh, if I want to do something different and if my band's not practising, I can make electronic music." They gave me the idea to learn how to programme a drum machine and use a sampler. It's just really like the world is opening up for you. Their music had a huge effect on the direction my career was going in, that I could mix electronic music with punk rock, that electronic music could be punk."

"Look, I'm a hits only person. When I go see a show, I don't want filler. Unless you're Sonic Youth or Tori Amos, I don't want your B-sides. Hits only. It's so self-indulgent. I picked Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady because I like that it's a little campy and gay. And the harmonies are good. It's that simple. I think with music sometimes it is that simple. It was pop punk, not pop punk as it is now, but it was poppy. I got into punk late because what I thought punk was did not appeal to me at all. I was like I couldn't care less about [whispers conspiratorially] Sex Pistols. But Buzzcocks, Gang Of Four, Wire, that's my jam. Melodic and smart and put together and catchy and the rest of it? I don't care. It's self-indulgent, like you say you don't care what we think of you but, yes you do. Singles Going Steady doesn't take itself too seriously, and it's gay. It's so gay. I think it's cool to think about being gay in the punk scene, I don't think it could have been too easy but to me that's ultimately not giving a fuck. It must be easy to be some straight, white dude and be anti-establishment. Well you're part of the problem, get out of here. You're anti what? What are you talking about? We were so lucky to come along in the 90s, because it was really a turning point for pop culture. Look at Riot Grrl, it made punk a safer place for women, and then Queercore came along and made it a safer place for queers. I think, there is a refuge in punk rock now, but that's the thing why I think the Buzzcocks was more punk than punk, because I don't necessarily think there was a refuge then. I think it probably felt pretty lonely, because you weren't disco, you weren't pop, that's where queer culture, or the gay scene really was, and to be a punk then? I don't think you could seek refuge in that. "