"Yeah, my mum bought it for Christmas. I must've been 18 at the time or something. I find it quite cool that my mum actually went into a record shop and asked for Metal Box by Public Image! There were only a few thousand made, so it was limited edition. But I was a huge PiL fan, I loved the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten/Lydon and when the Pistols split, everybody was waiting to see what he's going to come back with. Nobody could believe that he would return with this. They sounded like nothing you'd heard before. The first track, 'Albatross', is basically listening to Lydon screaming that he wishes he would die for ten minutes, or a junkyard having a nervous breakdown! The album has these metallic smashes and clangs, which I'd never heard in music before. This is considered one of the first post-punk albums, alongside the Siouxsie and the Banshees record, but before Metal Box, it would probably have been Pere Ubu's first album. From a UK fan's perspective, Banshees and PiL would have made the first post-punk records. We'd bought 'Death Disco' on 12"" records, but to buy an album in a canister, cut and mastered really loudly, bursting out of my speakers was something strange. These were not rock & roll songs, they didn't have a lot of dynamic to them at times either. They were danceable though, with a disco drumbeat, a dub reggae bass, playing Swan Lake on guitar, with Lydon screaming about his mother having cancer over the top of it and ending up on Top Of The Pops. That's avant-garde being taken into the fuckin' mainstream. To me that's very revolutionary and subversive. It was a real howl from the soul. Every time I listen to Metal Box, I remember what it was like to live in Britain in the late '70s when I was a teenager. It was a grey, damp, repressive country and that record reflects the state and times perfectly. It was a snapshot of the times."

"I was 10 years old and I didn’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll. I was at a friend’s house and we were playing Warhammer, because I’m cool, and his older brother had an Iron Maiden poster and I thought it was very cool. It grabbed me and I didn’t realise it was for a band. I mentioned it to my parents and about a week later my dad brought me a copy of Killers on cassette from the Our Price at Waterloo Station. I can still remember hearing the opening track. It was like a switch flipping in my head. It was immediately apparent that this was my thing. Rock ‘n’ roll arrived very suddenly and forcefully in my life. One of the things I love about Maiden still, is that they are resolutely impervious to fashion. They’re just Maiden, they have always been Maiden and they don’t give a f*** You can take a lot of my records away from me, but I’ve got a lot of collector’s edition boxsets of Maiden and I would fight for them harder than most things in my possession. One of the things I love about Maiden still is that they are resolutely impervious to fashion. They’re just Maiden, they have always been Maiden and they don’t give a fuck. There’s something punk about that. They weren’t cool in 1980, they weren’t cool in 1990, they weren’t cool in 2000 and they weren’t cool in 2010, but they still go about what they do selling out arenas all over the world."

"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?"

"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.”"

"Of all the people who were a direct influence on Oasis, the line goes back to the Sex Pistols, whether that’s Joy Division/New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses or Factory Records, and if they hadn’t played those two gigs in Manchester who knows what would have happened? And on that album you’ve got Lydon or Johnny Rotten with that voice going on about the Royal Family and boredom and the rest while you’ve got Steve Jones just hammering it out like a pub rocker or like someone who’s into Slade or The Small Faces rather than punk rock, and between those two things you’ve got it. Every time I listen to it I think that if it came out tomorrow it would fit right in, it wouldn’t feel dated. Way back at the start of Oasis we did a radio session for Mark Radcliffe and during ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ Liam out of nowhere sang ‘Sunshi-i-ine’, you know, with about ten extra syllables and when it went out on the radio I remember thinking, ‘Fuck me, that sounds great.’ And when we came to record I was like, ‘Sing it like you did on Radcliffe again, like Lydon.’ It was his idea, I just pushed him toward it."