"The first heard time I heard Roxy Music I was smitten. I was in a record store and I asked the guy ‘What are you playing?’ They used to put the record jackets on the front desk, I picked it up and they looked like a band from outer space. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but I loved everything about it, ‘Virginia Plain’ was just an incredible sounding song. It’s the way the synthesiser bends at the start, then the songs kicks in and Bryan Ferry’s singing is so over the top and melodramatic, I’m not even sure what he’s singing about. There’s those breaks where they jam in the middle, the keyboard and synth solos. It was the sonic template, it sounded completely otherworldly to me. I felt a kinship with Roxy Music. I grew up listening to The Who and The Beatles and they were rock stars, but I felt Roxy Music were sort of my peers. With a lot of the new wave and punk bands I thought ‘I can do this, I can be in bands and do what they’re doing.’ It didn’t sound anything like the classic rock records I’d been listening to, it was arty, very flamboyant and kind of crude in a way. It was a bit pretentious but I liked that, I found it really fresh at the time that they had an art-school approach to the music and yet the music was very DIY, it wasn’t slick. They were great musicians but didn’t sound like virtuoso bands like Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer, though I did have some ELP records too! I fell in love with Roxy Music, I bought all their records, their solo records and live bootlegs. I was the self-appointed president of the Roxy Music fan club in Madison, there were only seven members. For a couple of years, once every two months we’d have a ‘Roxython’ on a Saturday night until the sun came up, we’d play their albums and dress up in very flamboyant clothes. It was great."

"This is when I was at Art School, on foundation, in Winchester. I went early for the term that starts around May, wandered into town and the local record shop was having a sale. There were two records I bought cheap that day: A Wizard, A True Star by Todd Rundgren, and Can't Buy A Thrill by Steely Dan. Those two records I must've listened to a billion times. A Wizard, A True Star is a truly bonkers record. I don't know if someone who didn't know anything about Todd Rundgren could go back and listen to it today and get anything about it. It starts with 'International Feel' with this semi-cosmic synth riff, which goes down through beats into this song with really loud drums on it, and then peters out and suddenly it's the song from The Wizard Of Oz! But that's Rundgren, really. I just sat in my room and listened to it thinking ""this is fantastic!"" Mild hallucinogens may be useful in its appreciation. Mike Barnes, the journalist, is a friend of mine and a few years back we went to see Todd Rundgren play A Wizard, A True Star live in its entirety. And what Mike said about Todd is you just have to go with it, basically. It doesn't make any sense. It goes from the sublime to the ridiculous, and there almost seems to be no taste filter with Todd. There's a book called Todd Rundgren In The Studio, and he's supposed to be this studio wizard but you realise after reading it that he's completely slapdash! He's such a messy producer! He made a huge amount of money out of Bat Out Of Hell, but he got kicked off the project as a producer because they didn't like any of his mixes. But he believed in the project so much he invested in it, and ended up taking a percentage on it and made a fortune from it. That shows that he's someone who is smart but won't necessarily attend to details, and will still maintain goodwill towards a project he's been sacked from. I like that; I admire that."

"I think I was definitely one of the people who saw an excerpt on Tomorrow's World on Kraftwerk in 1975, and they were saying this is the mental, extreme edge of music, where they're doing it all with electronics and Kraftwerk were just about the only band who did this. Before The Human League, you would have heard 'Autobahn' on the radio occasionally, and maybe 'The Model', but that's about it, if you were lucky. And it was looked upon as really out there. It's more naturally linked with classical music, synth-pop, whereas rock & roll came from a different branch of music. I don't think I actually bought The Man Machine until I was 14 or 15, probably six or seven years after it was released. There's an awful lot of records that I love that I didn't really give a proper listen to until I was in my early twenties. I think there's a lot of fear in music, and listening to music, and a lot of people not wanting to go outside of their comfort zone. I remember when I was 12 or 13, my elder brother listening to some very strange music that he would have heard off John Peel or something, and I would half listen out of the corner of my ear and then run away, because it was so alien to me! It's only with time and with age and experience that you let yourself listen to things that would've sent you running in the old days. I've seen them live twice. The first time, I think I almost wet myself, it was at Tribal Gathering in 1997. It was the first time they'd performed in years and it was like a whole generation had come through absolutely worshipping Kraftwerk and suddenly they were back on the scene. The five minutes in that steaming tent were just the most exciting moments - the whole crowd was just feeling and waiting that this is finally going to happen after years and years. Then the curtains finally opened with the vocoder'ed voice and everybody just completely wet themselves - brilliant! They really give it some on stage, don't they - show men! It's all pretty static, but you wouldn't want it any other way."