"A year after the punk gig debacle, when the school banned me from organising outings to gigs, I went to the housemaster about an Iggy Pop gig in Manchester. I explained that Iggy wasn't technically a punk and had been around ten years longer than punk music. I asked him if I could organise a trip to see the show and, very reluctantly, he agreed to me taking five people, as long as I could find a teacher to drive us there. I tried every single teacher in school and everybody turned me down, except the school organist, Mr Parks. God bless him. He had been in a boarding school himself, went to Cambridge and then back to playing classical organ for a choir at another boarding school. He had no experience of life and when he talked to you, he would never look you in the eye. He was a very damaged, sweet human being. And I persuaded the poor fucker to take us to see Iggy Pop at Manchester Apollo. Iggy, fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, who was playing the Lust For Life tour. We knew when we got there that we had to ditch Mr Parks quickly or he would yank us out of the gig. We got the venue and we ditched him. Iggy came on, covered in blood and with a devil's tail between his legs, fucked out of his mind, and throughout the show, his own security would pick him up off the floor and prop him against the mike. He would crawl into the audience and the bouncers were so terrified that they were attacking anyone. I was punched in the face for the first time, aged 16, at a gig by a bouncer who was trying to get away from a blood-covered Iggy Pop. The gig was jaw dropping. It was real, it was primal and Iggy was a force of nature. He looked like the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He looked like Nureyev on bad acid. I am not gay – I wish I was, or at least bisexual – but I fell in love. It was profound and it was beautiful – and Iggy, of course, created punk music. Afterwards, we made our way back to the car, thinking ""we are grounded for fucking life"" and that we might be expelled. We found Mr Parks and for the first time he looked me in the eye and said, ""That was incredible – I have never seen anything like it. Musically, it was very simple, but it was the most exciting thing I have ever seen in my life."" The man wouldn't stop talking all the way back in the car about this revelation. So, Iggy saved my life and probably saved Mr Park's life too. I have met Iggy. I have met James Osterberg, too – which is very different to meeting Iggy Pop – a few times. He is the most articulate, intelligent man. He was reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot when I first met him. He is witty, gawky and very worthy of my love. I could have chosen a number of his albums, including The Idiot and Lust For Life. I wouldn't choose the more obvious one, Raw Power, because I don't like the production. Fun House is raw, fucked-up and has some astonishing moments and it has primal Iggy all over it. For years, Iggy garnered little respect. As a devotee, seeing him get respect in recent years has been great. I am very happy that the world has recognised him for the artist that he is."

"One of the first jobs I ever had was working as a caddy on a golf course, and I worked just long enough so I could buy Lodger by David Bowie. The second job I had was cutting lawns, and I remember it was one of those hot summer days, I was sweating and getting attacked by wasps, and I was just thinking 'This is all worthwhile, because when I'm done here I'm going to ride my bike and go and buy the cut out vinyl of Suicide'. Cut outs were like the discount version. To be honest with you, I don't really even remember why I was fixated on buying the first Suicide album. Part of it was the cover, and the guy who ran my local record store, his name was Johnny, he was this alcohol and drug-addicted crazy person, and you'd walk in and he'd be playing all these random records, from Nick Drake to the Grateful Dead to The Clash to Miles Davis, and one day he was playing Suicide. It sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before. I think I was about 14. It wasn't until many years later that I met anyone who liked Suicide. I don't know if you experienced this as well, but when I was growing up albums were these almost, not to sound too grad studenty, totemic things that you would take into your house. Nowadays if I hear a song and it doesn't immediately resonate with me I probably won't spend any time on it. Some of the early records that I bought, like Public Image's Second Edition or Suicide, I'd made the effort to bring these into my house. I only had nine or 10 albums in my possession, so if I didn't understand a record back then I would think it was my fault. I'd think that the people making the record were smarter and more sophisticated than I was, and the fact that I didn't understand it was indicative of my own shortcomings. It was the middle of the summer, and I didn't really have a lot of friends, I didn't have a lot going on. My mum would go to work in the day and I was pretty much left alone to read books and watch TV. I had a lot of free time to listen to records. I took the Suicide album home and it didn't make sense to me, but I spent day after day and week after week listening to it until I cracked the code and it started to make sense. The first song is 'Ghostrider', and I still remember that Saul on the road to Damascus moment when I was listening to it for the third or fourth time, and there's that recurring line ""America America is killing its youth"", and I'd never heard anyone say anything like that before. And to say it in such a throwaway, casual way, it wasn't delivered in a portentous way, it's a throwaway lyric in a song, and that was the moment that really resonated. At the same time I was taking guitar lessons, and my teacher loved very complicated well-produced modern jazz fusion and heavy metal with long guitar solos, and he'd force me to listen to Van Halen or Larry Carlton and then when I listened to Suicide I was first confused - am I allowed to like something that clearly my music teacher hates? And finally I admitted to myself I don't like these well-produced records, I like these strange sounds. I think it also really corrupted my musical DNA."