The first song I remember hearing
Little Richard – ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’
“My mum and dad had an old record player – almost like a long drinks cabinet – and you used to lift the lid up and there was a record player inside it. You could stack up singles on it as well. They were quite young when they had me, both rock’n’roll generation, both used to be out jiving. So that was the first music I ever really heard: rock’n’roll. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis. But ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ and Little Richard are probably my favorite out of all that.”
The first song I fell in love with
The Beatles – ‘She Loves You’
“It isn’t my favorite Beatles song now, but it was when I was five or whatever I was. That was the first time I saw The Beatles on TV: they played the 1963 Royal Command performance thing and they played ‘She Loves You’ on that. That was the first time I fell in love with The Beatles really, so right from that age and it’s never stopped.”
The first gig I went to
Status Quo
“It was 1972. I went to at a place called the Guildford Civic Hall, which is near where I come from. Me and my mates, who were all in a band, we’d already been trying to get a band together, rehearsing. That was the first live show I went to see. We were in the very back row upstairs, but the sound was so loud, because we weren’t used to that kind of sound, we’d only had these crappy record players to play records before. And even discos weren’t like they are now… they’re not even discos now. But just the sheer volume, man. That was the message we needed really, that’s like: ‘’we’re on the right path, this is it’’. And it was just the most exhilarating thing, to hear music at that volume.”
The song I can no longer listen to
Any song by Paul Weller
“Well I’ve been thinking about this question, but it would probably have to be most of my own songs really. There’s very few songs I’ve turned my back on over the course of time but I would find it really difficult to sit down and listen to any old albums of mine. They’re things I did then, and that’s where they stay for me really. It’s nice sometimes when I hear something unexpectedly on the radio, an old song from whatever era, that’s always nice, because you hear it in a different context. But generally I can’t really listen to my old records; I don’t know many artists who do really.”
The first album I ever bought
The Beatles – ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
“It came out in 1967, but it took me probably a year to save up for it so I bought it a year later in ‘68, so I would’ve been about 10 I guess. It took me along time to save up for it. I sold off all my toys. I had a bit of a sale in my bedroom and invited friends around just to raise the funds to get it, and I got a bit more money off my mum and dad. I think it was 30 bob at the time, I don’t know what that is in new money, around £1.50, something like that. I just thought it’s amazing man. I mean I loved the Beatles anyway, but that was the first album I’d owned, and just to see the sleeve and the lyrics on the back and all that stuff, and the cut out thing inside it you know. So I just played the shit out of that for as long as I could.”
The song that makes me want to dance
James Brown – ‘Sex Machine’
“And I first heard that in a, there used to be a dance in the woken football club on a Thursday night when we were all little skinheads [sway deads]. So I don’t know when I heard that, probably in 1970-71 something like that. But it’s the funkiest record I’ve ever heard I think and again it still stands the test of time I think.”
The song I want played at my funeral
“Well it depends really, if I get buried, probably ‘Going Underground’, and if I get cremated, ‘Funeral Pyre’ maybe. But who knows. Perhaps I won’t have a funeral, I might just evaporate.”