7. Iggy & The StoogesRaw Power

It would’ve been about 1984. I was playing in a band, and my brother was playing in a different band with Jimmy Hartridge, the other guitar player who went on to be in Swervedriver. They were doing a Rolling Stones thing, we were doing an Echo And The Bunnymen thing. Then either Jimmy or my brother said, "Yeah, listen to this," and put on Raw Power. There’s ‘Search And Destroy’ – "I’m a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm"… Everything exploded. That’s when The Stooges were only starting to seep through into more sort of general consciousness; now you can buy Iggy And The Stooges t-shirts on the high street.

There was a time when, if you met somebody else who knew The Stooges, that was something special. We played a show once in a squat in Hackney in London. Our band was called Shake Appeal. We walk in, get our gear together, then this guy with specs comes over to me and he says, "Hey, are you guys Shake Appeal?" I said, "Yeah, yeah." He said, ‘This is brilliant. We’re playing before you and the last song on our set is a cover version of ‘Shake Appeal.’" I was like, "That’s fantastic, what’s the name of your band?" And it was Kevin Shields!