5. Lou ReedTransformer

It’s emblematic for a lot of things. I’d have been 17 or 18 when I discovered The Velvet Underground and everything that was around them. I remember listening to ‘The Gift’ and ‘Heroin’, but this album – ‘Satellite Of Love’, particularly – it just really takes me right back. I suppose, truthfully, being back then a sort of goth – I had a very long fringe and tight trousers – it was realising that this album wasn’t a pose; it was really fucking good. 

I remember going to see John Cale at the Royal Festival Hall – he did the live soundtrack to a Lon Chaney film – and I was just looking at him thinking, Jesus Christ! It’s him! He’s there! And he’s real! I really got into that stuff and who those people were; Moe Tucker, Sterling Morrison and who the whole band were, not just Lou Reed. But I suppose it all comes to a pinnacle with Lou Reed and Bowie, too. 

At that age, the whole Transformer / Velvets-thing is so attractive but you don’t see the downside of that lifestyle; you just see these artists really bearing their souls and creating this terrific, dark, bleak work.