8. X-Ray Spex – Germ Free Adolescents

I’ll say plain and clear, I found my voice via this band and this record. I learnt how to sing with Poly Styrene. I found myself in there somewhere.

I think I’m driven by feeling. I’m not a classically amazing singer, at all and a lot of what drives me is contact and exchange, and the relationship around the work. I think that is where the best things can happen. More and more I feel really conscious of the chemistry – more and more I have an amazing sense of gratitude.

What punk was when it first started to happen around 1977 – that quite short-lived era, which then had to continue and go into other places – was something very much in its time. I think the mentality and the spirit of that, this creative chaos, in which anyone can own it, hold it, do it, and being fearless within it – that’s absolutely there in hip-hop and in jazz.