7. The Meteors – Meteor Madness

When I started Sleaford Mods I started to explore my childhood influences, like The Meteors. I was 13 in 1983, but it was a good period of music. Socially it was not very good, but creatively it was great. I tried to dress up, I was a bit of a scooter boy. Pilot jacket, American lightweight camouflage trousers, leather jacket, crows nest haircut that didn’t look very good, but you know, that kind of thing. It made a big impression on me, but I didn’t experiment with these ideas until Sleaford Mods really, when I found my natural voice.

I can sing, but singing is a really difficult thing. I can sing very well and I did that for so many years but it’s not my real voice. When I started Sleaford it was my own voice and I married perfectly to that kind of thing. People these days are like, "Oh you sound like John Lydon," well, I don’t mean to sound like John Lydon, if there’s echoes of that, it’s just the way I speak, you know.