I remember Iggy and the Stooges' song 'Search and Destroy' reaching out from my speakers to me like my own personal anthem.
The Sonics I found later and that was pretty important.
I do a cover of a Velvet Underground song, and they were one of the most important bands, for me.
The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene.
I have always maintained that Iggy Pop is the Heavyweight Champion of Rock & Roll.
People would be surprised at how much of an electronic dude I am, and I like new wave, post-punk and proto-punk stuff.
When I was 14 years old, I was a huge fan of the Velvets, the Stooges and the Modern Lovers. They are my three favourite bands. I never get sick of 'em.
I was a big J. Geils fan, a Steppenwolf fan and a Savoy Brown fan.
I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing, and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.
I like Dave Davies from the Kinks, before he could play slick.
I loved the MC5 and the Stooges, but also, the British Invasion - the Kinks and the Yardbirds - and then Led Zeppelin, of course. Alice Cooper was one of my favorite bands.
My roots are more in he Beatles, Zeppelin, the whole 60's side.
I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk.
I would never have written 'Trainspotting' if it hadn't been for this album, 'Raw Power,' and 'Metallic K.O.'
There's a focus that hasn't been there for ages and ages and some American bands are sounding quite English like they did in the late 70s and early 80s.
The Velvet Underground is probably the best band that's ever existed, assuredly the best American one.
Black people created punk - the band Death was way before The Ramones. Same with Bad Brains. If you think about it, the wool has been pulled over our eyes.
The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong.
When I was 13, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground made more sense to me than anything else.
I have been listening to the Stooges' self-titled first album for well over half my life, and it remains one of the most exciting and essential records I have ever had the good fortune to come into contact with.
Just about every rock band and every guitar player from 1964 to 1984. To me, that's the golden period of rock. From the first Beatles album hitting America to the last Van Halen album with David Lee Roth. That's where all my favorite rock exists.
It was only later that I found out there was good '70s rock like the Raspberries and the Flaming Groovies. I always gravitated toward the '60s music more, though, like the Kinks, the Who and the Beatles, of course.
Silver Machine still sounds really modern with all the white noise. It's a bit punky in a way. They were ahead of their time.
I knew about things like Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground, weirdly, before I knew about David Bowie. I didn't know what David Bowie was, when I was a kid. I thought he was like Visage.
People say I sound a lot like the Ramones and it's probably because I'm influenced by the same '60s groups, but I was never a strict Ramones fan.
