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Baker's Dozen

Lust For Music: Irvine Welsh's Favourite Albums
Joe Clay , March 4th, 2014 06:05

With Filth recently released on DVD and a new novel due later this year, the Edinburgh author places a long-distance call from Miami to give Joe Clay the rundown of his top albums

T

T. Rex – Electric Warrior
It was the first LP I bought. It was a big thing. You'd save up all your money and buy an album every weekend. I used to have part time jobs after school, delivering newspapers and groceries. So I had money to buy an album and the big purchase of the week was the album on Saturday.  There'd be an advert in the Evening News on Thursday and Friday nights for Bandparts – y'know, Bowie's Aladdin Sane, £2.99, and all this kind of stuff. So you'd go to Bandparts and you'd be absolutely shitting yourself in case they'd run out. I'd graduated from buying singles – mainly Beatles and the Stones – to albums and the first was Electric Warrior. I was about 13 or something like that. I'd seen Marc [Bolan] on Top Of The Pops. In those days, it was anything that disgusted your parents. So Bowie's …Ziggy Stardust… – when he fellated Mick Ronson's guitar on 'Starman' – stuff like that.