Genesis – Foxtrot
It was during that pompous phase that I got into Genesis – Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme and all that. I look back and it's like, my God, that sort of "children abused by nanny at public school" revenge fantasy type of stuff. It's bizarre. But I loved the musicianship of it. They threw everything at it. Tony Banks' organ and piano, Rutherford's guitar and Gabriel's weird vocals and the whole stage theatrics they used to put on was pretty amazing. I liked Alice Cooper at the time too, and Bowie of course. I liked people putting in an effort with the stage show. You really felt you were seeing something special. 

I was writing lyrics then. Ballads mainly, so I was probably always a writer. I thought I was a songwriter at first, but I wasn't. They were about five or six pages long. They were stories. That was the start of me writing. Song lyrics.