Sex Pistols – Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols
I can remember my father saying, "Look at the state of this lot, with the pins in their noses, and their buttons and spikes…". I just fuckin' loved that. Music was different then, you couldn't just go online and search for a band, you would hear these rumours and they'd grow to tumours and grow and grow, until you would walk into a record store, and it was almost like you were buying porn, because this was supposedly such a naughty record. I swapped a T-shirt that I made for the album. I used to make my own punky T-shirts and trousers, because I couldn't afford to buy all this shit, so I'd find something from one T-shirt and sew it on to another. I had the Mona Lisa cut out, and I sprayed on it with paint, and my brother's girlfriend helped me sew it on to another shirt. And so I sold that to get the Pistols' record. I remember going to the disco and they played the Pistols, and I'd love it, hearing tracks like 'Holidays In The Sun' and 'God Save The Queen'. Listening to the lyrics and the words that Johnny Rotten used made me ask questions like, "What's the monarchy?" and things like that. It was like an education for me as well. I didn't know what Belsen was [when listening to 'Belsen Was A Gas'], and then I found out it was this concentration camp where they were massacring millions of Jews. Fucking hell. I mean this was a pop song, and I would never have thought about that. The record took me to another level. All this stuff we're talking about isn't stuff that I have to go back for to find inspiration from, because I came through it. Maybe that's why Skindred are they way that they are. When I'm bringing this stuff, I'm doing it with an authenticity.