Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel ("Melt")
Charlie Burchill and I are on the record as being big, big Genesis fans. Having said that, I watched a documentary on them a couple of weeks ago on BBC Four and indeed I would have hated to be in a band with most of the guys! They talk about Peter's nonsense in terms of the way he dressed up but I thought to myself: "Pal, you'd be in Camel if it wasnae for him!" When Peter left Genesis, I'd be lying if I said that I loved either of his first two solo albums - they didn't quite hit the mark for me. However, the third one more than hit the mark. There were sounds on it that I'd absolutely never heard. Not so much now of course but listening to it at the time there was something very abstract about it and jagged, and claustrophobic and threatening. This was the dark side of Peter Gabriel but there was also this wonderful, catchy hit on the record as a balance.

But the real reason I relate to it so much is that he took us on tour with him through Europe. We were such massive fans of his and we were so pleased to be there, despite the fact that we got booed off one night in Brussels. And the rest of the nights we got howled off! Absolutely howled off. I don't know why and it never really dawned on us. We just thought: "This is great, we can watch Peter Gabriel every night!" We were doing stuff off Empires And Dance at the time and there was something perverse about the stick we were getting - part of me quite liked it. So, the combination of the times, the tour and the record itself, leads me to include this on my list.