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Baker's Dozen

"You Can't Escape Your Influence" - Mark Lanegan's Favourite Albums
Julian Marszalek , January 26th, 2012 04:35

In one of our best Baker's Dozens yet, Mark Lanegan talks Julian Marszalek through the most played discs in his collection

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The Leather Nun Force Of Habit

Their cover of Abba’s ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ is fantastic! I don’t know how popular they were in the States – personally, I don’t know anyone who’s into them – but I know that everything I have done since I heard this record has a piece of this album in it. It’s a huge influence on me. I’m sort of a sucker for European persons singing in English – there’s something about it! They have this one song called ‘Prime Mover’ and I probably shouldn’t say this but I’ve managed to write four or five songs out of that song over the years.

Like all of these records, it’s one that I’ve heard a million times but one that I still listen to. It’s not like the Stones or Zeppelin – the kind of bands that I loved but have heard so many times that I never want to hear again – but have this just as much but I never get tired of listening to it.

Is that combination of the profound and the profane in their name something that appeals? I don’t know though I have been drawn into the seedier side of life at time. I never got to see these guys but I’ve seen a couple of clips on YouTube from their reunion tour and they sort of looked like they could be the guys from Saxon [laughs hard] so it might have turned out different if I’d seen them back in the day.