13. Bob DylanThe Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

Choosing a Bob Dylan record was really, really hard. There’s obviously Blonde On Blonde. There’s Oh Mercy, which is such a good record. Highway 61 Revisited is so good. But I ultimately ended up at Freewheelin’… because it was my initiation into Dylan. I discovered Dylan at the same time as Kerouac and Salinger and all of those kinds of people. Reading Allen Ginsberg and beat poetry, dreaming of going to America and heading west, jumping on a train. That’s the image that I had in my head when I discovered Bob Dylan. Then at 16 I got Bob Dylan’s name tattooed on my right butt cheek, so I think I can confirm that I’m a fan! I’m actually heading to New York on Monday, and I will be in the area where the cover art was taken, which I’m very excited about. I have these dreams of me wearing a big coat walking through the same streets.

I think what’s apparent through a lot of this list, from Ethel Cain to Nick Cave, is just how important storytelling is for me, and Dylan always had this magical myth surrounding him: from changing his name from Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan, to the story of him heading off to Woody Guthrie’s house. I have to give an honorable mention here to Robert Johnson – without whom at least 70% of this list wouldn’t exist – and the story of him going down to the crossroads and selling his soul, then being able to play music like the devil had taught him. 

You remember earlier, I told you how shitty the sound system was in my mate’s Peugeot 206? We drove to France once in that car and we had this album on. You try listening to a fucking harmonica in a Peugeot 206 with a sound system like that. It’s piercing. But it still remains one of my favourite albums of all time.