The band that changed my life was The Who. It's hard to pick just one album, but if I had to pick the one that really showed me how things could be done, it's 'The Who Sell Out.' They really went to town on that, doing something that no one had ever done before.
I love punk, I love a lot of British Invasion bands, I love garage bands.
The Beatles, the Small Faces and the Kinks were great bands, but that was in the '60s.
I used to jam with Steve Marriott of the Small Faces.
When I hit 11 so did the careers of Dylan and the Stones. A year later it was the Who and the Kinks.
The Small Faces are thought to be a one-hit wonder in America because we only had 'Itchycoo Park.' Then the Faces just had 'Stay with Me.' So both bands could be considered one-hit wonders in America, even though we had several huge hits in England.
I was part of that whole early Moody Blues transitioning from a sort of R&B-blues band to being more progressive.
I was a mod when I was a kid. I'd be in Italian pencil-leg trousers with those bowling shoes you wear outside and a Fred Perry polo shirt with a V-neck sweater. It was like an Essex uniform - a very specific look.
C'mon, I mean who didn't listen to 'The Who' in the 60s?
There was so much great music around in the '60s, stuff like The Small Faces, but I also love The Jam.
It was only later that I found out there was good '70s rock like the Raspberries and the Flaming Groovies. I always gravitated toward the '60s music more, though, like the Kinks, the Who and the Beatles, of course.
It's very schizophrenic because I like a lot of very straight pop, like Small Faces, Stones, Kinks; and on the other hand, I like a lot of avant garde things.
I began writing with Mike Pinder and eventually we went on to form a new band called The M&B, which later became The Moody Blues, what I would call a progressive blues band.
