We couldn't possibly have done what we did without punk. Until then, the bands that we really liked, the Curved Airs and the
Yeses and the
Genesises, they were skilled musicians, they were people who'd read the
Bert Weedon songbook for eight years. And punk came along,
The Clash,
Sex Pistols, but the point was that they just went out and did it. They learned how to do it, they were on a stage doing it. And without them we couldn't have thought about doing it, we assumed you had to learn all the chords and so on. We were a punk band.
