I bought my first Buzzcocks record by mistake. In the disco a few nights earlier, I’d pogoed enthusiastically to ‘Rockwrok’ by Ultravox, without knowing what or who I was pogoing to. Confusing ‘Buzzcock’ for ‘Rockwrok’ in the punk section of the store, I bought ‘What Do I Get?’. I didn’t know what I’d got, but once I got home, I knew it wasn’t Rockwrok. The B-side, ‘Oh Shit!’, summed up my mood perfectly. 

My disappointment soon turned to satisfaction. The record I’d got was brilliant and over the next couple of years I’d buy all Buzzcocks’ other records, the sheet music for ‘Another Music in a Different Kitchen’, and I subscribed to their fanzine. I wanted to write songs like Shelley did. But I soon realised that if I were to do that, I would have to become not just a punk, but a poet and a philosopher too.