What does punk mean to you?
"I think everybody should be allowed to have their own little version of it, and not have to make their version of it be the version for everybody else. It had so much impact on so many people that it can't possibly be a blanket statement. To me it really gave me the opportunity to question authority and to really say, I don't have to do that. I was raised in an environment where one was to be very conformist. I went to a school where everyone was taught to sit down and shut up: I had parents who were the same and it turned me into, by conditioning, someone who would sit down and shut up.

"But when I heard Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten, you know, these initial voices of outrage... (anything aggressive previous to this was Ted Nugent, where just the guitars were loud, and they were singing about cars and girls, there wasn't any intellectual wallop behind it). Then, all of a sudden, you were hearing Anarchy in the UK or White Riot, and I just thought, Wow there's an anger I thought would never be possible. As Hubert Selby, the great writer said, I was an outlet looking for a scream, that was me. When I heard that music I was like, A-ha, this is it, my ship has come in! And I'm still on that ship.

"So, for me, punk rock was very liberating. It was like the prison doors swung open. And it was a prison, not my life, but now I could leave it. It's never been closed since. It gave me a lot of strength and much needed courage to hit back. And that's what punk rock means to me."