What’s your favourite album and song ever?
Appetite For Destruction by Guns & Roses and ‘Tuesday’s Gone’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

What was the best year for music?
1987. Metal was no longer a pariah. In Britain, for years, it had been underground as an unfashionable subculture - denims over leathers, bullet belts, and an all male preserve. But Aerosmith were back, Guns & Roses broke out, and the whole Hollywood glam and hair metal scene made metal so damn sexy again. Metal has never been as exciting or glamorous since.

What is your earliest musical memory?
Hearing ‘Smoke On The Water’ by Deep Purple for the first time, roaring out of a biker’s house near where I lived in New Zealand. I was only a child who owned two records at the time, but I wouldn’t be lying by saying the experience was transcendent. Metal had me forever from that moment.

Is there any particular album or song you never want to hear again in your life?
I could extend this to whole genres, but let’s start the holocaust with ‘Candle in the Wind’.

If you could go back in time which musical figure would you like to meet?
Ronnie Van Zant from Lynyrd Skynyrd, if just to say ‘please don’t get on this plane’.

Who would you put in your fantasy band?
Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens on vocals, Angus Young on lead guitar, Izzy Stradlin on rhythm guitar, Rudy Sarzo on bass and Tommy Lee on drums.

What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to?
Aerosmith in 1986, on the PUMP tour. Heavy metal rock and roll perfection. Tyler, Perry and the band were clean, fit, lean and beautiful and making the best music of their career. I knew I was in the presence of legends.

What was the first gig you ever went to?
Tobruk and Briar - two Brummie heavy metal bands - in 1984, at the Powerhouse with a lot of other men wearing bullet belts, back-patches, white baseball boots and skin-tight jeans.

What was the last gig you went to and how was it?
Volbeat at the Underworld, Camden. Imagine crossing Johnny Cash with Metallica. That sums up this Danish rockabilly-metal outfit. It was shivery.

CD, Vinyl or MP3?
CD and vinyl.

John or Paul?
George – for the guitar on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.

East Coast or West Coast?
For metal? West Coast. From Van Halen and Ratt to the Beautiful Creatures, the coolest US rock music still tends to come from California.

Dylan or Elvis?
Elvis, in Hillbilly phase.