As usual I had been collecting ideas for song titles for the last couple of years, titles, words pictures, bits torn from magazines, videos of programs and movies which would make up the lyrical palette for the new record.

We started in January 2002. Each day I trekked across town to Degville’s fifth floor flat right in the centre of Covent Garden, X coming by tube from Hampstead, ready to fire up the beatbox. 192 bpm here we go, still get a shiver down the spine...

I'd become friends with Alan Mcgee who I had always wanted to meet - I even went to a lecture he gave at a music fair on rock and roll but when he walked past me afterwards I was too scared to say hello! It’s funny how you always think, oh he won't want to talk to me... well, it turned out one day my girlfriend was having dinner in a gastropub called the Salthouse in London’s Abbey road... she phoned me and said you'll never guess who's eating there too, Alan Mcgee and what she thought were 2 roadies... she said you have to come down for a drink..

We sat there and I was not saying anything( I hate going up to strangers and saying hi I'm Tony James!).. the 2 "roadies" were Bobby Gillespie and Manni from Primal Scream to make things worse, who my friend Mick Jones knew but I didn't... anyway eventually Penelope leant over to Alan and said -"do you like Sigue Sigue Sputnik by any chance?" Alan roared "we fookin’ love them! and Bobby grinned in agreement! "well" said Penelope " this is Tony James....." pointing at me!

Well that was it.. it turned out Generation X had been Alan and Bobbys’ favourite band; they’d gone to see us as kids at school when I'd played scotland with Gen X, and they loved SSS too...

We were off! ...more red wine, Bobby standing on the table while we swapped more and more rock stories of mutual admiration. I always loved the Primals too, went and bought all their records... it was a mad night (actually Bobby had sneaked to a recent SSS gig too and bought a CD of us... funny how these things come around isn't it - I really think he is great).

Anyway, a month later I was in Alan’s office and he said we should go see the Primals in the studio as they were recording around the corner.

When we got there they played this backing track they had recorded called "Miss Lucifer", although there wasn't much singing on it, I was blown away, damn, it rocked and was really suicide like at 220 bpm too. I went home with the riff buzzing in my head - really jealous! But it was soo inspiring that later that night the riff for "Mickey Mouse is Going to Hell" (a title I'd lifted from the book 'No Logo' the previous summer) came into my head.... I'd phoned my answerphone and dddaddd'd it down the line so i wouldn't forget it, and worse, praying I hadn’t directly nicked the Primals track wholesale!!! phew, I hadn’t!!! - it was a killer riff and set the tone for the new album, we were going to rock again

Thanks Bobby - the favour returned then...

Degville came up with a tune immediatley and X blissed away on guitar..

we had a new box of synth sounds from the korg that were so inspiring too and more songs started to flow, back on that beat again..

In fact I was down in Somerset when X phoned from Degville’s with this great backing track idea but they had no lyrics... hang on I said, I’ve got this idea called "everybody wants what Sputnik wants" ...oh yes perfect said X, fits perfect, i e-mailed then my rough lyrics and we were away.. "Original Freekster" was Dirty Deg’s title of course... "Family X" was one I'd had for a while... over the next month it just flowed...

This time we decided to only do rough demos and play the songs live first before we went to record them... which turned out to be a good policy, not that Degville could ever remember the words ever! (even now)

So many days I was walking back down the Tottenham Court road scribbling lyrics onto a pad in the cold - I find when I'm driving or walking I always see things clearly and easily complete the lyrics like that, most actually while I drive back to somerset through the night, with a white pad on my lap at 100mph, listening to trance music at deafening volume... in fact Im still doing it, maybe its the high speed or the fact that trance has no lyrics, but I always get inspired, from Judge Jules and Fergie playing tunes - I record their shows onto minidisc every week! ...its exciting!

We went to Japan, and i got so many ideas - I love it there, the shows were great- Japan IS Sputnik, especially Osaka, it IS Blade Runner meets the Matrix.. when we came back I had lots more stuff, but we knew we had to take a break while X had his baby (a boy, "Jack") and I was moving London flats to be more popstar central in Marylebone, so we lost a couple of months......

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