Jason Williamson on the Sleaford Mods’ musical influences

“Even at five or six, I started taking music seriously. That could have been the theme tune to my favourite cartoon or the music that was in the charts… Abba, Dr Hook or the Osmonds. My stepbrother had a few punk albums and, when I got a bit older, I became obsessed with the Sex Pistols and the Jam. I loved the anger and the energy. When I joined my first band at 11, I tried to recreate that same emotion. Unfortunately, the drummer thought I was being too aggressive, so he left. I just wanted the music to mean something. I wasn’t prepared to put up with the light-hearted nonsense like the ones you saw on Top of the Pops.

“Growing up on a working class estate in the 70s and 80s gave music added importance. So many of life’s references came from music. I didn’t know about stuff like pasta and courgettes. We had no access to these things. I learned about the world through music. That meant music needed to say something. It had to be relevant.

“Would I call the Sleaford Mods an electronic band? Yeah, because we make our music on a computer. There are some real instruments on certain tracks, but Andrew does most of the work inside the computer. Even after all these years, people still say that music made with software isn’t real music. Where’s the craft? How come you didn’t spend years learning the guitar? That’s bollocks. The first time I started making music with a computer, I felt liberated.

“I made four albums before I met Andrew, but I was still trying to work out what kind of sound I wanted. Once we started working together, it began to gel. I liked hip-hop… the simple Wu-Tang beats. But I wanted the punk influence, too. John Lydon, Mark E. Smith. The heavy bass came from the Two Lone Swordsmen album, From The

Double Gone Chapel. A huge, dubby bottom end. And then there was grime. I’m talking about the first wave. I was digging out YouTube videos of tracks being made by local gangs in Nottingham. They sounded so rough and tinny, but there was so much character. Put that lot in a melting pot and you’ll end up with Sleaford Mods.

“Before things started happening for us, I’d been making music and trying to get somewhere for a long time. That makes you quite jaded and cynical. You get to a point where the music is very rough and ready, and you don’t really care about the consequences. By that, I mean you don’t worry about pissing people off. That all fed into the music, too.

“We’ve never been precious about what we do, which came in very useful when we started getting a bit more successful. Yeah, it was fantastic to be on telly and know that people were buying your records, but we were always careful to check our egos. It was like we were constantly auditing ourselves and the music. Are we still pushing forward? Is the music still valid? Have we turned into music business wankers? As long as we can stay on the right side of honesty, we should be alright.”