Phil Oakey explains how certain producers' grasp of reality could best be described as amateur: "One of the first people we worked with, he got out a Marshall Time Modulator. 'This is a fantastic box', he says. 'It cost so many thousand pounds.' So we asked him what it'd do. 'Well, you can make things sound like they were recorded down a cardboard tub!'" (P48)

"All too often the rather untidy stacking necessary for the best sound and most even courage of people who'd paid to listen was sacrificed for the sake of macho cosmetics. Tall, smooth, black and menacing to the ears." Ben Duncan confirms that in the seventies, PA was judged with the eyes not the ears. (P24)

"This is my pride and joy," spoke Porky the cutting king. "It's an old Fairchild Valve Limiter... it's controlling the shape of the groove, stopping the peaks on the record being too shallow and that means the stylus is less likely to jump out of the groove. Valve limiters are great; they take off more than they give back in – technical term this – balls." (P68)

"We used orchestras this time around too, and I think, quite frankly, that unless something very seriously changes, we will never use orchestras again. They're just the most un-conscientious people – I'd rather have Lemmy in there doing something." So, at last, the Heaven 17/Motorhead album. Stand by your Fairlights. (PI6)

"Two weeks of applying either Methylated Spirits or Surgical Spirit and you'll have fingertips like an elephant's bottom." Jenkins, you may be a demon guitarist, but you are never going to get that job on the Boots cosmetic counter. (P70)