7 ALBUMS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

7 albums that changed my life with The Bookshop Band

The Bookshop Band’s Ben Please on listening to Bob Marley as a kid on his father's farm, searching for baroque metal albums as a teenager and being stopped in his tracks by Sufjan Stevens.

Photo courtesy of Elly Lucas

28 March 2026

Exodus

1.

Bob Marley and the Wailers

Ben Please: ‘My dad used to live on a farm in a shed. People would come from all over the world to live and work there, and there was a communal record collection. I used to go up to this very grotty room in the main farm building, and just work my way through the records, probably scratching lots in the process. I must have been about 12 or 13, something like that.

‘I just have really lovely memories of finding this big stack of Bob Marley records and going through them all. My favourite song was ‘Three Little Birds’. I used to sing along and harmonise with it all the time. That was my first feeling that music could make you happy; it could be enjoyable and have a groove and all of that sort of stuff. I was always hearing little harmonies that they didn't have on the record. So it was like I became the backing singer for the band. I loved doing that. I realised music could be fun, but also you could add your own thing to it as well.’

Odyssey

2.

Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force

This is deeply embarrassing. It was my brief heavy metal stage when I used to walk around my hometown with my dark glasses and leather jacket on. I must have been about 15. Yeah, this is proper 1980s/1990s glam, heavy-metal, baroque stuff.

He's renowned as being one of the best guitarists in the world. He always plays Bach in a heavy metal style. But Odyssey is also full of passion. When I was 15, I would try and track down cassettes of his albums. (This was way before the internet.) It was such a thrill when I found one!

There's one tune that’s really melancholic and melodic and I was always trying to play it on guitar, but it was too fast. To this day I can do about three seconds of the intro, which I feel quite proud of!

Ambient 1: Music for Airports

3.

Brian Eno

This was one that I pulled out of my parents’ record collection. I must have been about 10 or something and it was just so different from anything that I'd heard. I went through a bit of a Philip Glass/Brian Eno stage. It's just music to think to, music to put you in another space. It gives you space to have your own thoughts. Yeah, so I always used to put this record on as a kid.

Oxygène

4.

Jean-Michel Jarre

I remember seeing the cover: the Earth being ripped away and there's a skull underneath. And then you've got a picture of this moody Frenchman smoking a cigarette on the back and that, combined with the sounds you hear, means you're totally there! You're like, ‘Yep, I understand this’. I used to take it up to my mum's studio (she was a painter) where there was a record player and I’d put it on. There's a couple of tracks with a sound like a synth gun going off: pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. And I used to set her mirror up and turn my back to it and every time that sound came on, I’d spin round and shoot at the mirror. And to this day, I still know exactly when to spin round and shoot!

The Bends

5.

Radiohead

I’d left John Peel’s radio show playing one night and fallen asleep, and when I woke up, there was this song playing. I was like, ‘What’s that song? I love it’. It was very acoustic. It was so good. I really like simple things and it was so simple. It turned out to be ‘Street Spirit’ by Radiohead. It took me about a year to track down the album because I didn't hear John Peel say the name of the band.

Leisure

6.

Blur

I discovered Blur via a bootleg mixtape of a live concert. It had lots of early Blur bangers like ‘This Is a Low’ and ‘There’s no other Way’. I just love the inventiveness of the songwriting, coupled with the energy. I wish I could perform like they do, with that kind of energy. But it's also infused with the interestingness of Radiohead.

Seven Swans

7.

Sufjan Stevens

I was in a record shop in Charing Cross in London one day and they were playing ‘Seven Swans’, the title track. I was just walking through and I stopped in my tracks. I was like, ‘What’s this?’ It doesn't happen very much in your life when you're just floored by a song. It was a banjo track and it was completely different from anything I'd heard.

I love the whole album. It feels like every song is slightly unfinished. It has this rawness and immediacy about it. It's not overthought but it's also quite orchestral. I think Sufjan Stevens has been quite an influence on us. The production on this album is sort of the opposite of something like Radiohead, which is produced to the max. This album is more like: this is an oboe, this is what an oboe sounds like.

I think the way we record is a bit like how you'd record an orchestra, as opposed to whacking everything through loads of effects. I've got nothing against that, but that's just how we've ended up recording, quite naturalistically.

Buy The Bookshop Band’s new EP, Oz Sucks, here.