“I liked Bad Company and Free. Those bands, like David Bowie and Roxy Music, were all pop. But their albums had deeper cuts. That’s what I hoped we could pull off”: Billy Duffy on the making of The Cult’s 1985 breakout album – and why Rain made him sweat

Billy Duffy of the Cult wears his blond hair in a pompadour and plays his Gretsch White Falcon onstage in this live shot from 1985.

On his way up the rock ’n’ roll ladder, Billy Duffy – co-founding guitarist of the Cult – wasn’t all that into heavy metal, leaning instead toward glam and proto-punk, genres centered on primal simplicity.

“I just wanted to be like the Stooges,” he says today. “Really, why can’t you play four chords over and over again? [Laughs] It’s hypnotic! I’ve always loved early Stooges records for [their] simplicity; they had a kind of hidden hypnotizing quality.”