Brixton came to be seen as a riot zone. A lot of shops were boarded up for months afterwards and never reopened. It felt like Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government just left us to rot. There was no investment in the community, nothing was repainted and everything was underfunded. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go; we felt like a forgotten generation.

There was a wall between the gardens, and arches below the train track that ran from Brixton to Loughborough Junction, and we would run along the wall, using it as a pathway to the other gardens, and play in derelict houses. The trains were regular and loud, but to us it was normal, so when they stopped for a bank holiday the silence felt eerie. My partner reminds me that even now I find it difficult to live in complete silence. She’s always walking into empty rooms where I have the radio blaring. I grew up with trains and planes passing overhead, brothers ranting, music playing, mother shouting – and I cannot sleep without an audiobook playing. I’ve lived a loud life.

I centred my life around songwriting with Len. That’s what had kept me going through those dark months after the attack, travelling every day from Brixton to his home in a tower block in Deptford. We were very disciplined, setting ourselves targets. We had to write a song every day, and we would make ourselves nish it even if it wasn’t good. Len originally came from Teesside, and started off on the music scene of the mid-1980s as a jazz guitar player, playing in quartets, when the jazz/soul sound was popular, capturing people’s imaginations with films like Absolute Beginners and musicians like Courtney Pine and Sade. By the time we started working together in 1990, the sound had morphed into the funkier style of acid jazz. We had traces of that in our early songs, but were soon experimenting with different sounds.

Sylvia was so much fun to record with. She loved anything unconventional, and no idea was too crazy. Skunk Anansie worked by two mottos: ‘leave your ego at the door’ and ‘you never know until you try’. That way, everyone was free to criticise anyone else’s contribution, and no one was allowed to kill an idea without trying it first. Some things sound awful in your head, but when they hit the air magic flies into them. We always worked hard on the groove so our music wouldn’t sound disparate. Cass used to say that we weren’t about being ‘clever bollocks’, until Robbie (the drum virtuoso) proved him wrong when he wrote ‘Fuck you jazz cts’ out in Morse code and then played it for fun. I call that very clever bollocks!

Our equipment was ruined. We didn’t know if we could go onstage, and thought it was all over. But then the most beautiful thing happened: every crew member from every other band brought all their towels and blankets, anything they could find, and stretched them out in the field backstage. Then they all proceeded to dismantle our entire production – lights, speakers, amplifiers, instruments, flight cases, amps – they even took the valves out of the guitar. All of our gear was spread out to dry. It took up a whole field behind the stage.

It was a clear sunny day, so everything gradually dried out. Then, all of those wonderful, beautiful human beings put our stuff back together again, and we did the gig. It was one of those moments when people pulled together and helped us, so that we could carry on and play in memory of everyone who had died. We could not have played without them, and it’s one of the most special memories of all my years of touring. It makes me emotional just thinking about it. Reminds you of how much love there is in our rock community.