“It’s been well documented that Bruce Springsteen is a real hero of mine, but it confuses people too because they can’t hear his influence in my music. But to me, that really isn’t what it’s about – if you sound too much like the people who inspire you, what’s the point?

But my love of Springsteen isn’t an easy thing to explain, I readily admit that. Really, I think it was a matter of good timing: I was in my mid-teens when Born In The USA took him to a new level of global awareness, although ironically I think it turned as many people off him. He was misunderstood for a long time because of that era.

It was a real flashpoint for me when I saw a documentary on his career around that time in the mid-1980s. It had some old footage of him from the late 1970s and he looked like James Dean, really cool in a suit jacket and jeans. But I was flicking channels, not all that interested. And then I flicked back at the very moment the piano and harmonica come in at the beginning of Thunder Road. We’d just got our first video recorder and I quickly threw in a tape, I was that captivated. Next was Rosalita, and that was it for me – I went out and bought Born To Run and gradually got the rest and listened to them all in chronological order.

Those Springsteen albums I listened to over and over again made me fascinated in how records were put together.

I was 14 at the time and into The Smiths – I’d bought all their singles as soon as they came out – so to like Springsteen was quite unusual. I know it sounds weird because he was a big star but it felt like I had discovered something that nobody else had told me about. Perhaps it was because I was at the right age and impressionable, but he felt special to me.

And that was a source of pure inspiration. At the time I didn’t immediately know I was going to make a career out of music or anything. But it was the spirit of that footage I loved, watching this guy sing that song and making it look like it was the best thing in the world. Enjoying it. That could have been channeled into anything in my life, animation or something.

Looking back, perhaps there was a nucleus there for what came next for me. Those Springsteen albums I listened to over and over again made me fascinated in how records were put together. I still had no idea that I wanted to write songs though, and actually, the fascination led me into sound engineering. Almost by accident I was hanging around studios, picking up instruments and eventually recording my own stuff.

I will always talk about Springsteen when asked because he genuinely gave me a position in life I wouldn’t otherwise have had. To mention his role in the way things have turned out for me feels, well, respectful.”

Badly Drawn Boy’s new album, It’s What I’m Thinking Part One: Photographing Snowflakes, is released Oct 4. A short UK tour starts at Scarborough Spa Theatre on Oct 16. www.badlydrawnboy.co.uk