His new play Birdland pays homage to a Patti Smith song and has a rock-star hero. Which is no great surprise, because music runs through Simon Stephens's plays – here, he picks a song for each of them. Listen to all of these tracks as a YouTube playlist.
The play: Frank's Wild Years (unperformed, 1988). The song: Frank's Wild Years by Tom Waits
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The first play I ever wrote was called Frank's Wild Years and it was a monologue based on the Tom Waits song of the same name from his album Swordfishtrombones. The song's about this guy who's so disaffected by his suburban marriage that he stops at a garage on his way home, buys a bottle of whisky and a jerry-can of petrol, and sets his house on fire with his wife inside. With a brilliant leap of imagination, I wrote it is as a police interview.
The play: Bluebird (Royal Court, 1998). The song: My Girl by Otis Redding
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[In Bluebird, London cabbie Jimmy cites My Girl as his favourite song and the play ends with it crackling through his radio.] I always loved the associative violence in this Edinburgh karaoke classic, but it really comes from when I was 17. Instead of learning to drive, I got a box set of Atlantic Records from 1948-74. Never really learned to drive. Definitely made the right call.
The play: Herons (Royal Court, 2001). The song: Can I Pass by the Country Teasers
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Ben 'BR' Wallers wrote a song for the play. This isn't it, but live clips from our 1995 tour of Europe. We toured for six weeks in this little transit van with an American band called the Oblivians, going round all these cities I'd never been to: Zurich, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona. You get there and it's just the same punk bar in the red light district. I appear, youthful and angular, around 50 seconds in on bass guitar. Happy days.
The play: Port (Royal Exchange, 2002). The song: This is the One by the Stone Roses
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My teens. My team. My DJ-ing years as a student. The Royal Exchange auditorium filled with this music in 2003 and then the Lyttelton in 2013 and that, for me felt like pretty much job done. Ian Dickinson, Pete Rice – the two sound designers – and I all grew up at the same time and we were defined by the sense of "Fucking turn it up."
The play: Country Music (Royal Court, 2004). The song: Cold Cold Heart by Hank Williams
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I knew it was going to be called Country Music pretty soon after I stepped into the prison [the play came out of creative writing workshops held in Wandsworth prison] because country music is so charged with prison iconography and vice versa. The way in which country music interrogates crime, regret and the sense of an absent future. Johnny Cash and Hank Williams's songs are full of those men that I then recognised in the prisons I worked in.
The play: Christmas (Bush Theatre, 2004). The song: That's Life by Frank Sinatra
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A play written out of my experiences teaching in Dagenham where I first heard this song. It galvanised me. And me and teaching friends drank a lot to this song.
The play: On the Shore of the Wide World (Royal Exchange, 2005). The song: Proof by I Am Kloot
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I used to go and watch Johnny Dangerously before he formed this band in the 80s. Beautiful writing. Made me want to write. He and Eitzel and a few others. So many of my Exchange plays come out of that time.
The play: Motortown (Royal Court, 2006). The song: The Classical by the Fall
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Ian Rickson asked me to write a play as jagged as the Fall who are and were and remain my favourite band of all bands.
The play: Pornogaphy (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, 2007). The song: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
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This was the director Sebastian Nübling's idea and although Floyd at Live 8 get mentioned in the play, the overriding image of his production was Christophe Franken singing this song, lubed up in body oil. It defines German theatre – and Nübling's take on my play – for me. There's always music and music is always present in his work. We make each other mix-tapes all the time.
The play: Harper Regan (National Theatre, 2008). The song: No Cars Go by Arcade Fire
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I would have used this as the closing credit curtain call song but never did.
The play: Marine Parade (Brighton Festival, 2010). The song: I live in This Place by Mark Eitzel
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[The musical Marine Parade was written with American Music Club's Mark Eitzel. They struck up a friendship after Stephens sent off some fanmail with his early plays attached.] We both loved theatre and music, but shared a sense that musical theatre was frustrating somehow. We wanted to make a play that was as dramatically truthful as the best theatre and as good, musically, as the best music; a musical without saccharine music or a sentimental storyline.
The play: Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith, 2011). The song: Kerosene by Big Black
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As the song says: "I was born in this town, lived here my whole life." Sums it up.
The play: Wastwater (Royal Court, 2011). The song: Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen
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I remain deeply ignorant of classical music. But this piece chilled me to the core and made me want to write.
The play: Morning (Traverse, 2012). The song: Radiator Song by David Lynch & Peter Ivers
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David Lynch is a key figure in my sense of what drama should be.
The play: Three Kingdoms (Lyric Hammersmith, 2012). The song: La Paloma by Elvis Presley
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Elvis has been a voice in my consciousness since I was four.
The play: Blindsided (Manchester Royal Exchange, 2014). The song: Tears on my Pillow by Little Anthony & The Imperials
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I really knew that I wanted Tears on My Pillow playing in Blindsided, but I didn't prescribe it. It's like an early childhood ghost of the Grease soundtrack, but it's exactly the type of music my Dad had on 8-tracks in our family car and it still breaks my heart into pieces.
The play: Carmen Disruption (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, 2014). The song: It's Over by Roy Orbison
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Roy Orbison takes me right back to the beginning: My Dad. John Peel. My early childhood. It came on my iPod's shuffle as I landed in Cologne to start work on this play and then I saw it graffitied on a subway as I arrived at my hotel. Love and the end of days.
The play: Birdland (Royal Court, 2014). The song: Cocksucker Blues by the Rolling Stones
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Cocksucker Blues is actually a film about the Rolling Stones 1972 tour of America, but this band at this era define the metabolism of the insanity at the heart of the play. If I had to choose a particular song, it would be Rocks Off.
