By Fiona Sturges [The Independent, 14 September 2008]

As a child, the composer Philip Glass worked at his father's radio- repair shop in Baltimore, which doubled as a small record store. It was there that he was exposed to a huge variety of music, from Schubert and Bartok to Hank Williams and Elvis. "I liked nearly all of it," he said years later. "People forgot to tell me some stuff was better than others."