Kember was a keen record collector from the age of 11 or 12; some of the first records he purchased included albums by The Velvet Underground. Pierce: "When I was 14, I bought The Stooges' "Raw Power" and I listened to nothing but that for a year". Spacemen 3's early gig posters would often make explicit references to their sound being inspired by The Stooges, The Velvet Underground and The Rolling Stones. In 1988, Kember said, "Groups like Suicide or the MC5 are like my favorite stuff in the world". Pierce said, "Early on, we were listening to The Stooges, then came Suicide, then we'd start listening to Sun Ra, and pick up on all these lateral threads that ran between them".