"Foreigner was a band that had an anthemic sophistication about their musical approach. It was educated, well-formed, well turned-out British-American music. The primary songwriter and leader of the band [Mick Jones] was a Brit, and the vocal talents of probably rock’s finest ever tenor, Lou Gramm, fitted perfectly with their sound. I got to know Lou many years later after his horrendous illness. When he was making his comeback to singing after brain surgery, me and some other guys played with him on a big German TV show, and we had to change the key of the song we were doing. We dropped it before he came over to Germany and then when he got there we dropped it another couple of steps. I said to him that the Lou Gramm of 20 or 30 years prior, when he was singing at the top of his range, was a pretty hard act to follow. He said that he didn’t write the songs, and just had to sing what was written, and that he could do that in the studio but it was very tough to do night after night on stage. In a sense I have been there myself. I made records in 1982 [The Broadsword And The Beast] and 1984 [Under Wraps] where I sang really well on record, absolutely at the top of my range. I’m a baritone, and my range is usually up to an E or an occasional hasty F, and then I was singing F# and G. I was singing at the top of my range and singing consistently up there, not just the occasional high note. It was something I couldn’t keep up night after night and I lost my voice in 1984 and had to pretty much take a year off to recover. I cancelled three shows in Australia and two shows in the USA. Over the period of a month I cancelled more than 50 per cent of all the shows that I’ve cancelled in my entire 44 years in music. I still have a soft spot for Lou because of his incredible vocal ability and the wonderful controlled quality of his voice. I do believe he is rock’s finest tenor. His diction was good, his articulation and rhythm was great, he was a truly great singer. It doesn’t mean he’s rock’s best singer or best-known singer, because the usually out of tune Rod Stewart and gymnastic Robert Plant were probably more charismatic. Lou was more mainstream, but it was nevertheless a joy to listen to someone, rather like Alfie Boe, who is in complete control of their vocal ability as the result of hard work and a huge amount of natural talent. He may not be the most exciting pop singer, but for me he is the best."

"It is the British version of the album I am talking about [the US release would include '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'] and mostly because of the cover, which I think is probably my favourite ever picture of The Stones. If we are on that subject, it says quite a lot about Mick Jagger as a frontman that he was secure enough to be only third from the front on the cover of the early records. When you look at Out Of Our Heads it looks like Brian Jones' or Keith Richards' group. Mick is just peering in from the side. That's how cool Jagger was - most singers are always pushing people out of the way so they can be at the front. Out Of Our Heads is often entirely overlooked within The Stones' catalogue. I love it because before that, on the previous albums, they were attempting to recreate the music of their heroes in an almost academic manner, with only a certain amount of success. What gave those early records credibility was that they were aficionados and experts and that was something, besides The Beatles, which was exciting to British kids. However, they hadn't really put their own mark on their music. Out Of Our Heads moved away from blues into what then was called rhythm and blues. They were much better at appropriating that style, than they were pure blues music. There are more chords, less rootsy themes and [the songs are] more about 'finding a girl and losing a girl' and so Jagger is more believable on that album. Overall, musically, the songs just suited their style better. Out Of Our Heads is a band just about to hit their stride and about to turn into their own songwriting machine. There is almost no other record like it. I think you could argue that if you want to really discover what The Velvet Underground were inspired by, it is probably Out Of Our Heads. Not just in terms of how the band look, but the evidence is there in the version of Marvin Gaye's 'Hitch Hike', which obviously the Velvets chopped on 'There She Goes Again' - and I used on 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'. There was a point where I was into The Stones more than any other band on the planet. I found out everything there was to find out about them - about the band, about Andrew Oldham and how they made their records. That investigation was really good for me. When I formed The Smiths, they were probably the biggest influence in terms of the politics and the blueprint for a band, including the dynamic between the guitarist and the singer. When I was trying to get The Smiths together, I took the behaviour of Andrew Oldham and Brian Jones in their resourcefulness, desperation and ingenuity as the MO of The Stones as a working unit, as a source of inspiration - which was a pretty unusual thing to do in 1982."