"I went to see Blade Runner when it came out in the cinema; for me it was the perfect melding of sound and vision and a kind of dystopian future that seemed quite compelling. Almost a place you'd like to live in, because of the idea of replicants and who is human, and WHAT is human? Also, the beauty of Harrison Ford. Him and - whatsername - Sean Young, she was styled to perfection. Ridley Scott, although he reckoned it was a torturous film to make - the budget got cut and all kinds of jiggery pokery went on backstage - the one enduring thing, for me, is the soundtrack. Bizarrely, the soundtrack album didn't come out until years and years and years afterwards [1994], but you could get the film on VHS and everything. In 1990, I got summoned to work with Vangelis in Paris, and we wrote the title track on my album. One of the first things I asked was, ""Can I have a copy of the soundtrack?"" We recorded 'Europa' in Studio Omega on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, which was originally earmarked for Hitler's occupation should things go pear-shaped during the Second World War. The Bois de Boulogne is where all the transvestites and transsexuals would come out at night. It was quite an atmospheric place to work. At the end of the weekend they gave me a tape of the track we'd recorded, and a metal cassette of the Blade Runner soundtrack that I've still got today. It's a real treasured item. I remember reading And Suddenly There Came A Bang!, where it talks about Blade Runner, Harrison Ford and also Mel Gibson in Mad Max 2, and I remember seeing it soon after and thinking, ""Oooh. Yes."" That was mindblowing. It was kind of a blueprint for the early look of Frankie for me. That whole cyberpunk and S&M... The baddies were more attractive than the goodies, obviously, and Max himself was somewhere in between the both, neither good nor bad - just out for himself. Another soundtrack I think needs mentioning is Midnight Express by Giorgio Moroder. which is also on a par, I think. Although it's more disco - especially 'Chase' - Vangelis and Moroder to me were icons of electronic music in the '70s and '80s. Although I think Vangelis had the edge with atmosphere."

"The thing about that record is that it had an honesty that rock & roll had been missing. The 80s were a terrible time when guitars didn't sound like guitars and there were drum machines, but then all of a sudden here comes this group, Guns N' Roses who plug in their guitars and just didn't mess around with any fancy stuff. And the songs were undeniable! 'Welcome To The Jungle' is an undeniable song in the same way that 'Satisfaction' has that great riff with the lyrics on top of it. Great lyrics, great imagery, and as soon as you heard that high-pitched voice that harkened back to a Robert Plant-ish approach to singing, which hadn't been heard in quite a while… Well, it still works today. That's got to be coming up to 30 years old, but you put that on today if it was a brand new band, I would say, 'Who's that?' That intro is almost symphonic, and it just defined the band. You hear that song, and then the rest of the album follows through. 'Welcome To The Jungle' is head, hands and feet above the other material. Bands have a few songs that just stand up, you know? You think Thin Lizzy, you think 'The Boys Are Back In Town'. You think the Stones, you think 'Satisfaction'. You think Led Zeppelin, you think 'Stairway To Heaven'. There are just certain songs that, either because of the melody or lyric or the sound of the song, intrinsically say, ""This is what that is"". The only band who doesn't have that thing, just because they have so many god damn good songs, is The Beatles. I don't know if [us influencing them] is the case. We never paid attention to anything. There can be scenes or not and people can be influenced or not, but at the end of the day you are left to your own devices. When you think about it, The Beatles were influenced by Motown, The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, etc. but then when you hear The Beatles, it's their own stuff. It's like cooks. Everybody uses salt, everybody uses vegetables, there is nothing unique, but how you mix up those elements makes it yours or not. If you can grab a style, I think it has to do with talent. Everybody cooks, but few people are cooks."

"Again, with Blur it was hard to pick just one. I really love how this song starts, I like that guitar part, the scratching chuggy thing and then the way it explodes into this Beatles-y chorus. "I think Graham Coxon might be my favourite guitarist ever. It's that same thing: he's always offsetting Damon Albarn's beautiful melodies with really freaky, strange discordant guitar lines. I think they like different music, right? I remember Graham Coxon loved My Bloody Valentine, really droney guitar music like that and Damon Albarn is more poppy, and that combination together sounds so cool. You can always hear Graham under all Blur's songs, just making it all so much cooler. “I wasn't really caught up in the Britpop war, I grew up hearing it come through my older brother and sister's bedroom walls really. They used to play Blur and Oasis and Pulp, there was no distinction. There was no war going on in our house. We just loved all of it! “I feel bad but I haven't listened to Blur's most recent album. I need to listen to more new music but I'm pretty lazy about it. I love songs that I know and you know that feeling when you can sing along to a song that you love? You can't do that with new music or you have to get to know it first. It's just laziness! I always find listening to other people's music inspiring and I'm always like ""ooh I wanna write a song that's like this!"" And quite often that'll be a spark into something else entirely, but I don't wake up in the morning and put on an album in the way I imagine a lot of people do. I listen to music in the van a lot, that's where I listen to music the most. “I'll see new bands at festivals or Soph is really on top of new music. In the van it's normally Spotify, we have a playlist that we play all the time but there's no new music on it, its pure 80s’ and 90s’ sentimental classics. It's called FM FM! It was created and started by our wonderful ex-tour manager. We all love Magic FM, so it was meant to be the whole of their playlist made without adverts. It's so long that you could listen to it for days and not hear the same song twice."