"This album is flawless. From production to writing to everything, that album is just good. There is not much more to say about it than that album is fucking perfect. Some albums are just perfect. Amy Winehouse Back To Black is fucking perfect. The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill album is perfect. It won eight grammies or something. Start-to-finish, every song, literally every single song, is a number one. Not in the terms of success, but sonically, it's solid songwriting at it's best. From production to writing, to delivery, to performance, stylistically, I could sing that entire album, it's just so perfect. It's like eating the most well-rounded meal, all of your favourite foods from start to dessert, everything is your very favourite, cooked exactly the way you want it to be. Sometimes I'll put on that album and I just can't believe how easy it is to explain, because it's just so fucking perfect. And the way she came off Fugees and did that was so cool. She is a badass. She is so unapologetic. Oh I love her. She's my generation's Nina Simone."

"I would say that Nick Cave is the greatest artist of my generation. I saw The Birthday Party about ten times and they only lasted a few years. I was lucky. I went to see them opening for Bauhaus, by accident. They blew Bauhaus away. I was like, ""What the fuck is this?"" There was this man in a vicar's dog collar, slapping the front row with a bible and a bass player wearing an Australian corked hat. They were fucked – they were more fucked than Iggy and I had given up looking for people more fucked than Iggy. I think The Birthday Party were the only band where Nick Cave was matched by other characters as big as he was. The Bad Seeds are a great band but Tracy Pew and Rowland Howard matched Nick Cave, which takes some doing. I was so lucky to have seen that band. I followed them around and saw them degenerate due to heroin abuse. Then, I watched Cave's transition into The Bad Seeds and I still thought he was a fascinating human being. I could have put The Birthday Party's second album, Prayers On Fire, on this list, but it is pretty unlistenable for most people. I chose The Boatman's Call because it was the first time he allowed himself to get really vulnerable through his love songs. I think it is a masterpiece and shows the breadth of his talent. There are five or six love songs on that record that are as good as Leonard Cohen's. It is a remarkable record. I have met him a number of times. Once, I pretended to be a journalist and interviewed him. He was probably still strung out on heroin and we nearly got into a fight. He threatened me and I didn't back down. A few weeks later, he found out who I was and then slagged off James in the NME. It didn't make me love him any less. It was just who he was at the time. I think he is still very damaged and hurt from his dealings with the press. He's been through the Amy Winehouse/Pete Doherty thing, where the press are sitting like vultures, waiting for him to die. I can imagine that he has coloured his view of journalism. I had a dream about Nick Cave on the night I got married, in which he told me his secret, magical voodoo name. I have never had the opportunity to tell him what his secret, magical voodoo name is, but I hope to one day. I guess that Nick Cave may hate James, but I don't care. I recognise his genius and I love him and wish him well."

"When she did the video of 'Rehab', I thought 'Jesus, what is that?' - again, that initial thing... I thought, 'shit, she sounds tremendous, who is this kid?' And it looked great, and the arrangement was great and the whole package was great, and I had to get the album. So I got the CD and it just got better and better. You hear her getting into the ballad, 'Love Is A Losing Game' - that's like a standard, that comes from a jazz standard, something one of the old jazzers would have done, that's how good that is. She nails the shit out if it. The whole album is tremendous, and it's just a shame - making an album like that and then nothing. The band I take on the road with me is the same brass section that she used to use. So when she died, we were in France and I saw it on BBC news, and I came down to the bar that night and I said 'my God, how did that happen? She must have thought she was indestructible', and they said the opposite - she had loved living on the edge apparently, it was that thing of danger, that's what they felt. I wish I'd met her and had a chance to sing with her because she had a lot to offer, and she had a great spirit and what she sang was tremendous. I would have loved to duet. When you record something was somebody, it lasts forever, and if you haven't, it's a shame. It's a shame that it [drug addiction] happened to her so early. With Whitney Houston, she's left a wealth of material to listen to, but Amy Winehouse, I know she did an album before that, but Back To Black is tremendous, you just think 'shit!' Just waiting for the next, and now there is no next and it's a bloody shame. The drug thing, it never appealed to me. Sniffing cocaine, I know what it does. For singers, it's death - it gets on your vocal chords, it's bad news. Burns your bloody nose out. I've never taken any drugs. The only thing I took was at the beginning, purple hearts, because I was doing so many shows and I was getting tired. I think it was Viv Prince, who used to be a drummer with The Pretty Things, who said, 'try one of these, that'll keep you awake', but then I realised you couldn't go to sleep! So that was a short-lived thing. And I'll take a sleeping pill when I've got to go to sleep and I know I need to get up, but mild ones, nothing heavy, because I don't want anything to get in the way of what I do. And when I've gone a little too far drinking and I think 'oh shit, I've got to get up tomorrow', then you see it, and you think 'you fucking idiot! You stretched it too far last night'. So you do that enough times and you learn, but some people don't learn."