"The moment I got into Crowded House, I was on tour – actually I went to see a Stevie Wonder gig in Wembley and I was like 'the guy doing the sound is brilliant.' And I thought it would be incredible if I could get him to do sound for me [which he did]. Anyway, I was at his desk one afternoon and he was playing Crowded House. I think he bought the cd for me and I just played the album and thought 'oh my God.' It was very different but very odd, there are some odd songs on there, especially as they were coming out of Split Enz as well who I knew a little about. So, I just grew to love it. I met my now wife as she used to work for EMI and had been doing promo for Crowded House's gigs in Denmark and what have you and had also been at Montreux – she was a mad fan as well. And 'Don't Dream' Is Our song, [shows me his wedding ring] – we have some of the lyrics inscribed here. I've had the pleasure – or the embarrassment – to tell Neil Finn this once. I saw him in a café in LA. And I thought 'do not, under any circumstances, tell him about ring' and before I knew it, I was going over telling him about the ring. I couldn't stop myself! By this time, I had seen them twenty times. But I was just there, in front of him going 'ummm..ehhh…ah fuck it!' But he was really polite and gentle and spoke about our mutual friend who used to be my musical director but was also producing Neil's album. How did he even know who I was?! I've seen Crowded House in so many different style of venues. I drove to Bristol to see them at the Bierkellar and so there was only three of them - there was no sign of Tim Finn… have you seen them live? No? Ah, fucking hell! They're amazing. I saw them at Hammersmith Odeon at one point and their drummer needed a piss mid-gig. So Neil Finn just started noodling and they ran around and swapped instruments and just started playing this nonsense song they made up on the spot. I just thought 'what is going on'! Every time I've seen them, they just make shit up. And I love that about them. Because they can be also so sincere about a lyric or a song they're gonna play. But where was I? Oh yeah, Bristol. Tim and Neil had just had a big bust-up. Tim had had enough. So that was quite a weird night. One of my favourite bands in terms of the music they make but also, as a live band, they're hard to beat."

"Johnny Marr was quite young around this time, wasn't he? And Morrissey…some people are more lyrical than others and their conversation can use the language more [stylishly]. And he must have found that it came easily to him. But how does Johnny Marr play like that! Even people who hate The Smiths agree that Johnny Marr was a genius. To be honest, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce weren't a bad rhythm section either. How did they do that quite young? I don't know. One of my older brothers was into The Smiths and we shared a bedroom so I heard a lot of their music. We would have been teens about this time. I loved the fact that they were from Manchester. I saw Andy Rourke around this time in town and it made me think 'fucking hell! It happens! I've just seen HIM! He's in this band that are totally credible, cool, has put Manchester on the map and I've just seen him walk out of the Arndale Centre!' And so yeah, we bought records and got drunk in Manchester and it felt like the town was happening at the time. The first time I saw them was on a north west television show and they did 'This Charming Man' and I was like [mouth agape]. We had had the Duran Durans and Spandau Ballets who looked great and were very glamorous and then you're confronted with these guys from Manchester – very ordinary in a way you might actually see them in Manchester but they weren't ordinary in their music. They didn't dress in clothes made by someone in Soho. It was like they got their shirts in Afflecks Palace! It was almost anti-glamour. And that felt very touchable. What do I think of Morrissey now? For me, lyrically he's still incredible. I can't say I know the last album well but I just think, like anybody who is an artist, you can tell a story a number of times and it has a freshness about it but we know Morrissey's way [by now]. I don't want to judge him but I don't really get into what he says off record because sometimes you wonder if he's taking the piss? But I don't know, I haven't really followed it. Is he doing that to create something going? Will he come back and say 'I didn't mean it like that'? Surely he must know [his recent comments around Britain First] are not a cool thing to do. But he's bizarre and thank God he's bizarre. I don't want him to be normal in any way, shape or form."

"My Mother and Father were both in theatre and in some movies. My Mother was on Broadway in the ‘50s before I was around, in a musical, I think she was in it for two or three years. They always did things together, they were always getting the Broadway musicals and listening to them and getting into records. “Broadway musical cast albums are part of my earliest memories. I’ve been told that I would - as children can often do - absorb them and memorise it all, so on a family trip somewhere I would start singing them the whole way through. All of he songs in this musical or that musical, or whatever one they’ve been playing a lot of, or whichever one I maybe liked more and asked to keep hearing. “That’s been a big part of my writing; to have a storytelling aspect, a certain variety, a certain sense of those characters. It’s not all autobiographical, that’s often mixed in when I write and perform - to have that sense of playing or acting and storytelling. “This song is from Man of La Mancha. which was one of my favorites, that was one of the ones I could sing all the way through, and was one stayed with me more. Occasionally I would listen to it even when I was older than six years old, there’s something about a lot of those songs that connected with me. “With ‘Dulcinea’ in particular it’s the heartfeltness and the melody of it. And then it’s actually sung by other people with a different beat, a different groove and a different attitude, the same words are sung in a mocking and taunting way. “I was recently thinking of this - and I didn’t realise at the time - but to learn as a child that a song can be done in such different ways. The same song, the same words, the same chorus, the same melody, can be done as a sincere, heartfelt love, and then also could be done as absolute mocking, taunting and a violent aspect to it, instead of the most tender. It’s the same thing, but a different way and a different attitude. I think there’s something about it that I probably had taken in a very natural way, because I was hearing it. “Actually, from very, very early on, there was a Violent Femmes show or two that I sang a little bit of that song as a little intro to some other song that we did, because it seemed like it would be fun to do or it was in my head to do it. So it even made it to a Violent Femmes concert once or twice in the very early years of our band"

"The Blue Nile was another sort of national treasure that I was drawn to and then thrilled to discover they were local. I can't overestimate what it meant to fall in love with bands from Scotland who enjoyed success. It just opened up windows for our minds, because there's a certain particularly being a 70s baby and London just felt so far away – success of any kind, or glamour, felt far away. Whenever a Scottish band would succeed on a national level it felt really immense. 

 What I also just loved about The Blue Nile was how evocative and sad they sounded. I loved the sorrow in their records, because up until hearing them, I'd hadn't really heard sorrow. I'd heard non-conformity, I'd heard rebelliousness with Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Clash, but I'd not heard sorrow. 

 Depression and sadness have always been a part of my language and my family all sort of thought or considered me a complete freak as a result. They just thought this whole darkness and my gloominess was an annoyance and at best, an irritant. But to me it's always been part of my interfacing with the world. Sorrow, sadness and depression – it's just existed in me and it's part of, I think, human nature. 

 When I heard Blue Nile, I was like, 'Ah, old friend, I recognise you, there you are. Somebody else feels the same as me'. I loved the sort of expansiveness of their sound. It felt very sort of like a modern Frank Sinatra to me, in a way. It's an obvious comparison but the sweeping, Nelson Riddle-esque type of sonic landscapes just really captured my imagination. 
 
 Paul Buchanan's got this ache in his voice that's, again, very unusual. You don't really hear a lot of people sound like Paul. I loved the sort of ordinariness of the lyrics too – it was very much sort of relatable, simple, and unglamorous expressions of love; I just really identified with that. 

 Pop music has always just alienated me for one reason or another – I just don't identify with it or understand it. So somebody like Paul Buchanan and the Blue Nile literally speaks my language. It's a language that isn't often used or utilised in day-to-day culture. I think we're all encouraged to hide our mental health issues, or encouraged to hide our depression, our sadness and our griefs. I believe in the expression of grief: I think it's imperative for a joyful life, and why live if you can't live joyfully? 

 To live joyfully one must express negative emotions. It's really, really important. And those people who shirk from so-called negative expression, I think, are cutting off an entire part of their own happiness and existence."