"I find that many albums by The Beatles don't completely hold together for me. While Sgt. Pepper's… holds together stylistically, it isn't one of my favourite albums. However, I have to include The Beatles, because they are clearly the greatest band that ever stalked the earth. I got into the Love album to introduce my son to The Beatles. George Martin lovingly remastered it and I think he has made some improvements. Sonically it is fantastic. It flows. I love being able to go across their entire span of history. I went to the Love Cirque De Soleil show in Las Vegas, which was a bad idea, but this record is a fantastic introduction and became my son's understanding of The Beatles. The other records are well worth investigating, of course, and they made truly great records, but there aren't any that could go in my Baker's Dozen. The album contains 'A Day In The Life', which is in my top five greatest songs. I love the fact it was created through such a mad, collaborative technique. One part is John, one part is Paul and they left a minute-and-a-half to fill with something. What fucking amazing, arrogant craziness could do that? And, to then produce one of the greatest songs. That song is akin to how James write to a degree. We write through improvisation. No one takes anything into a room. We start improvising and the improvisation may take ten minutes or it may take 90 minutes. We record it all and then whoever wants to can take a track, chop it up in whatever way they want to, and then present it back to the band. Someone else can then input and add a keyboard line or whatever. Therefore, we have this collaborative process that you can hear on the new album that is a little insane, as we might have had a part, which worked in the first ten minutes, and then we might try and weld it to something that worked hours later. They don't necessarily join and we have to find a way of joining them. That acceptance of chance can lead to the best moments. Most bands have one or two songwriters (we now have four) and they are at the mercy of their conscious ability. With us, a chaotic reaction to each other is creating the song, which is probably why we have been around for 33 years and we never get bored. We never know what the fuck we are going to do next. The Beatles had that on their greatest collaborative songs, where they couldn't be sure quite where a song was going. They allowed themselves the possibility of fucking songs up in a great way. The Beatles are the Shakespeare of our time. They will still be played in 100 years' time and people will still wonder how the fuck they made such amazing music."

"That first McCartney solo record was an eye-opener. I was aware that The Beatles were breaking up and I was aware that McCartney was bringing out a solo record and, song after song it was, you know, decent! The production wasn't like Beatles production, but it was decent enough. The playing wasn't as good as Beatles playing, but it was good enough. Then I found out that he wrote, engineered, produced, played all the background - except Linda would show up here and there - it was a one-man band. I mean everything! Drums, keyboards, everything, then engineered it, then produced it, did it all. Unbelievable! He only had these four machines with these RCA knobs, very primitive equipment. It's a real tour de force. He's not a great guitar player, not a bad guitar player, he plays just good enough to be able to get those parts down. It just comes down to song writing. You've got 'Junk', or ""Maybe I'm amazed by the way you love me all the time"" - that could have been a Beatles song! There's another great story in how he and Lennon would work together and McCartney would bring songs to Lennon and Lennon would pooh-pooh them and one of those songs was a song called 'Woman'. McCartney brought it and Lennon said, 'That's not great'. So then McCartney said: 'Look I'm going to prove it to you, I'll give it to Peter and Gordon and they'll have a number one record.' Lennon purportedly said, 'Yeah, but that's because your name is Paul McCartney.' And McCartney says, 'Okay I'll change the name to Bernard Webb', and, sure enough, he gives it to Peter and Gordon and... number one. He did it again with Badfinger, brought in another song that Lennon purportedly said wasn't good enough, called 'Come And Get It'. I mean, what the fuck is it? Anyway, another number one song."

"When I did ‘Setting Sun’ with The Chemical Brothers it was based loosely on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Do you remember when it went to number one, what song we knocked off the top? ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ by Deep Blue Something. We were like Sir Galahad. 'And she said, 'What about Breakfast At Tiffany's' and I said, ‘I remember the movie.'' And we came in, 'Off with your head you piece of shit.' Revolver was when the sitars really started to come in with The Beatles, and all the backwards stuff on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. It’s their first drug album. The drums sound great on it and it’s a masterclass of how to make guitar pop. That’s just it. They took what the Beatles had been, they did Revolver and then the next week they’re making ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. They’re a completely different band. It’s a cliché to talk about it now because it’s so well-known but this is a mindblowing album. I went to see the premiere of the George Harrison film the other night [Martin Scorsese documentary Living In The Material World] and on the red carpet outside this journalist asked me this question: 'Would you say that The Beatles have been an influence on your music?' I was that amazed I had to take my shades off. I said, 'Is that a serious question?' And he was only young and in all innocence he said, 'Yes. Why?' I was like, 'Are you having me on?' And he was like, 'No.' Now ignoring the fact that it’s me, if you’re in a band and you’re playing guitar, you have been influenced by The Beatles. That really is all you need to know. The psychedelic stuff they did after this was mindblowing and the Fab Four mop top stuff before this was equally as good but on this record it all came together."