"This reminds me of recording at Sawmills Studios at Fowey in Cornwall. It was a really beautiful environment and, thanks to the estuary, you had to come over by boat, loading the gear on depending on whether the tide was in. Then once you arrived it was this cut-off, really beautiful house. It felt like a holiday camp. Those first days in the studio were so exciting, we almost couldn’t contain ourselves. We were desperate to get in and start setting stuff up. We’d done a lot of four-track demos in the living room of the cottages so we kind of knew what we were doing but it was a very free time. I remember Danny and I being in the main living area there and getting really hooked on Either/Or. I think it was his almost Beatles-like sensibility in terms of his melodies and song structure. The technical side of things always interests me and I saw him doing similar things: finding a way to play four chords in a slightly odd way. His stuff wouldn’t always land on the chord that you expect, which was cool and very inspiring."

"This era of the Velvet Underground is possibly, along with Ray Davies, my favourite kind of singing. It’s sort of weedy and again without testosterone and certainly without force, it was just very, very hip and not trying too hard. It’s interesting, because did a band ever sound as hip, not trying, but still delivering? “Velvet Underground were a real staple of my generation, in that a bunch of kids in the mid-70s’ discovered them retrospectively, probably in a way that I’d imagine kids now discover The Smiths. They sounded genuinely subversive without being obscure, they were real, proper songs and there was a great poetry in there. “Often when you talk about songs to people, most people assume you’re talking about the words - to a lot of people that’s what a song is. But because I got so obsessed so young with the mechanics of the music, the production and how things came together, often I wasn’t really too bothered if the words didn’t make much sense. I’ve had amazing experiences with songs that had words that absolutely didn’t make any sense, like ‘Jeepster’. “‘Foggy Notion’ is a really good example of a song that’s just really rocking - the guitar is really hyped up and swings like crazy - that makes you feel really good and absolutely doesn’t need any serious lyrical content. In fact, sometimes - and I suspect it’s the case with ‘Foggy Notion’ because I know it so well - if the lyrics were snagging your attention too much it would distract from what it’s supposed to do. You’ve got to remember it was for young people in the 60s’ to Frug to, doing these dance moves in cool striped-shirts and cool shades and ‘Foggy Notion’ is all about that and the sound of the voice. I think that’s a great thing and something people who think songs are entirely about meaning and words aren’t aware of. “It’s an interesting thing with The Velvet Underground, because if you imagine The Rolling Stones back then, who were supposedly the baddest of the bad boys and The Beatles who were supposed to be the hippest and most worldly, I wonder what they made of The Velvets at the time or if they’d heard them. I know Dylan was aware of them, but writing songs like ‘Heroin’ and ‘The Black Angel's Death Song’, I wonder if you were in The Beatles or The Stones you were just going ‘Oh no, we’re so X-Factor.’"