"Romeo and Juliet is on my list because I saw it when I was at a very formative age. I think I was 14 or 15, and at that age, girls are very dramatic about romance and they’re just starting to get those feelings, and love is very painful and very important. It’s overwhelming and you have these huge crushes, and so Romeo and Juliet is all about that huge first love. And you couldn’t have found two more beautiful teenagers than Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting… and that was the first time I had ever seen Michael York and he was stunning — he was stunning. The costumes were gorgeous. Zeffirelli was a beautiful artist. He designed theater and opera and sets, so it was just beautiful. I think why I love Italy so much now is because of that movie, and it made me fall in love with Shakespeare. That’s one of the first times that Shakespeare became not just some dusty old English thing that you had to study in school, but it became really alive. You know what else did that really well? Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet… So, Romeo and Juliet was my first introduction. I walked around pretending I was Olivia Hussey. I had my long dark hair parted in the middle, and we had these, like, hippie baby-doll blouses that had the empire waist, so I would wear that all the time and I’d sorta stare at myself in the mirror. Of course, there was nobody in Cleveland, OH who looked anything like Leonard Whiting, so it was all in my head."

"It’s not an obvious pairing but someone asked me if I wanted to do it and if I’d like to work with her and sent me a couple of her albums. When I heard them I was really blown away with them. I thought, ""this girl’s superb""! She came to my studio and we talked about for a while and she was a lovely girl, very sweet, and her voice is so amazing! So in tune! Beautiful quality and a lovely tone. And a beautiful plumage! [laughs] She was beautiful and I loved her voice and her pitch and her sense of timing was absolutely marvellous, you know? In fact, in her live show, sometimes her drummer is playing his bass drum to her left hand. Her hand’s like a drum machine, almost. Very tight, rhythmically. And I just love her voice. We laid down four or five tracks with her on piano and sometimes she wanted to do it all at once and I’m going, ""hmmm… Don’t do that! Because I’ve got to separate it again and it’s almost impossible to get the separation.’ I wanted to have the complete control that I like; I like total separation and control over the stuff so I can make it sound good. And we did it like that, just one track, and then we did them all separate so she played the piano parts separate and did the vocals separate standing up at a vocal mic and I just really enjoyed it, you know? I still listen back to those songs and I think they’re great."