"Francesco Rosi’s great historical and political mosaic is a dramatic inquiry into the circumstances around the assassination of the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano. On one level, it’s an extremely complex film: there’s no central protagonist (Giuliano himself is not a character but a figure around which the action pivots), and it shifts between time frames and points of view. But it’s also a picture made from the inside, from a profound and lasting love and understanding of Sicily and its people and the treachery and corruption they’ve had to endure. It’s a rigorous investigation (Rosi actually uncovered new facts about the case), but it’s never dry, it has blood flowing through its veins, and it’s shot in black and white that is absolutely electrifying (the cinematographer was Gianni Di Venanzo, who shot many of the greatest Italian pictures of the ’50s and ’60s, including Antonioni’s L‘eclisse and Fellini’s 8½). And Salvatore Giuliano is, among many other things, a grand hymn to Sicily, the land of my family, and for that reason alone I cherish it."

"They were a fantastic live band and I saw them loads of times. Watching the way Alex was onstage taught me to let things flow and not be so tight-arsed. He improvised a lot. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band had a sense of threat – this feeling that he was a gangster, a bit of a hard guy, a bit shifty. There was a sense of menace in their stage performance, with Zal Cleminson dressed as this wacky clown, which was unnerving. We went through a phase like that – Paul used to get made up, half his face white and half black – when we did a lot of theatrics and a lot of that comes from Alex Harvey. I used to nail Steve Dawson’s DMs to the stage and he’d lean forward because he was nailed to the floor at the back."

"I saw it when I was seven and it has stayed with me probably more than I’m aware of. I loved the Beatles and owned a bootleg single of “All My Loving,” so when the film came to my local cinema in Warsaw—called Moskwa (Moscow)—I queued up for half a day and got in. The film didn’t make much sense story-wise, but it was a mind-blowing experience. I remember it so vividly—the energy, the jokes, the crisp black-and-white shots, and above all the music. It’s a film that is carried by music, which was something new for me at the time. Was it the first music video? I think that British pop was responsible for some of the most inventive British films (OK, Richard Lester was American, but it’s still a very British film)."