"This was originally going to be last but instead I put Alfie Boe last, and I thought I’d bookend things with classical music, without wanting to sound snobbish. Actually I do want to sound snobbish – there’s nothing wrong with being snobbish when what you’re being snobbish about is the gold dust of our musical worth. Beethoven to me is the consummate classical composer. He learnt stuff from Bach, and Mozart, but he came at a time when he could bring all of his many influences together and not only from the classical tradition. He had an awareness of folk music and rhythm that I think is demonstrated in the ninth. The scherzo from the ninth symphony is a very rhythmic affair and one of those occasions where he utilised elements of rhythmic folk music, which is kind of interesting I think. A lot of composers looked down on the traditions of more naïve music forms but Beethoven seemed to recognise their worth. And of course towards the end of his days he would leave the symphonic work behind and concentrate on string quartets, and that again is a very disciplined, controlled fine art in music, to work with finite musical resources and treat them almost as if they are a symphony orchestra. So Beethoven is kind of the guy for me, he’s the top man. I probably first became aware of Beethoven’s ninth through A Clockwork Orange and that took me through the electronica versions of Walter - now Wendy - Carlos, and then to the original score by von Karajan. That is the one I still enjoy best to this day, the Sixties Deutsche Grammophon recording, where the tempo’s just right. I’ve listened to lots of other variations that are too fast, too slow, a bit sloppy, too cacophonous, but von Karajan in spite of his rather dictatorial nature, did the job."

"They'd made three albums before this that had the hits on and some other stuff that was really good, but I never really liked a whole album. There were great moments. But then Caravanserai came out and I liked the way the songs move and flow and change direction and bring in different moods and atmospheres. It was a very exotic record for me, living in Kingston in Surrey. It felt like I was hearing the real sound of the desert. The musicianship is so great. One of the things I love about Santana is that they always had great drummers. Obviously you've got Carlos on guitar, but every instrument is pushed to the front. When the Hammond player is letting rip you can really hear it. It's a very well-structured record, which back then was a very different thing to do, because it was all about the live performance, and if the song was eight minutes long you'd play for eight minutes. There wasn't the technology for any sophisticated editing so people used to play it that way to create that mood and that atmosphere. To capture that in the studio is difficult, but on this record it kind of goes beyond that. It's like somebody said there are no rules for how you do this. I don't know how to do this so I'm going to do this by instinct, I suppose. Also, for them to come in with Latin music that wasn't salsa or mariachi was unheard of. They were saying 'this is what young Mexicans do'. I just remember watching them at Woodstock and seeing [Santana drummer] Mike Shrieve and thinking my god, how do you do that? How do you play with all of them at the same time and they're all playing different things and it all works out so remarkably well?"