"By 1972, I’ve finished up in art schools, hitchhiked around the country, and I moved to Providence, Rhode Island. In the mid-’70s, I was in a band with Chris Frantz from Talking Heads, and I wrote a couple songs that stuck during that period, including “Psycho Killer.” We also did a lot of cover songs—Al Green, Velvet Underground, the Sonics, the Troggs. The Velvet Underground were a big revelation. I realized, Oh, look at the subject of their songs: There’s a tune and a melody, but the sound is either completely abrasive or really pretty. They swing from one extreme to the other. “White Light/White Heat” is just this noise, and then “Candy Says” is incredibly pretty but really kind of dark. As a young person, you go, What is this about?"

"It’s another one of those movies that just feels so real. You watch those scenes and you’ve got tanks and armies, you know. It’s the first film I saw, as far as docudrama film style — you know, hand-held, very real, in the streets, in the world. And if I’m not mistaken, he only made a couple of films; the filmmaker made it and then he disappeared. He stopped making [fiction] movies. He made one with Marlon Brando and then that was kind of it. But the fact that he pulled off this movie — it’s a masterpiece. I remember watching the movie and feeling like it was a documentary, it felt so real. It’s so amazing. The performances of the actors, everything — it’s mind-blowing when you watch it."

"The album with Faith Healer. No one else around the midwest, apart from us guys, was following this kind of music. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were incredible. They were another band I knew about from reading people like Chris Welch. I could picture what they sounded like just from reading, because back then the writers were real writers. I never got to see The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, but I could visualise what they were like. Alex Harvey got up and played with us at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1980, a couple of years before he died. We did 'Shakin' All Over' and he ate a cassette - what the fuck? They were a mash of cool stuff: the music was haunting and heavy and fun, all at the same time."