"We all lived in a house together and I remember hearing David putting the finishing touches on that one in his bedroom. He wasn't a pianist, but he could change chords and have a rhythmic thing going. The lyrics on that one really got my attention, 'Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow' and all that. But it wasn't really until we got into the studio and got Rick Wakeman in on piano… I mean, David just told him to treat it as a piano piece, like a long solo all the way through. Rick's like a virtuoso so he just went to town on it! Then we had to pull something together to go with that. We had mapped it out a little bit because we already knew there would be a string arrangement that Mick had done on it, so I went through the string arrangement and knew what I could and couldn't do. I knew the ballpark. It still needed to be a solid beat, but kind of a futuristic-meets-classic rock thing because of the strings being so overpowering and Rick's playing was more classical than rock. I think the lyrics were very John Lennon-inspired – 'I am the egg man' sort of thing. There was a concept behind the song, but it wasn't that obvious. It was like painting a picture. He did actually give us a brief description, that it was about a girl who was dissatisfied with life and was always dreaming of another place that's better, but didn't know where it was or how to get there – maybe Mars… maybe Mars is the place? We did it three times in the studio and, when you are recording, you finish and you all stay silent as possible, you don't even sneeze because it will cause problems with the mixing later, but on that third time, the phone rang. We didn't even know there was a phone in the studio! It was one that was used by session musicians to ring out on, but it had never rang before. It rang all over the end of the song. It was a really pleasurable experience listening to it after it had been mixed for the first time. I think this might be my all-time favorite of Bowie's tunes."

"When Eraserhead came out in France, it came out with the weird title, The Head to Erase. It was in French. I remember I was reading my parents’ newspaper — it was a socialist newspaper — and there was a whole page of how much this famous film critic didn’t like the movie. He was really trashing the movie. But the way he was saying it was very awful, disgusting, it made me — I was a 14 or 15 year old kid — want to go to the other side of the city and see it. And then it was like my own secret. And I went there. And I loved the movie so much, that I believe I went to see it four times in one month. Then after two weeks it moved to another city and I went to see it again in a screening with my friend. Then maybe one year later, it was replaying near my house at the midnight screening, so I went again with another friend. And for me that was the confirmation that cinema could also portray your inner world, that cinema could portray dreams and nightmares. And I hadn’t seen, at that time Un Chien Andalou by [Luis] Buñuel but Un Chien Andalou is one of the rare movies that is written in a mental language, a dreamt language. Eraserhead is another one. Kubrick said once that he regrets he didn’t have the idea to do that movie. In any case, it had such a strong impact on me that I would say Eraserhead — it made me get into film school two years later. Maybe it was a mix of 2001 and Eraserhead. I don’t know how many times I saw Eraserhead in the movie theater, but I guess it was maybe 15 times. I had an addiction to this movie, which is the kind of addiction kids can have to their mother telling them a story. You want to listen to the same story over and over, and have a hypnotic feeling and relaxing feeling. It created some kind of relaxing feeling in me. That I would enjoy all these movies — that are nightmarish– as if it were a dream, especially when the girl comes out saying everything is fine in heaven. There’s a fact also that David Lynch made that movie with almost no money over a period of five years. Then when I was doing I Stand Alone, I had a lot of money issues. I had problems completing the movie, then doing the editing, also. All the time I had in mind that David Lynch did that movie in five years. And I said well, “Maybe it will take me 10 years to finish the movie. If it takes ten years I’ll do it and I shouldn’t worry.”"

"I hadn't actually heard this song one before we played Carnegie Hall last year [for The Music of David Bowie concert featuring the Pixies, Debbie Harry, Cyndi Lauper and Michael Stipe]. We were the house band and had quite a few artists coming on to play, so I had to learn it. For me, it wasn't an obvious one. When I first heard it, I even thought it was a terrible song! Like it wasn't even a song! That was just my first impression of it. But it was only when I started playing it, and trying to do my own version of it, that I realised that it all fit perfectly. It was great to play live. It was just him throwing something together - it's unserious, a totally unpretentious concept, and the music just fits the lyrics so perfectly. You know, the drums are not that tight, and there are drum rolls where you think: 'Wow, that's like a beginner that's just been playing drums for six months!' But then you play it and it actually fits! It's really weird. It fits the idea of always crashing in the same car. If it had been played technically correctly it wouldn't have worked. For me, it was a good example of how everything in the backing of a song has to line up with the message of a song. I think a lot of music these days, gets into this over-produced, too-tight, no feel thing, but you can't fault it. It's correct. The dots are all in the right place, but there is no soul. Or even, there isn't a message to grab a hold of and it all falls down. It's so easy now to put something together in your bedroom on your computer that sounds like a finished record, but if you don't have those same elements there that make a good song, you may as well not bother!"

"I was 12 when it came out. I remember it very well. It was a Saturday morning, and I went round to a friend's house and he'd been out shopping that morning and he'd bought the album. And we played the album, and it was something like you'd never heard before. We were in the middle of what I might describe as somewhat traditional rock music – you know, The Stones and Led Zeppelin were at their peaks. This thing came along and it didn't sound like anything else. The production values, the production's quite dry, and also you've got this visual of Bowie with the spiky hair, it just was something so different. You felt that music itself just got changed, and that rock music per se moved into some other place. The best way I can describe it is that rock music became modern. It became a new thing. I have no doubt in my mind that David Bowie is the greatest solo artist that Britain's ever produced. I can't think of a better solo artist. The other thing I would say is I thoroughly underestimated the brilliance, and the input made by Mick Ronson, in the period he was with the band. I had no idea Mick Ronson did all the orchestration, and did all the arrangements. So when you're listening to a track like 'Life On Mars' off Hunky Dory and, this album, 'Moonage Daydream', when you take into consideration that he did the string arrangements, that really puts him in a different sphere as well. And without Mick Ronson I don't think it would have sounded as original as it did. It made me so sad seeing this documentary about him [Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story on Sky Arts], somehow the Bowie machine swept Mick Ronson under the carpet, which is incredibly unfair. It was heartbreaking, to be honest. I felt really sorry for the guy that he'd been so underestimated while he was alive. At least now we can celebrate his brilliance."