"The thing about Todd Rundgren is you have to buy into the whole thing. He’s another preposterous artist. He’s insanely talented: great singer, fantastic guitarist, great arranger, and he dances like a ninja. He used to be able to solo while kicking his legs in the air, wearing purple loon pants. I did my foundation year, a one-year course where you decide what you want to do at university, in Winchester. I went to a record shop there, and they were having a sale, and I bought two records: A Wizard, a True Star by Todd Rundgren and Can’t Buy a Thrill by Steely Dan. I had never heard anything like A Wizard in my life. It goes from the spaciness of “International Feel” and suddenly he’s doing a Wizard of Oz song. It was bonkers but it totally primed me for what was next. By that point, I had managed to get all of my friends into him, so everyone was waiting for the next record. I bought Todd when it came out and was like, “whoa!” It’s heavy—some of it is quite unlistenable and annoying, and some of it is absolutely beautiful. That’s Todd Rundgren for you."

"The ‘60s was such a powerful decade for music, but in the ‘70s it suddenly felt really old to me. If you’d have asked me about The Beach Boys and The Beatles at that point, I’d have called it a load of old tosh. I was looking for my thing and the new thing, and Bowie led me into The Velvet Underground, which led me into glam rock and the New York punk scene. I remember first seeing ‘Starman’ on Top Of The Pops and I’d never seen anyone who looked like David Bowie did - it was all sparkly and mad hair, but the song sounded amazing. The message of there being something out there for you really hit home with a lot of people who were my age, and it came at a time when everyone was searching for something that our generation could call music. Bowie had his moments as an artist, didn’t he? It’s a controversial thing to say, but I think Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory were the only great albums he did really. He had fantastic tracks from other albums - I love “Heroes” and I love “Ashes To Ashes”, they’re brilliant songs - but in terms of albums, it’s Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory that mean a lot to me.”"

"This is where I came in with Queen — somehow I missed the first two albums. Our bass player always looks at me like I’ve got three heads when I say, “no, I never saw Seven Seas Of Rhye on Top of the Pops. I must have been out playing football that particular week. But when I first heard Killer Queen I thought, “wow, this is different. You could tell they were rock band, but you could also tell they were much more than a rock band. It had elements of vaudeville, which is fantastic to be able to bring on board, and when I heard the album there was even more things, like Bring Back That Leroy Brown, but at the same time you had things like Brighton Rock hammering away but with Freddie Mercury sing away in this weird falsetto that sounded like Sparks. It’s an amazing record. Now I’m Here is still one of the best rock songs ever written. It was very varied, very Queen in the sense of setting a standard that they then had to follow. It wasn’t like an AC/DC record where you get 10 songs that are very similar. This could have been four different bands on one record, with four different personalities making the music."