"I was just thinking last night, after I’d already sent you the list of songs, “Why didn’t I put that Lux Prima record in there?” It’s my favourite of the year so far. The first time I heard this song it knocked the wind out of me. Where did that melody come from? I’d never heard it, and yet it felt like it had existed for all eternity. By the time the track's over, it's already ingrained in you. Something else I love about this album is that it starts with a couple of songs that have you thinking that you know where the record’s going, and then it takes this hard right turn. I love that! Why don’t bands do that more often? You think of Ziggy Stardust as being this big rock record, but you forget that all of the big rock songs are saved for the back half. Side one is all soul and pop. I like that kind of sequencing, where the band is being deliberate, where they know they’re handling a piece of art. I think, with us having just put together Everything Hits at Once, I relate to that more than ever - that sense of wanting the album to gradually take the listener somewhere."

"This is from that same period. He's such an unusual artist. I could have chosen the first album but I'll choose Shooting At The Moon because I saw him play when I was in Coventry and it was just absolutely extraordinary. It was the group that had Herbie Flowers, David Bedford, Mike Oldfield... This was another John Peel thing. I heard 'Joy Of A Toy', 'The Lady Rachel', 'Stop This Train' with Robert Wyatt playing drums, and all that early Soft Machine stuff which he liked. It's beautiful, things like 'May I?', incredibly gentle, beautiful love songs. Sexy. That gentle and sexy thing has always been there in Wire. When you think of 'Blessed State', which is Bruce's song, absolutely beautiful. There's always that temptation to make it simple; Colin with his white hat and us with our black hats, that's the tension. It's not as if we haven't been accused of being obscure on occasion, or opaque. But usually it's the things that people think are opaque are the things that are straight reportage. People do it, you see it, you write it. Real life is stranger than fiction but it seems as if in popular song it's not - it makes real life really dull and not about love, negotiation, and mess, and passion."

"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.”"

"The Nutty Professor. So Jerry Lewis, I met Jerry once. We became friends later, but when I first met him, he knew what a fan I was of The Nutty Professor, particularly the Buddy Love performance, and [inaudible] I said to him — and I meant it — I said, “Jerry, it’s just you and Brando,” and he took about a two-minute pause, and he went, “Well, Brando’s good also.” It was hilarious. He was wearing a kimono, if you believe that, a Japanese kimono and tennis shoes. Something about Jerry Lewis’ direction, he believes in the total filmmaker. He felt that you weren’t really a filmmaker unless you starred in it, composed it, edited it, directed it, all of it, and that’s what he was, and I think that The Nutty Professor has also had a huge impact in terms of my own tone, performance style. I’ve borrowed from the Buddy Love character a million times, and so much so that I’ve had directors tell me I need to get new material. I put him in City of Angels, and I got the good fortune of having him play my father in The Trust before he passed on, so Nutty Professor was a big influence."

"I think this is the first Byrds album I owned. I bought it because it had all the singles on it. When I was a kid I didn't have a lot of money so I'd probably go and buy a band's greatest hits album, just to give a taste of the band – I love singles and greatest hits albums. I love this record because every time I hear it, it's joyous, it's transcendental and it makes my spirit soar. Whenever the Beatles and Byrds released 45s, they were all in mono because they were more powerful in terms of mixes. I watched repeats of Ready Steady Go! in the mid-'80s and was entranced by performances of 'Mr Tambourine Man', and also when The Beatles covered it too. The Byrds helped us dream away the greyness and bleakness of Glasgow and the repressiveness of Thatcherist Britain. The Byrds are better than The Beatles for me. I'm more of a Stones guy myself, but The Byrds just portrayed this image of beautiful Californian transcendent sound. That run between '65 and '67 in this compilation of A-sides and B-sides is unbeatable. I almost don't want to use this word, but it's a perfect record and basically formed the foundation of Primal Scream."

"This is a record I love so much. I remember the first night that I heard this I put it on and I was working late on some visual stuff and I left it on for about seven hours and I just didn't want to change it, and I had it on random shuffle so it just kept coming up with surprises. Track two ['Keep The Dog Quiet'] starts with the oddest note that any song could start with. It really is an off note. The main thing about this album is that I'd never heard anything remotely like it – when I heard it I just thought that it was really one of a kind. Still is, actually. This harmonic danger that he puts himself in, of just creating a world that is sonically so tense or dangerous. It's the opposite of secure or comforting but it's not the dangerous of someone like Boulez where, to me, it's sort of contrived danger – "Ooh, wouldn't it be original to put this like this?" It's not that. It's got something that's more intuitive and organic than that. It's having a taste for the other side and a feeling of, "Wouldn't it be nice to be in a place like that?" I love the darkness of it."

"A Man For All Seasons is basically porn for people who love dialogue. Paul Scofield’s brilliant performance. Robert Shaw’s equally brilliant performance as Henry the VII. It’s always appealed to me. I was 13 years old the first time I saw it. Absolutely fell in love with it because it’s wall-to-wall language with compelling performances. And [it’s] about something to me, in terms that I was raised Catholic. So Thomas Moore’s decision to not sign the oath of succession appealed to me as I was growing up because this is a dude who’s martyred for his beliefs and whatnot. And people will always compare that movie to The Crucible for some reason. But I never felt the same connection to The Crucible because in that instance John Procter is just going to great lengths to try to keep his name. Whereas Thomas Moore went to great lengths to keep, what he felt was his soul, intact. By taking that oath it would’ve been selling out on his soul, it would’ve been lying. He couldn’t do it and I always found that insanely admirable and the life one wants to emulate to some degree, without being crazy Catholic at the same time."