"I was never a western guy but I happened upon Tombstone one day on TV and was really sort of taken with it. It’s one of those movies that, if it’s on TV, I can’t turn it off. I just have to watch the whole thing. I really love Kurt Russell in it, but I think Val Kilmer’s performance in Tombstone is perfection. I just think he’s funny and cool and sad and broken. He’s a bad guy, but you’re rooting for him. He’s an interesting sidekick because Doc Holiday is a criminal, you know? But it’s like, “I’ll be your huckleberry” is such an amazing kind of line of bravado and bravery. And then at the end, when he’s dying, Kurt Russell wants to play cards with him, and Val Kilmer just wants him to leave and let him die. It’s beautiful. And Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton and Kurt Russell — it’s just quite a team. And you’ve got Billy Bob as a bully on the card table. It’s just expansive, and I’ve lived a little bit in Wyoming and being out there — really it just gives you a scope of the West: those big skies, and it’s beautifully shot. It’s just one of those movies that, when it’s on, I’m going to watch it."

"What’s the name of that film? Was it Jimmy Kimmel that was involved in it? Windy City Heat? It’s this guy, oh God, what’s his name again? I can’t remember. [Editor’s note: Perry Caravello.] He’s Italian-American and, you know, he’s been in the game a long time, and you see footage of him going into auditions and things like that, and he literally thinks he’s, like, the next Marlon Brando. He really believes he’s gonna be the next Marlon Brando. And his friends create this whole film, this fake movie, that he lands the lead part in. They like shoot the film, there’s loads of things that go wrong. And he’s got an awful attitude, like, he’s really cocky and everything. Anyway, the film came out. They released it. They released, like, the making-of, and I think he kind of put two and two together. And he’s done interviews since then and says, “I was in on the joke the whole time! I knew what was going on! I knew what was going on!” And I don’t think he did. And it’s really heartbreaking then to go back to it then and realize that he didn’t know. He really heard that he had gotten this lead part in the film, you know. You should check it out. It’s funny. Jimmy Kimmel’s involved in that, I think."

"The first time I heard him was in London, it was 1964 and he had just come out with that album and I got it. It was in my manager Gordon Mills's Notting Hill Gate flat and he just had it because they used to send him stuff - things that I might like. There was this album, so I thought "Shit! This is tremendous" and recorded a bunch of the songs on there - 'If You Need Me' was one of the ones on the first album. Solomon was always my favourite soul singer, more than Otis Redding, Sam and Dave or Wilson Pickett. Solomon was a step above. He was more of a singer who happened to sing blues and gospel - you could tell that he came from the church, but he sang it better. Otis Redding used to get trouble with this throat - you could hear it in him. He was struggling to get out what he did. Wilson Pickett had great feel and great drive, but there was a roughness to his voice, and Solomon could be rough or sweet when he wanted to be, he could put his voice into different areas. And his range was huge - there's that track on it, 'Goodbye Baby, Baby Goodbye', he sings that in two octaves, which is tremendous. Real, very honest."

"That's a record that Jack [Bevan] from Foals had discovered when we were living in Oxford writing Total Life Forever and there were eight of us in one house: other musicians, no TV, just a record player in the fireplace. The house was falling apart and that record was the soundtrack to that whole period, 2009 to 2011. It was the record I felt envious of not having made. They did something that I felt I was close to being able to make but also superior, and it wasn't what I'd made! I thought: ""Shit, they got there first!"" It's a strange record from a strange group because they seem underappreciated and under-exposed and never really play live. We ended up going to record in Gothenburg and we met Dan Lissvik on this industrial estate in the winter. He talked about how life is a pendulum and he sits above it; he was chain smoking and was a good guy. The record itself though is somebody's idea of West Coast hip-hop filtered through a suburban Swedish kid's imagination. It is at odds with what Gothenburg is like in the winter. The production on it is amazing, with elements of interlocking guitars, but it's freer and maybe it helped us loosen some of the strictness that was in the band at the beginning sonically."

"I love L.A. Confidential. If it’s on for even a second, I just watch it to the end. I almost want to call my cable service provider and ask them not to show it any more, because it has overwhelmed my life. It’s because I’m from California, from Los Angeles, because the idea of police corruption, of political ambition, of logic and defying expectations. Really, Bud White is Rudy, in the thug cop questing for detective greatness. [laughs] There’s something about that. Also, the way that it commingles all of the ideas of pornography and politics and financial development and mob power and drugs. You know, I studied history and English at UCLA, and one of the big themes in a bunch of our history classes had to do with, “How is it that Los Angeles and Hollywood and California present themselves to the world as both this destination place of palm trees and glitter and gold and your future, and also corruption and deceit?” There’s this duality to it, and I just think that Curtis Hanson’s way of delivering that… And the performances! I mean, David Strathairn and Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger and Kevin Spacey and James Cromwell… Police corruption, and justice, vigilante justice, and it’s just got everything. It’s just a perfect movie."

"Rick Rubin embraced Johnny Cash when he was floundering without a label. Rick thought this was unthinkable. He started soliciting writers beyond the country community and they did two great, odd, dark records. I wound up writing a song called 'I Witnessed A Crime' without knowing that Rick was going in this more contemporary vein. I later discovered it was too mid-’50s; too perfect for old-school Johnny Cash. So it didn't reach release until it was bootlegged out of the studio and found its way to YouTube. 

Rick called me up – I live just walking distance from house-to-house: ""Can you come over?"" I said, ""Well, you still got that old Fender guitar down there? If you let me play it I'll come on down."" He had this stunning Fender Esquire from 1954. I walked down and the door opened up, he ushered me into the living room and sitting on the sofa was Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. I was dumbfounded. So we sat down this close and he said, ""I like that song."" June started welling up and said, ""Ooh, you played the solo just like Luther Perkins."" I said, “Well, I'd like you to help me get through it.” We wound up singing it across the table. Little did I know that Rick had hidden microphones, capturing the whole thing."

"I can't say this about every song on this list, but with this one I was quite aware of what the band were doing when it came out. I wouldn't say Public Enemy are my favourite band, but it's pretty close, and when this record was released, they were the most important group in the world as far as I was concerned. ""They were the most interesting, the most intelligent, and at the time, nobody was more controversial than Chuck D. They were so original; they were breaking new ground with every recording. Before It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, there just wan't music like this. ""That record came out six months before Fear of a Black Planet, and it still felt so sharply of its time because Chuck was talking about everything he'd gone through in the months leading up to it - the controversy with Professor Griff, and everything else. Later on, he said something like, ""Public Enemy is CNN for black people,"" and you get that with this song. It's totally brutal, totally brilliant, and totally of the moment. In the winter of 1990, they just meant everything. ""I've put this one on plenty of mixtapes. Plus, is that a Frankie Goes to Hollywood reference in the title? It's got to be, right?"

"""AM is one of my favourite records of the last ten years. I've always liked the fact that Arctic Monkeys sidestepped the indie scene and reinvented themselves as a rock band. I think Alex Turner gets a lot of unfair flak but he's a phenomenal songwriter, one of the best of our generation, and this record in particular has some incredible songs on it. People like rockstars until they don't like rockstars, and then if you're a rockstar you'd better fucking duck. He's always just been himself, and luckily himself is just rock & roll through and through. I'm incredibly jealous of his mind, he's a great guitarist but as a lyricist it's incredibly frustrating to be alive at the same time as him. As a rockstar he just has it, and luckily he's not put too much of a foot wrong yet. As far as I'm concerned he can do no wrong, and I'm putting that all on his lyrics. It's mental that he can squeeze a line like ""She's got a Barbarella silver swimsuit"" into a song and make it relevant, make it just feel new, yet he's referencing things from such a long time ago, probably from before he was alive. He has an understanding of pop culture and is a master of manipulating it to do whatever he wants. As a lyricist myself it's quite amazing to see."""