"This art form, and it is an art form, which winds up being tagged as blues, is largely made up of expressions so genuine that they come straight out without second- or third-draft revisions. There's a resonance that's magnetic, kind of a compelling entity of its own. Shemekia Copeland, her dad is also from Houston, and released a couple of regional hits under the name Johnny 'Clyde' Copeland. As teenagers when we had the garage band we attempted playing – and the word is attempted – his great record 'Down On Bending Knees'. Talk about compelling – that was a great record. 

Unknown to me, Shemekia recorded a ZZ Top song, 'Jesus Just Left Chicago'. Her people asked if I'd consider playing a guitar figure and I said I'd really enjoy it. She didn’t know that I treasured the work her dad gave us. I said, well what's this for? A single? ""Well, we think it'll be single-worthy, as part of an album."" An album? Well I gotta hear it."

"During our first ever rehearsal as The Horrors we were doing a load of garage covers and then we started doing our first original song - it was called ‘The Fall Of Winter'. There's a bootleg of it somewhere online and it sounds like a complete mess, a racket. When we wrote it, Josh [Hayward, guitarist] said, "That song sounds a bit like The Jesus Lizard". And I said, "Who are The Jesus Lizard?" and I went and checked them out. Down was the first record of theirs I bought. There's something about that cover itself... I think it's the actual painting style. It puts ideas in your head. There's an important difference between an illustration or painting that puts ideas in your head and one that turns you off. This does a little of both and that's probably what they're going for - trying to turn you off in a good way. Even the way all their records have four-letter word titles is trying to piss you off. There's also an element of the grotesque about them that I guess people like."

"I was thinking of different forms of inspiration and years ago, when I used to box, I had a heavy bag hanging in the garage of my house that I bought after I was inspired by "Peace of Mind." I would go out, and work, and do my TV shows, and do my radio shows, and do all that kind of stuff, where you’re sitting there with makeup on, and trying to hit your marks, and all that business. And then I would go home and I would crank in my mix cd and one of the songs was Midnight Oil’s “Blue Sky Mine”. And it just had such a strong drum beat that I would just go into this zone and just start pounding the body of that heavy bag to the beat of the drum. And it really just got me inspired. So, like I said, Boston was inspiring to get me into a career, and Midnight Oil was inspired for me to break someone’s ribs."