"He was a kind of blues/country artist from America - obviously Scottish lineage - and I remember, the first time I heard a bit of his music was a long time ago when I was very young. It was a cover of 'Sweet Dreams' by Patsy Cline; it was an instrumental version and I thought it sounded amazing. I'd just bought an acoustic guitar, and I heard it on the radio and remember thinking… I'm gonna preface this by saying we live in an age where I'm sick of seeing so many people saying, "I'm glad the guitar solo is dead, anybody can play like that" No they fucking can't! I see so many idiots in indie bands try to play solos and they can't fucking do it, because they haven't got the bravery to do it. They haven't got the fucking blood and guts to do it. You have to spill your guts if you want people to believe a guitar solo. That's why I always go for people like this; you can tell, if a Roy Buchanan song comes on, in any obscure station on the world, as soon as the solo comes you know it's him. And that's a really special gift to have. Not many people have that; as soon as he plays one note of a solo, you know it's him. It's beautiful. He always starts off a solo in a beautiful manner, almost slightly depressed, and then it just goes apeshit and he really loses it. It's almost like the guitar's having a fit. He goes from beautiful to really disturbed in one solo. I remember I went to see The Departed in the cinema and this song, his version of 'Sweet Dreams', came on in the end, and I was like, "Fuck me I forgot to buy a Roy Buchanan record!" I meant to buy one 20 years ago and I never did. I went out the next day and bought Roy Buchanan's entire back catalogue. The best one is just called Roy Buchanan. There's some beautiful stuff on it. There's one song called 'The Messiah Will Come Again', with a spoken word intro, and you can tell it's him doing it, and it's just beautiful. There's an old Phil Lynott and Gary Moore song called 'Parisienne Walkways', and you can see it was inspired by this song. I challenge somebody to listen to this song and not actually rethink their prejudice against expression on the guitar."

"We played at the Freddie Mercury tribute at Wembley in 1992. The best part was doing 'All The Young Dudes' with Bowie and Mick Ronson and Brian May. That was the best three minutes – musically – of my career, from an emotional point of view. It was the last time Mick Ronson played on stage and it was celebrating the life of a phenomenal musician that we all miss to this day. Brian May is a career long friend of mine. I remember Phil Collen (guitar) was really nervous. I said to him: 'You're bloody doing it. You'll regret it you're entire life if you don't' I literally had to drag him on stage by the collar. We were looking across and there was Ronson and Bowie and May. And it's my glam anthem, you know? It's my funeral tune and there we were doing it with everyone who ever meant anything to me all on one stage. Bolan would have made it even better I suppose, but he was dead. But this record Ziggy Stardust? The way I see it is this: what other record could have influenced, say, me, Boy George and Morrissey in the same way, you know? We don't have much in common but we all saw that same thing…. we saw Bowie with his arm around Ronson on Top Of The Pops and it was like 'well, that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life'. Seeing it on colour TV as well: it looked amazing. To see Slade; The Sweet; Bolan - all of them with the purples, greens, oranges, reds and silvers – it was bonkers. Even Gary Glitter covered in bloody Bacofoil. To come from black and white to that! Bowie oozed class. I got the Ziggy album when I was 12-years-old. You're full of shit at that age but you're also a sponge. And I was listening to things like 'Rock n Roll Suicide' and I'd think: 'I wonder if we really are all going to be over and done with by 1977'. It was a great story. [sings] 'Pushing through the market square…' Brilliant vocal delivery which was a) listenable b) commercial and c) totally accessible to anybody, from hardcore Bowie fans to little girls who were probably enamoured of David Cassidy. I was listening in awe. He had it all."