"He was already with Rod Stewart. I'd started following him because he'd been in The Yardbirds. But he was always the most animated guitar player. His mistakes were tasty. I loved English music - I came here in 1968 and I saw Bakerloo Blues Line, I saw Love Sculpture, I saw Jethro Tull, I saw Spooky Tooth. And The Jeff Beck Group was the template for Led Zeppelin."

"I had a copy of Nevermind on cassette, but In Utero is one of the first records I can remember being released and it meaning something to me. The production is what I loved; it remains one of my favourite records. At this point I was playing in a bedroom band and we were trying to play AC/DC and Iron Maiden and it was really hard; we had neither the skills nor the equipment to play that music. Then In Utero came out and within two days we were covering Rape Me. The guitar on that album sounded like the guitar coming out of our amps, and the drums sounded like the drums that we had. It was hugely empowering for me. It meant that the music I loved was within reach in a way it had never been before. That blew my mind."

"""When I was in high school, I was a little rebellious,"" Levine said. ""I wanted to play music. I didn't want to do the things they were teaching me. I picked up a guitar and that was it. The second I picked up a guitar, I never really put it down again. I fell so madly in love with it, it's all I did. It consumed my every thought, and I'd have friends over that didn't even play instruments and I would just put instruments in their hands."" "I remember hearing Green Day for the first time and being kind of blown away,"" Levine continued. ""When I heard 'Longview' on the radio, I was just kind of enamored by it. I was like, 'Wow, what's this?' It was very accessible, melodic rock and roll music, but it was a little pissed-off and obnoxious."

"The pre-dub stuff, which basically was called ska, was a bit faster: you've got Desmond Dekker, Dave & Ansell Collins, Jimmy Cliff. So skinheads loved that in the early 70s and rock fans looked up their nose at it. There were lots of silly lyrics. Rock fans who were into Clapton and Hendrix thought, ""What is this shit?"" That's probably part of the reason I loved it so much. Dread Locks Dread is an awesome, awesome record. I used to hate the way white rock bands would occasionally throw in a reggae number. But the whole reggae thing, the whole thing of instruments dropping out with dub reggae: suddenly the guitar will disappear and it's just the drums and bass, or the drums and bass will drop out and it's just the guitar. That kind of stuff. That awesome spaciousness. That's definitely something that very strongly influenced Gang Of Four."

"I like Foals. They're a strange band I don't quite know what their influences are. The whole concept of influences is a slightly dull concept, it's one of those things that uninspired interviewers always ask. Their influence thing is really fascinating though. Their guitar playing sounds like Femi Cuti or something like that but obviously with an alternative structure to the song. Yeah, I love the Foals, they're great"