"I think this song is an early example of me hearing something and realising that a song doesn't just have to be guitar and bass and drums - a song can just be whatever you want to make it. I actually first discovered Suicide through Bruce Springsteen; he spoke about how much they had been a big influence on his record Nebraska. The song ‘State Trooper ’is very similar to it and he said in an interview that he was trying to do what Suicide does. This was a reference because of its sonic palette. In the back half of my song ‘Savannah’ there's this spoken word moment that happens in this underlying low bass tone that I'm talking over and it was definitely influenced by this song. It has a tremolo on it and the song’s shaking in this way that ‘Ghost Rider’ does."

"London Calling is probably my favourite rock record of all time. It’s incredibly powerful and diverse, it’s social, political and has all sorts of musical genres - punk, rock, ska, ballads, jazz and dub - rolled into the song arrangements. The Clash were at their peak when they made it and the kick-off track is the most anthemic song they ever wrote. It’s got everything, brilliant lyrics, a brilliant performance, it just sounds killer and Mick Jones’ guitar playing is phenomenal, when you hear that guitar riff it’s like a fire alarm going off. ‘London Calling’ is like a call to arms, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it, it’s that powerful. I went to see them on that tour at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and it was absolutely rammed. The second they started playing the entire room started jumping up and down and I thought the building was going to collapse, you could feel the whole place shaking. It was an old theatre and I was watching from the balcony, thinking we should maybe get to a safer location but I became so immersed in the music I forgot about it, it was a fantastic show. There were obviously differences between the British and US punk bands and some of that is in the sound of the records. The British records had a bit of a darker sound to them and that could be due to technical stuff in the mastering, but a lot of it had to do with the performances. To me, the British bands have always been ground-breaking, as a whole there were better new wave and punk bands coming out of the UK than the US, it was like the second British invasion. There was a great scene in New York, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie were ground-breaking at the time, but England, a country with a much smaller population than the US, had a larger percentage of iconic bands from that era."

"I was about fifteen-years-old and I had just started playing drums and somebody played this album in its entirety on the radio. My Dad had a garden centre at the time and I used to sit in the pickup truck listening to the radio – you know, in its own bizarre way [at that age], you just want to be on your own. So I remember being in that van and the radio DJ saying something about AC/DC and they put it on – I was nailed to my seat. And I'm a drummer, I've always liked rock bands and I've got a mid-life crisis band with some friends – we're called The Luddites. We just play three-piece punk or rock. We murder some of the classics for charity – that's how we get away with it. We go from Sex Pistols to Clash to Foo Fighters to Kings of Leon and so on. Really anthemic songs! Those last two bands have got an odd place in a lot of people's music world – certainly that very guitar heavy rock sound of the Foo Fighters – you would be shocked at some of the people who are into this heavy rock sound. Certain people – a mom with three kids for example – are really into this music! But it's all melodically very strong. Where were we? Oh yes, AC/DC. I made a cassette of this album. I used to drum to this album. Phil Rudd was a monster on the drums. He doesn't do anything – he's the rock Ringo. Whatever he's done needs to be done. People take the piss out of Ringo but everything he did was where it should be. How did I change from being a drummer to a singer? I borrowed a guitar from a guy in the band and fumbled through a few chords and tried to write songs and I became the singer because of that."

"The thing about this band is that it came out of a grunge background, obviously Dave [Grohl] came out of Nirvana. But he can play guitar just as well or better than Kurt, sings great. The most interesting thing I find about Foo Fighters, and songs like 'My Hero', is that they are based in pop melodies. Not based in the blues. Which is really interesting, having that big wall of sound guitar thing with pop melodies and interesting lyrics. Just an interesting band. This album just has the songs and it has the attitude. You can have good songs on an album but... well I remember getting the Blur record [Blur] after hearing that 'Song 2' and I was shocked to find the rest of the record was just synths and stuff. What the fuck? You hear 'Song 2' and you think, 'Wow, that's great!' and then you hear the rest of the album and it's like REEEEOOW REEEOW. It's like The Communards or something. Almost disco electronica or something. So, you know, consistency is not just a big word like gymnasium, you want an album to make a statement song after song. Maybe the most consistent band is AC/DC. Song after song could almost be the same song. There is a great interview with Angus where a critic says, 'I don't want to insult you, but I think your new record sounded just like your last record', and Angus said: 'I don't agree. I think our new record sounds like every record we've ever made.' Sometimes the biggest criticism you can make can be the biggest compliment you can give. Colour is a consistent record. It makes one statement. So what that means is that they can take that music and play it live and it should sound similar to that record, consistent. I would include more if I could, but when you pick an album, it's not just a standalone item. It's about what's happening in your life, where you are and so on."

"That first McCartney solo record was an eye-opener. I was aware that The Beatles were breaking up and I was aware that McCartney was bringing out a solo record and, song after song it was, you know, decent! The production wasn't like Beatles production, but it was decent enough. The playing wasn't as good as Beatles playing, but it was good enough. Then I found out that he wrote, engineered, produced, played all the background - except Linda would show up here and there - it was a one-man band. I mean everything! Drums, keyboards, everything, then engineered it, then produced it, did it all. Unbelievable! He only had these four machines with these RCA knobs, very primitive equipment. It's a real tour de force. He's not a great guitar player, not a bad guitar player, he plays just good enough to be able to get those parts down. It just comes down to song writing. You've got 'Junk', or ""Maybe I'm amazed by the way you love me all the time"" - that could have been a Beatles song! There's another great story in how he and Lennon would work together and McCartney would bring songs to Lennon and Lennon would pooh-pooh them and one of those songs was a song called 'Woman'. McCartney brought it and Lennon said, 'That's not great'. So then McCartney said: 'Look I'm going to prove it to you, I'll give it to Peter and Gordon and they'll have a number one record.' Lennon purportedly said, 'Yeah, but that's because your name is Paul McCartney.' And McCartney says, 'Okay I'll change the name to Bernard Webb', and, sure enough, he gives it to Peter and Gordon and... number one. He did it again with Badfinger, brought in another song that Lennon purportedly said wasn't good enough, called 'Come And Get It'. I mean, what the fuck is it? Anyway, another number one song."

"Electric Ladyland actually would be a welcome album if it was a brand new band today. It still holds up. It was actually a pivotal record in the sense that you had a guitar player, perhaps the pre-eminent one of them all, who actually took chances in terms of songwriting. He also experimented with electronics, backing tapes and all that stuff. The reason that I know all of this is because the engineer and producer on that was a guy called Eddie Kramer who engineered some of the earlier Kiss records, and he would tell us stories and everything. A double album, it had lots of great guests on it like Dave Mason from Traffic and many others. 'Crosstown Traffic' is great, very unlike Jimi Hendrix. Noel Redding, the bass player actually auditioned as a guitar player and Hendrix told him, 'I'm actually looking for a bass player', so he had to switch over to bass right on the spot, which is why his bass playing, with a pick, is not the way that most bass players play. I was still in school when I heard it, I must have been 17 or so because I remember drawing the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the name and all that, on the cover of my notebook. In those days we used to buy albums sometimes just because of the album covers. There was an art to it, there were big hardcover books talking about the art and design of album covers and there were artists and companies like Hipgnosis and places like that which specialised in just creating album covers. For instance, on Love Gun we had a painter named Ken Kelly who painted the piece, and it was a lot of time and effort. It was an art, and sadly that's gone. Now the visuals are down to the size of a postage stamp, you don't get much. I didn't actually buy this one because of the cover. I'd bought Axis: Bold As Love because of the cover."