"Again, a similar time in my life; I was listening to a few American psychedelic bands. There was a band called Long Ryders who did a track called ‘Looking for Lewis and Clark’ that I played, learned, used to sit and sing although I had no idea what the lyrics were. I was pretty much singing nonsense, although the song did get me into Tim Hardin! Anyway, they were one of a few bands [that were important to me], like Opal, Screaming Trees and Rain Parade, but Rain Parade was the one that changed me. This album was like an explosion in my mind. I don’t know what program it was, but I saw them perform ‘No Easy Way Down’ on TV, a filmed concert, and it was like, ‘Here is something I can fully get behind.’ It’s a slow, sludgy, drone rock anthem; the guitarist is doing the Kevin Shields tremolo thing with the guitar, but in 1985. It’s just incredible, and I have to say would have been pretty influential on the early Ride sound for sure."

"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."

"What a crazy title! It’s not a surf album at all, of course. I think it’s basically a reissue of his previous album [Let’s Hide Away And Dance Away With Freddy King], which featured his big hit Hide Away. “I guess they stuck the surf picture and title on the record to capitalize on The Beach Boys and the whole West Coast craze that was going on at the time – which Freddy King had nothing to do with. “Although Freddy later became known for being a fine vocalist, he was one of the best blues guitarists ever, and this album really shows what a creative and aggressive guitar player he was. Between the lead lines are little rhythm lines, and they’re all played by Freddy! He could fill in the blanks all by himself. Freddy found all the right notes – nothing was superfluous. When we tour, I make sure to have this on the iPod, so we get to treat the audience and the crew to Freddy King before we come on."

"This song has this kind of rocksteady beat over a little bit of a punk rock thing, but I could relate to it because it still sounded like folk music. It wasn’t over the top like the Sex Pistols, it was music from the street and for the people and it had a heartbeat. Joe was explaining the situation in the song much like Bob too, and something in my head just clicked where I was like, ‘This is the same.’ That sent me even further on my musical course. “When I first heard Joe and Mick [Jones, lead guitarist in The Clash] get together and play those beats with the simple guitar stabs, I knew that all I cared about was lyrics. I didn’t care about the music or playing technical. Of course, I was only 13 years old and now I care much more about that, but at this point I just wanted to communicate my message and The Clash showed me the way. After that I got even deeper into storytelling punk rock music."

"They're a band from near Chicago. This is a heavy record, and it's where Deftones get a big part of our influence from, tone-wise. There are these huge chords going on, a huge backbeat, rolling basslines going on underneath, a lot of that has directly inspired certain songs. There's a wall of sound guitar, it's heavy and even bombastic in a way, but it's produced very well. We approached the producer about doing something for us, I think around our first or second record. I think the vocals are an acquired taste, he didn't have the best singing voice and he talk-sings, but the lyrics are very scientific, he sings about the stars and astrophysics, really odd topics, but the songs are really warm, there's a romantic vibe there as well. I knew I had to pick some records that inspired us that were older records, and this is one - I listen to this now and it's stood the test of time, and Deftones were definitely influenced by it."

"You have to put Hendrix in there if we’re doing this properly. Why Axis I don’t know, but I remember I had a copy of that record without a cover as a kid so I made a cover for it. It was some religious record sleeve - there were all these new folk bands playing at churches in the early seventies - but there was no record in the sleeve and I fancied myself as a drawer so I took a magic marker and put the album title and drew my version of Hendrix playing the guitar. It was one of the earliest records I listened to – I’m from Seattle and everyone in Seattle has a Hendrix record or five. I thought I was being a little bit different going for Axis as a nine or ten year-old kid, 'cos it wasn’t one of the main records, it didn’t have any of the hits on it. It was kinda dark and twisted and cool. I think it stands the test of time musically."

"The whole New York thing was kind of like the Bowie outer space thing – you’d see it on films. And when I first went out to New York I thought how right the music was for the place. It was the antithesis of the California thing. I bought a Velvets compilation with ‘I'm Waiting For The Man’ on, and every title fascinated me. When I got Banana everything about it was cool, a different kind of cool to Bowie, just this disrespective, narky cunt, with the greatest rock & roll band in the history of time. Technically it doesn’t matter, the chemistry between them was incredible. Every rhythm guitar part I’ve ever played I’ve just nicked from Lou Reed, even some of the punkier stuff. There were all these punky little rhythms. Not as important as Bowie in what he decided to do, but up there because it was a band with a definite front man. When I met the right people later in life I would use the Velvets model."