"I can’t remember how I discovered this. I can’t remember where I heard it, or the shop I bought it from. In those days you bought records because you thought the cover was cool, and hoped that the music matched the sleeve. Even to this day it sounds like it could have been made last week. Ted Templeman did amazing job — it’s the reason Van Halen got him. Ronnie Montrose was an incredible guitar player, and Sammy Hagar — even to this day — is a stunning vocalist. And the thought that Ronnie Montrose and Bill Church (the bass player) actually played with Van Morrison [on Tupelo Honey and Saint Dominic’s Preview] beggars belief. Denny Carmassi’s drumming was right up there with Bonham. The negativity around the band was probably the only thing that stopped them from going places, and because people thought they were poor man’s Zeppelin. The album was very reminiscent of Zeppelin, but its production was bigger. It’s just a really good slice of American rock, but it sounds very British."

"George Clinton is very important to us. In fact, George, Sly Stone, Miles Davis and Curtis Mayfield are all people we're inspired by and look up to. I'm lucky to have become friends with George. We played a show last year with his band in London and he's just an amazing guy. I remember getting this album, listening to it and thinking, "Free your mind and the rest will follow." It's free, psychedelic, sexualised funk. Also, there are incredible lyrics. George is a great lyricist, one of the best. On one track, George was told to play a guitar solo and imagine that he was just told that his mother had died. Funkadelic can go from real, emotional, plaintive with a song like 'Maggot Brain' to a big, acoustic funk track. The message from the band is that you can do anything. George had many great musicians in his band and he changed it around, you just never know who was going to play on the track. It always sounds like Funkadelic because of George's vision."

"This song that I'm going to play you is really interesting. To me it's the birth of funk guitar. This is a song called 'Go Where I Send Thee' and was recorded in 1937. The Golden Gate Quartet are an a capella group, so this is a capella, but listen to what happens with the rhythm. It's an amazing thing that four guys, no overdubs or anything like that, could make this amount of rhythm. For me they were one of the most important musical forces of the 20th century. The style of singing, which is called jubilee singing, was all originated in this one town in Virginia and there were lots and lots of groups in that town that could do this way of singing. Partly a way of harmonising but it's also a way of creating rhythm by making voices slightly hit off each other so they don't all land together. It's incredibly hard to do. You're pushing the beat by a 16th or 32nd to get that flam."

"I liked [Marc Bolan] at the time and I bought his records probably up until Electric Warrior. I wasn't a massive fan, but I was aware of him and I liked his music. Interestingly enough my very first TV appearance was on Marc Bolan's show, so I actually got to meet him as well. He was very nice but he made me think of one of those old film stars, like Gloria Swanson or something. In his mind he was still a star, and I guess he always would have been. Faded or whatever, but that's just the way he was. He was an original mod as well and in John's Children, which was was quite punky in a way. He's quite underrated. I was checking his guitar playing on Electric Warrior a few months ago and I was like, 'Fucking hell, he's really unique'. You know his sound instantly. It's not anything technical, he's just got a sound. Certainly I've started to appreciate him more in recent times."

"This song was a sonic influence on the record. The vocal sitting on top of things that aren't a conventional band, with some electronic instruments, some keyboards and some beats. The voice is still the main focus, but there's stuff happening around it that isn’t conventional. It was definitely an inspiration to some of the songs on this record; it was like a sonic headspace. “I’ve been a fan of Arthur Russell for a long time. I don't remember who showed me him but maybe it was on a highschool mixtape. Sometimes you just hear somebody; you can tell that it's unique, it's interesting and you want to know more about it. “With 'Nothing Sacred / All Things Wild' for example, which is the third song on Oh My God, I first tried it with an acoustic guitar and it wasn't really working, but then when we used just an organ and my vocal and that seemed to really work. Something like that would be really influenced by something like Arthur Russell."

"My first memory of jamming with Mark Ronson was sitting and trying to figure out a song called 'You Know, You Know' from this album. We were just having a bit of fun, but we played that song for two hours straight. Of all the Mahavishnu records this is the least produced, there's only five of them if you include the violin player. This record really changed my life, it opened my brain musically. I found this through Bitches Brew [on which Mahavishnu Orchestra's John McGlaughlin plays guitar]. I'd read the Miles Davis autobiography Miles while I was in high school. I didn't know anything about his music, I'd just read the book because it was there, but it got me into listening to jazz, and once I'd started listening to Bitches Brew every day, that got me into listening to Mahavishnu. It was a direct line of following the breadcrumbs of who played on what album you get into all sorts of stuff, a spiderweb of musicians."

"This was what my sister was listening to in her room and when I heard it there was a defining moment. We all have these pivotal moments where there’s a sense of clarity where we can recall what we were seeing at the time, we can remember what things smelled like and their color and I remember walking through the hallway of our house and hearing ‘Heartbreaker’ coming out of her room and the world stopped. I was stunned because it struck such a nerve and had so much energy. Then when the solo came on I discovered another dimension of music. I was probably ten or eleven. I hadn’t picked up a guitar by this point but that’s when I knew I had to play. I had seen guitars since I was in kindergarten and was obsessed by finding photos of guitars but after hearing Led Zeppelin II I crossed the line between just liking guitars and wishing I could play one, to saying, ‘Ok, I’m going to play…’"

"My older brother used to play this a lot in the house - the piano sample in 'C.R.E.A.M.' is probably one of the earliest things I can remember. It predates the first records I fell in love with, it was just always getting blasted out of his room. I didn't actively keep up with hip-hop - all I had access to was through him while I got more interested in guitar and rock music. When we were mixing Antidotes, I started to go back and actively rediscover a lot of the stuff my brother had been listening to at the time, from around '94/'95. I love the production, the lyricism and how evocative this incredibly captivating cinematic cartoon world is. I love the whole gang mentality, their self-sufficiency, the grittiness of the production. I don't think I've taken direct musical influence from them, but I admire their ethos and the self-mythologising, the way they turned it into something much bigger than just the tracks. It's just a fucking amazing record."

"There's a famous story about Lennon & McCartney meeting Gene Vincent in Hamburg and being terrified because he was waving around a gun. He was armed and extremely dangerous – and drunk. And they got the hell out of there sharpish. This is a classic, definitive rock & roll album. Again, it's complete. It just works from start to finish. And again, the sound, the simplicity as well, the use of the brushes – I don't think they used the kick drum, I don't hear a kick drum in it, it just sounds like a snare and cymbals, double bass, and the magnificent guitar sound of Cliff Gallup, and then Gene Vincent's voice on top. I always think of Ian Dury's 'Sweet Gene Vincent'. In fact, I think Ian Dury's 'Sweet Gene Vincent' might be the record that made me go and check this out. I took this out of the Manchester Polytechnic music library, and played it to death, and then went out and bought it. It's perfection. It's just rock & roll perfection."