"That must have been high school. A video played before MTV was around [on Top Of The Pops], it was 'Bang A Gong (Get It On)', Elton John played on it and really it was another song. It wasn't 'Bang A Gong' and there was this moment where Marc Bolan jumped and it wasn't even on time, and I think, "That's fucking cool! Goddamn it, how cool is this?" Such a wiseass thing to do. Either that or I guess they wanted to play the album version and they probably didn't make a video at that time and they just slathered that on. His guitar has a kind of bluesy effect, obviously his lyrics and vocal style I like - [imitates Bolan] - and I just thought this was a cool, cool record. I feel cool when I listen to it - I feel like the coolest guy in the world, just as cool as shit! Bolan took the blues and made it a lot more palatable. I love blues music, but after a while it's like, "Aw man, here we go again!" That would be like water dripping on my head if I listened to that all day. I appreciate it, goddamn it, I do, but in small doses. The A minor pentatonic - one thing I learned from the blues is get the fuck away from that pentatonic scale! I played with Link Wray one time - I played one song with him, I forgot! - and his thing to me was: "Joey, I don't want to hear any pentatonics there", and I just went out, I didn't even practice, thinking, "I'll just wing it!" I went out there and got so nervous, I threw in a pentatonic scale! I hope he didn't hear me! And he went, "Come on Joe!" He wanted me to put my leg on the monitor, total rock star, and I was thinking, "I won't do this! Please don't make me do this!" And I did it! I just felt like a douchebag. And funnily enough, we were playing at the House Of Blues."

"This is another record that I think Chris Bear might have found when we were twenty-one, twenty-two maybe, right before the band became Grizzly Bear. It’s a seven-minute, classic metal song with an almost Bowie-esque vocal delivery, it’s raging guitar music basically and I still love that kind of stuff. I had a deep metal phase as a kid, I loved Metallica and that kind of thing, but this is more in the Black Sabbath realm of heavy. “I’ve got a really strong memory of listening to this with Chris Bear and Chris Taylor. We had this phase between nineteen and twenty-two where we kept trying to be a band but it never really worked out. It didn’t happen until they’d started Grizzly Bear, I was the last guy to join, but when we were bonding over music around then it started to make sense we’d play together eventually. “We loved this song, it’s so classically heavy and cool and maybe it’s that, learning to appreciate music for what it is and not thinking about what it means, or if it’s moving you. It’s not cheesy or over the top, there’s a subtlety to it, it’s tasteful without trying or overthinking it. “We saw Danava play a few times in tiny clubs and they were incredible We saw lots of super-heavy music between 2004 and 2006 and being around New York was amazing for that, even Animal Collective were like that then, you’d see these crazy, heavy shows that were super-energetic and vibrant. “There’s not much documentation about this, but on our first couple of tours there was more of a heavier energy, musically it was much more improvised, frenetic and busy, closer to jazz. Our early live incarnation was somewhere between this and Elvin Jones, trying to channel this heavy energy. “It’s another one of those touchstones we talked about a lot when we were younger, not that it really made its way into our music very much, we never really made full on metal, but there’s occasional moments where that energy creeps in."

"This was a record that Chris Taylor or Chris Bear introduced me to in college. We were eighteen or nineteen in New York, they were studying music and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing! I was trying to be serious about linguistics but I was kind of bullshitting myself. “I’d started writing songs but I was very secretive about it and didn’t take it seriously. I played them to Chris Taylor, he was probably the first person who heard anything I’d done, but I refused to admit to myself that I took it seriously in any real way. When I went to college I decided I wasn’t going to do music, because there was no reason for another white kid to play jazz guitar. I ended up finding songwriting instead and it became a different thing. “This is a reference point we’ve talked about over the years, when one of us mentions this record, everybody knows what we’re talking about, we talked about it on Painted Ruins in certain places. The whole basis of the groove is built on an organ drum machine and the sound of it is very ahead of its time. It’s very groovy but it’s not beating you over the head, it’s an emotional tune that has this subtly danceable beating heart. There’s a soulfulness and dreaminess to it, it accesses the emotional part of you with this really pointed and tight rhythmic quality. “We never wanted to approach music from a folky songwriter’s standpoint. Certain parts of our music have come out that way because of what we play, but it’s remembering what it was like as a teenager, being really into music from a players’ perspective and finding the emotional quality in that, trying to build something that’s soulful and hits you without beating you over the head. I love it when people can pull off that subtlety, where they’re barely touching the instrument but there’s this rhythmic quality to it. “’Aht Uh Mi Hed’ is a touchstone that’s stuck with us, it’s an aspect of music that we really appreciate. We don’t actively strive towards it, but it never quite leaves our minds."

"I go by my original story – greatest album ever made. It’s incredible, beautiful. ‘Killing Moon’ is genius – the best song ever written. It was the first song we recorded before we went to Paris to do the full album, and the chorus came to me. I woke up one morning and I know it was sunny, and I sat upright with words that God had given to me in my sleep. It wasn’t like a dream, I just woke up with the words, and that has never happened before or since. I legged it to find a guitar to get the chords down, and obviously to write the words down. Divine inspiration, and that was it. I haven’t really credited Our Lord with the lyrics before. Would I change anything about the album? I like my voice better now, but having said that, most people would disagree, so no, not really. I think it’s a complete thing. ‘The Yo-Yo Man’ is not my favourite, but it sets it up right for that album. I always used to do the first track and last tracks of the two sides as the core songs. People were familiar with ‘Killing Moon’ by then anyway, but imagine if they’d got to the album without hearing it – it would have been like, “Whoa, what the fuck?” And then ‘Ocean Rain’ - the closer of closers. All in under 40 minutes – it’s like a Sixties record. It wasn’t the easiest album to sell to America, but it certainly inspired other people in bands in America to go on and reap more rewards than we did. I’m surprised that Warners didn’t press the button [and promote it properly in the US]. In those days you’d hire a plugger. Wayne Coyne thinks it’s the best album ever, but it just didn’t have the exposure. And we weren’t really a band that toured for long periods - I’d miss Liverpool too much. More European influences I suppose. But then we were the best band in the world and we’d just created that… and you’re not going to bribe people?"

"Like lots of people my age, Radiohead were a big band before Kid A. The Bends were where I really got into them, and then OK Computer really blew me away. But then Kid A came out and it was nothing like their other stuff. They took away all their guitars. They were the kings of guitars and they took them all away, and they replaced it with really out of tune, quiet synths and little drum machines and it made me and all my friends really surprised. We didn't know what this meant because we were so used to guitars being important, and then Radiohead came along and said you don't need any of that stuff, screw it. That really changed my attitude. Radiohead showed a generation that you don't need to be afraid of change. I just think it was such a brave decision, considering where they were in their career, what they had come from and what they had become well known for. They threw it all out the window and that inspired a huge amount of people I think, and it inspires us every time with think of it, or whenever we talk about turning our attention to a new album, we always have it in the back of our minds that we could ""pull a Kid A"", we could pull a U-turn, and that comes down to the fact that they were willing to do that, it was inspiring. Obviously loads of musical stuff came out of Kid A. The way Thom Yorke sings is pretty indelibly put into me, and a lot of the way the band play, and everything Jonny Greenwood does, influences us. It's what Kid A's attitude was really. It's really slapdash in the way it's recorded, it's really awkwardly mixed. It sounds like they've done it themselves out of old pieces of machinery that shouldn't work anymore. Gone are all the shiny, beautiful guitar tones and high production. Even his voice is beautiful and yet it's been corrupted and you can't really hear what he's saying, and he's singing falsetto. All the stuff that we kind of relied on them for all got chucked in the bin and that's just fucking awesome!"

"At this point I'm already in Suicidal Tendencies and I'm walking around school listening to Korn and Suicidal. I always had my headphones on and I had long hair, I kind of looked like a girl. I remember my friend called Carla, she gave me her copy of Evil Empire. It was really dope, it was one of the coolest moments ever, because she gave me a copy of her CD and then she gave me a kiss literally, and she said, 'this is yours.' I remember putting it in my CD player in my car and I've never sonically heard anything like that in my entire life. That shit blew my fucking mind. I didn't know what the hell to do with myself. I was like, 'who the fuck plays an instrument like this? What the hell is this?' Tom Morello's guitar lines were ridiculous. To this day, it's still ridiculous. If Jimi Hendrix were alive he would be like, 'what the hell is Tom Morello drinking!?' Then on top of that, add the part where they're from Los Angeles; it's a bit of a prideful moment for me. I don't ever have these moments where I'm like, 'Yeah, they from LA', but Rage Against The Machine, I felt like it was me. This is again identity; who this is and what this is – this is the sound of where I come from, this is how we sound. Then you mix Suicidal Tendencies in there, and I'm touring at this age already, so this was this made me want to play harder and more aggressive and made me want to exude more energy and play with power. That's where I learned that, and it moulded my years in Suicidal Tendencies. So Evil Empire, if I put it on in an Uber everybody's going deaf. It's Rage Against The Machine: I don't care – it's still too good. It's still too fucking good. They're getting ready to go back on tour this year. I'm gonna be the guy in the front row with the mouth guard and boxing gloves. Rage Against the Machine changed my life and will change yours on arrival."

"I first heard Alan Lomax's work while I was at university. I did music with visual art and film, but luckily at that time, it was just before this tutor left that had run it for 25 years, and he was quite old school but great because it was still fairly shambolic as a course and there was some good soulful stuff. Alan Lomax did lots and lots of field recordings around America and archived folk, blues and negro music and porchstep music. This particular album is when he went to Mississippi and Louisiana state penitentiaries and documented the prisoners as they were working in cotton fields. They've got music in their blood and that's what came through, I think. It's just absolute badass, amazing rhythms and there's a sort of sex to the music - they're singing about [sings] "be my woman and I'll be your man!", because they're obviously randy as hell and stuck in a fucking prison and working under really difficult conditions in the heat. There are different tracks where you can hear a load of axes and chains, and they would sing along to the axes hitting the stone, choirs of beautiful voices of men. 'Old Alabama's a really good one and 'Rosie' and what's so interesting is that I would listen to that and instantly there'd be a spider diagram going out. PJ Harvey on To Bring You My Love's 'Goodnight', she just stands there with a stick and hits it and there's a guy doing slide guitar. Moby, embarrassingly, sampled loads of it for free. Nick Cave and loads of artists I've loved, you just see bits of it in their music, it's that deep, dark, gothic soul, blues music. This is the raw, concentrated, original bit. There's a kind of spiritual rawness to it, they're spiritual songs about missing love and family. "I'll spend the rest of my days in these four stone walls." The fact that this mad white guy from somewhere decided to go and capture all of these voices - I know there are a lot of rights issues surrounding Alan Lomax, but I think just in terms of being an archivist, I think a lot of that stuff would've been completely lost, so it's great."

"I have a Polaroid of Kurt Cobain on my kitchen corkboard. It's him holding a kitten, two of my favourite things in the world: Kurt and kittens, the two 'k's! I was deeply in love [laughs] with him, on a hormonal level, for a long time. But I think in terms of what he taught me as a budding creative person and an angsty, very troubled teenager. It sounds really cheesy, but he got me through many many days of bunking school. When I think of Bleach, I've just put [points to phone] "bunking school", that's basically what I did. Just that first track 'Blew', there's that bass sound [sings], and it was just so dirty and rank and then there's feedback and his voice - [sings] "NO RECESS!' - on 'School'. What was so exciting about the fact that they had become so loved and so big was that they didn't compromise any of that aggression, anger and rawness. I just love people that become really successful by not compromising anything, and being completely true to their own spirit. At that time, I was starting to writing books of poetry and play guitar in my bedroom. I'd pretend to get the train to school, and then come back in and climb through the window and just spend all day with Bleach and Incesticide on a tape, and I'd just turn them over and [listen to] 'Dive', 'Love Buzz' and 'Floyd The Barber'. It was just the ability to play this album as loud in my bedroom as I possibly could and just scream along to it, and just feel there was a little soulmate, who had this similar thing, just guiding me through. I think that visceralness really gave voice to something that I was finding difficult to express and because I was finding my own singing voice, and very shy about it, it was like really nice to be able to not have to sound, as a girl, pretty and nice - all the female musicians like that, they're very beautiful, but to get that kind of guttural, animalistic scream was really liberating."