"Nebraska is different from all the other Bruce Springsteen albums because it's not very bombastic! It's just acoustic guitar on a four-track machine. It's got to be the most lo-fi record you could get from Bruce Springsteen. I believe that's because he made demos for the E Street Band, and just didn't like how they sounded when they were played with the band. His producers, and I think one of his bandmates said to him, "The demos sound better". When I first heard it, I think that I only knew Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie in terms of that type of sound - someone working with a harmonica and an acoustic guitar. He's writing about the working classes of America, or people who are failing in their lives or trying to make it but failing. It's darker than other records too though. I think he's taking inspiration from stories he's read in the newspaper about criminals who are serving life sentences or those who are going to the electric chair. At the same time, it's about families, brothers and someone's father who is no long alive. It's got a lot of humanity in it as a record, with this resonating and wonderful sound - daunting vocals and very haunting harmonica parts. There are also loads of reverbs and a glockenspiel is on there too. It's a murky-sounding record at first, but the more you listen to it, you find all of these other details. I was at school when I first heard it. I couldn't think of an obvious way that Bruce has influenced me, until I wrote a song called 'Elvis Has Left The Building' which is on my new album. I just thought that the kind of song it was, and the mood, reminded me of 'Streets Of Philadelphia' or 'Nebraska' - not in an obvious way, and I didn't think of him in order to write it, but it reminded me of that in an odd way."

"It was 1966, my senior year of high school, and with one of my closest friends in tow I cut school and went into New York, to the Bleecker Street Cinema, to see a double bill of Breathless and 8 1/2. I had seen foreign films before, but nothing like these two. We loved Breathless. It was rebellious, anarchic, romantic, and the characters were so superkool we wanted them in our seventeen-year-old lives. But as much as Breathless moved and influenced me, 8 1/2 rocked my world. In the first five minutes, during Guido’s dream, I could feel my brain collapsing in on itself. The camera’s POV of Guido’s foot tethered to the ground as he floats high above the ocean, then suddenly falling only to awake with a hand grasping for consciousness, was deeply personal for me. I often wake from my nightmares in much the same way. Forty years later, in season one of Heroes, an episode called “6 Months Ago” afforded me the opportunity to re-create those very same shots. It was thrilling to use those same images in the service of a different story of my own creation. If forced to name my all-time favorite movie sequence, the childhood memory of “Asa Nisi Masa” would make the final four. It is cinema as magic. The way the mentalist grapples with the words Asa Nisi Masa, and we travel through Marcello Mastroianni’s mind and into a haunting memory of the past. His childhood is alive with mysticism, mischief, and a lost family’s love. Don’t get me started about the exquisite finale, with its parade of characters and clowns. Is Guido dead or not? I still haven’t decided. Leaving the Bleecker, my mind permanently blown, I thought that I would never understand this movie—and that is one of its strengths. After forty-two years and as many viewings, it reminds me of the best of Bob Dylan, the last line of “Frankie Lee & Judas Priest”: “Nothing is revealed.”"

"Second I would say came out roughly around the same time but probably, The Silence of the Lambs. I just loved that movie. That too, me and my buddy Dougie Thornel… We actually were too young to get into that movie, but I remember one time we weren’t allowed in and then we snuck in anyway, and again, it was one where we went back and back and back. I think Ted Levine’s performance as Buffalo Bill is one of the most haunting performances that has ever happened on film. He’s an actor that I admire so deeply and I really love… Especially in the last few years, I’ve gotten to take these parts that are only in a few scenes and really create as rich a back story and history for the character as possible, and I thought he did that so cogently and so beautifully in that movie. Its not just that there are so many quotable lines, but you really see the depths of the torture that’s going through him. It’s such a meditation on serial killing and psychotic murderers, and I love the fact that Hannibal Lecter — obviously one of the great characters of all time — but I just love the fact that you don’t know whether to root for him or against him. I think it’s the ultimate anti-hero character, and the fact that they were able to achieve him being able to… you know, at the end of the movie, you’re actually rooting for him, that he got out and that he’s going to go eat people. I think that’s just so f—ing awesome. And obviously the scene with Levine and Jodie Foster with the night vision. It’s a book that I loved and I think its one of those rare times where I think the movie totally even outshines the book. Wow, what a film. It will always be one of my favorites."

"It was 1966, my senior year of high school, and with one of my closest friends in tow I cut school and went into New York, to the Bleecker Street Cinema, to see a double bill of Breathless and 8 1/2. I had seen foreign films before, but nothing like these two. We loved Breathless. It was rebellious, anarchic, romantic, and the characters were so superkool we wanted them in our seventeen-year-old lives. But as much as Breathless moved and influenced me, 8 1/2 rocked my world. In the first five minutes, during Guido’s dream, I could feel my brain collapsing in on itself. The camera’s POV of Guido’s foot tethered to the ground as he floats high above the ocean, then suddenly falling only to awake with a hand grasping for consciousness, was deeply personal for me. I often wake from my nightmares in much the same way. Forty years later, in season one of Heroes, an episode called “6 Months Ago” afforded me the opportunity to re-create those very same shots. It was thrilling to use those same images in the service of a different story of my own creation. If forced to name my all-time favorite movie sequence, the childhood memory of “Asa Nisi Masa” would make the final four. It is cinema as magic. The way the mentalist grapples with the words Asa Nisi Masa, and we travel through Marcello Mastroianni’s mind and into a haunting memory of the past. His childhood is alive with mysticism, mischief, and a lost family’s love. Don’t get me started about the exquisite finale, with its parade of characters and clowns. Is Guido dead or not? I still haven’t decided. Leaving the Bleecker, my mind permanently blown, I thought that I would never understand this movie—and that is one of its strengths. After forty-two years and as many viewings, it reminds me of the best of Bob Dylan, the last line of “Frankie Lee & Judas Priest”: “Nothing is revealed.”"

"It really is just this album. After this I think it was all downhill, and I never followed Morrissey's solo career. Musically I felt it was lost on me. I think the real power that hit me was in this record; the urgency and the energy of the record. Also I lived in France; I was a French adolescent when I first heard them, it was either 'This Charming Man' or 'Hand In Glove', and obviously in the UK it was a complete social phenomenon, everyone knew The Smiths, but in France you were really leftfield if you knew The Smiths or listened to The Smiths. And there were corners in those songs that were totally mysterious and fascinating and unpredictable. That was what I loved about them: there was a kind of beauty that you couldn't catch. I'd never heard this type of songwriting before. I think in the UK and Ireland there is the folk tradition, and I feel more depth in the folk music I've heard that's British, and more unaffected beauty. I've heard little French folk music, but what I have heard is highly repetitive, and nothing poetic or haunting or deep. It maybe had its uses at the time, but I don't feel that it has crossed that barrier into the modern world as well as the British folk music. So I don't know if it's because of that, if the roots would come from that and that differentiated it, because at the time I lived in France. But it had a huge resonance because it was new and different. It was beautiful. It had confidence and spunk to it, and of course Morrissey was a tremendous energy and singer. With the lyrics you would learn words and the meanings were not readily thrown at you; you had to think more deeply about what he was saying. The irony and all of that made it very fascinating. I don't own this record, but I'm sure if I played it today I would still enjoy it very much."