"I didn't get into him at all for ages. For years and years I just thought, what is all the fuss about?' I just could not get into it. And then one day someone said: ""Have you listened to Hunky Dory?"". I hadn't checked that out at all. I really got into Hunky Dory. I transcribed and analysed nearly all the songs on it. I got into Low, and I quite like 'Heroes', and Scary Monsters. But there's a lot of stuff I don't like. I could probably list 10 Bowie songs that I think are amazing, and the rest of it I'm not too bothered about. I'm really obsessed with him as a character, as an artist. To me he's incredibly impressive and really exciting, his relentless drive to reinvent himself. Probably one of the most inspiring people I can think of. But musically, it's not quite as abundant. That last album: it's quite weird. I was really into Death Grips, he was really into Death Grips, and Kendrick Lamaar as well. It's an album that owes a lot to those guys, but then it's also got a saxophone player on it. This track 'Girl Loves Me', he uses the language from Clockwork Orange. It's just a brilliant idea."

"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."

"I think that tune is such a perfectly crafted piece of music. The funny thing is there's two mixes. There's the Jamaican mix, and the Jamaican mix is tough but I do like the other mix too. I got to work with Tony Platt who was like the engineer at a lot of those sessions and he was telling me all sorts of stories. And then what the song was about, when he was living in London and he was hanging around in Soho. It makes so much sense now because when I was really playing this a lot was when I was spending a lot of time in Soho, going to Ronnie Scott's, learning my craft, learning to play drums and jazz, going to clubs, hanging out ‘til 4am. So I felt it, I could picture him being there like ‘Rahtid…’ Everyone's been out on the night bus and seen something and think did that just happen? So I've always had an affinity with that particular track, sonically and content wise. I think people don't often talk about that side of Bob, and they’ve made him out to be this ganja-smoking, peace-loving guy, that’s not really what he's about. He's very political and does a lot of social commentary."

"I remember when we first got it I could only see the darkness of it. I couldn't get underneath it where all the light is. I was impermeable to it somehow. And one day, you wonder what happens, why did I not get this? One day the door opened and I received all of its beauty. I could not believe that I had not been able to hear it before. In terms of being a composer, for me Milton Nascimento is on the top shelf. There is such a power in the chord changes. He's got to be the king of those, in my world at least. What I like about music is that it's transformative and it's transporting, and I think he's my favourite transporter of all. You go on such journeys with his songs, and this is difficult to do. He obviously has a gift and also works very hard at it. He's very dedicated to his art. But I've rarely been so transported as when listening to this album, and I don't ask much more of music sometimes than just to be transported. I was not really aware of the lyrical content that much. The sleeve tells you a lot, for sure, about people struggling or just being resigned to certain conditions. I've been to Brazil a couple of times and you see quite a lot of poverty, but a lot of poorer people do own a big TV to watch the football on, and I didn't feel like 'oh my god this is about to explode', like I did in America in certain quarters. In some poor quarters of North America there is such tension, but I didn't feel the same tension in Brazil. It's more mellow even among the poorer classes. I know that it's very divided, with a lot of walls and high security buildings for the richer middle classes, but I felt that the poorer people weren't on the verge of rioting: somehow there was more acceptance. I don't know; obviously there are very complex societal issues, but this album captures a sense of joy and beauty and it's amazing to put that into music. We all have joy: it's inbuilt, and music can help us find that joy, that joi d'vivre."