"I never knew if this was a compilation album or not, but it was the one that was around when I was at school. All of my mates had this record. 'Sunshine Of Your Love' and 'Crossroads' are my two favourite cuts off the album, but the thing was although as a band they were gifted with tons of ability they were also very musical with their recordings. One of the things they got, which I don't think a lot of the other bands did, was that it's great to jam for an hour live, but a record is a repeated instant. When you make an album it's something that people listen to over and over. So I think there were two Creams. There was the one that recorded and did songs that were four minutes long like 'Badge' and things, and then in something like 'Crossroads' they kind of just kept the best bits. I think they got it right. It's very difficult to be inspired and to be inspirational to your other players without it having to be a long-winded routine to get there. And alongside all that was that track 'A Mother Was Washing Her Baby one Night' which was brilliant ['Mother's Lament' from Disraeli Gears]. When I heard that it made it okay to have a sense of humour sometimes and to not take yourself too seriously. For me that last three minutes on the album probably had more of a message than a lot of the rest of it did, because it resonated that yeah, you can do something that's fun. You can do something that's funny, because actually we're pretty good at the rest of it already."

"We used to do loads of gigs in Western Europe during the punk days because nobody really wanted us in London. But we were getting invites to go to Belgium and West Germany and Berlin. We went on the Trans Europe Express to go to Berlin once and this was the perfect record to listen to doing that. The way they sing and the whole Man Machine idea – they totally pulled it off. They were so ahead of the game. And when you listen to very early Human League – 'Being Boiled' and all that – you can hear the influence it had on them. I was never really interested in that synth sound for the Ants. I was more into their graphics. I used to design handbills and A4s and there was a couple of robotic themes on that. Musically that was being catered for by the Human League, who I thought were great right at the start. It was the mystery that surrounded Kraftwerk that I was into. We were in Dusseldorf once and we went looking for the Kling Klang studio, but we couldn't find it. Apparently it was just an office anyway. I loved that phonetically pronounced European vocal. It was almost like he read it off of one of those machines that tell you how to pronounce things. But it always had a really human feel. I think people often overlook their sense of humour. When we were in Australia in '81, they were touring too. And we were stood outside our hotel and they were all there – I seem to remember they were wearing white coats and they were all going cycling together. There was a real personality behind them. Kraftwerk were trying to break away from that whole post-war vibe in Germany and Dusseldorf was quite a modern city. Visiting the places where the music came from has made the records even more precious to me because it reminds me of the time."