"It's this live, spiritual thing from '66 - Alice Coltrane, his wife, and Pharoah Sanders is on it. It's just a really spiritual performance. At one point, he starts beating his chest and making Tarzan noises. This was one of the things I burned - that's more obscure, the others are more influential, but yeah, Temple University is in Philadelphia, so it was very close to home in that regard. There's a writer from Philadelphia, Francis Davis, I read one of his jazz books, I'm intrigued by that guy. I haven't met him but I really love his writing and he was there back then, he was going to Temple, he was at the concert, and he wrote a review that came in there. That's a great, intense live performance. I've always sort of been into the improv thing of feeling it in the moment spiritually, but yeah, I was listening to a lot of jazz records and it really opens your mind, just because they're all such real players. It's all live, it's not overdubs, it's just capturing a real moment of true feeling, especially when you've got the greats, like John Coltrane, or in this case, John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Rashied Ali and they're all just such heavy people, you know? It's unreal."

"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."

"These were the two albums that introduced me to jazz. I knew bits and bobs but my dad was not really interested in jazz, it was never played in the house. Never heard it much on the radio. Eventually a girlfriend of mine at the time, when I was at Manchester Polytechnic, she played the Art Tatum album because her father had the Art Tatum Group Masterpieces. It's a beautiful album, it's so beautifully recorded, it represents an era before Miles, it's like jazz before Kind of Blue, it has that feeling of being slightly more traditional. But at the same time you can see the seeds of modernity within the recording, the extraordinary dexterity of Art Tatum. And once again, the engineering on these jazz records at that time is quite brilliant. I still listen to this album in its entirety. I love Ben Webster's tone. There's something very sensual about this recording. Just a beautiful thing to listen to. Kind of Blue was next on the list of the albums that I bought. And what I love about Kind Of Blue is the completeness of it. You get such joy; in a way the CD was better, because you didn't have to get up and go over to the deck and turn it over to side two, you just played it all the way through. This has been an influence on me in my attitude towards the band, and being in a band, and having a band, and what I had to face as I went through the Simply Red process. Because I realised that jazz musicians and reggae musicians and soul musicians, they don't have this peculiar . . . and I think part of it's evolved from British music journalism, actually . . . this notion that these guys in the band have to be effectively married, and there's some kind of sin created if one of them leaves or someone else comes in; it's like a national scandal, and everybody's in trauma that somebody leaves. With Miles Davis' career, he cleverly and naturally evolved over a period of years, choosing some of the greatest musicians that ever walked on the face of the earth. That again is one of the great things about Kind Of Blue – the fact you have Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans and John Coltrane, and Miles Davis on the record, and I think it's Jimmy Cobb on drums, Paul Chambers on bass. When I emerged as the only writer of the songs in Simply Red, it dawned on me and my management that we didn't have to be like the Beatles, and that you could say, “If this isn't working out, find another musician that's got talent, just keep moving.” Because I had that problem: I didn't have my second guy. John had his Paul and Mick had his Keith and Bono had his Edge, and that didn't happen to me, there was nobody else writing. And so when I saw jazz and the fluidity of Miles Davis, I thought, what's wrong with that? If there's nobody else writing, then bring other people in as the thing evolves. One of my great musical memories and moments was being at the Grammy Awards in, I think it was 1987, and I was talking to a very pretty girl backstage, and Miles Davis walked by, and I just froze because I was so thrilled to be in the space of my great hero. Then he stopped, and turned round, and came up to me and went [an excellent impression of Davis's hissing rasp] “Simply Red, right?” And I nodded in silence. You know, I'd been on the dole for four years, I'd just become famous in a matter of months, and there I am at the Grammys and Miles Davis knows who I am. He said, “I love that album, Picture Book, man!” And then just strolled off to the toilets. I was left completely stunned. You know, that, one, he even knew who was – and that he liked my album. It was an incredible thrill. I've never forgotten it."

"There's so much of his stuff I could have chosen. The reason I chose this one is, this was the first time I heard this band. I remember sitting in the car with my friend and saying "my mate's given me this tape, let's check it out". And I put it on and we both just looked at each other and went, "Oh my God!". I'll never forget it. It was a day like today, really sunny, and this giant doorway that you didn't know was there opened up, introducing you to this whole new world. It still feels like that now. He's another one where the colours never fade. The thing about the two as well, Coltrane and Miles Davis, is that they both represent two parts of myself. I always think of Coltrane as being outdoors music. Organic, countryside music. Elvin Jones [drummer in John Coltrane quartet], just sounds like waves crashing against the shore, the wind blowing in the trees. The music feels like this stormy day and then Miles Davis feels really urban, like city lights. When I was discovering this whole Coltrane thing, there were quite a few years where that was my religion. When I was learning the saxophone, I was studying a lot, practising 12 hours a day, and listening to Coltrane all the time and I was doing a lot of meditation as well. I was really involved with Tibetan Buddhism, doing retreats and doing a lot of study. I was very into it for quite a number of years. I've come out of that feeling like these pentatonics, these Nubian rhythms, these ancient rhythms, they make a lot of sense of the universe."

"It may seem like a change of tack, but it’s not actually. This is his most processed album. This is what I’m a fan of John Martyn for and something I don’t think anyone else has ever done before. It’s that sort of processed acoustic guitar that features a lot on my solo record, where the guitars are so heavily processed. John did this brilliantly. I saw him tour this album – it was one of the first gigs I ever saw as a youngster. It was astonishing hearing him making these beautiful soundscapes on a battered old Martin guitar through a delay line and a fuzz box. Not only was he a master of the guitar, he was also a master of processed sound. He used the voice in the way, again, that was like a tone generator. The words were barely audible but they made tones, in the way that Miles Davis might play his horn. Sometimes he’d sing in a completely different key. It was all about where he positioned the sound and the timbre. I don’t think he ever released another record that explored the acoustic process in the way that he did here. I know people that worked with him and had his effects pedals – I tried to get hold of them for this project (Edgeland) but they were long gone. It was a reference point for me for this album. I wanted to take that concept on, and Inside Out was my jumping off point."