"This is about an East German singer who has a botched sex-change operation and is left with an “angry inch” of flesh between her legs. Moving to the US, she gets involved with another singer, who steals her songs and becomes famous, while Hedwig, played by the director John Cameron Mitchell, ends up playing in a chain of seafood restaurants called Bilgewater’s. It’s a beautiful film that touches on Greek mythology and the origins of love, as well as gender identity. It’s a lot of fun too – a comedy with a serious message. And the songs are great."

"Nina is another friend that we were introduced to via John Peel and his family. There were a number of people after his passing that I really wanted to get in touch with and Nina was one of them. That was John’s legacy. That and one-stop shopping, something that Radio 1 would benefit from the asset of again. John was a place where you could go to hear very disparate music – some of which you would love, some which you would loathe, and some of which you would loathe but come to love. Nina was one of the people that he played a lot. This was the album when I met her and her fella. She’s an extraordinary singer – for me, I think the greatest contemporary female lyricist. She and her boyfriend live in a tiny flat in Manhattan, almost like Russian peasants. There are lots of stuffed animals and huge rugs on her tiny bed and laptops hidden behind huge automatons. I love her guitar playing and her singing, but her lyrics challenged me to try to be as good. She writes from a woman’s point of view, beautifully. Her lyrics are very personal. I struggled with that before writing Edgeland. This, and the John Martyn album, and the James Blake album – they were all writing very personal songs."

"There’s a funny story here. When I was with Dave Roth he would always talk about Tom Waits in a very respectful way which was rare. I never heard Dave speak reverently about anybody and I didn’t even know who Tom Waits was. I had never come across his music. But all through the years, Dave would always say, ‘Yeah, like Tom Waits’ and I’d just say ‘Yeah, yeah!’ And then I was on tour with Whitesnake and there was this band opening up called Bad English whose singer was a guy called John Waite and I thought “Wow, this was what Dave was talking about? Hmm, it’s kind of strange because it’s not the kind of singer that Dave would be reverent about.” And then I realized I had the wrong guy… So I went to the store and bought about twenty Tom Waits albums and (one of them was Mule Variations), and I remember that I was listening to all these records, getting three tracks in and literally throwing them away. Then I put Mule Variations on and stopped dead in my tracks. It completely leveled me and I can say – out of everybody I’ve talked about – Tom Waits is my favorite artist now. I completely resonate deeply with his music, his voice and his lyrics; I buy everything he ever does. He’s one of those guys who are totally at one with the creative element with no excuses or concerns about what’s going on around him – totally uncompromising.A lot of people think they’re uncompromising, but they’re not…"

"Tony Williams was Miles Davis' drummer throughout the 60s and he was really young; he was only 17 when he started playing with Miles. As he entered his 20s, flower power and Jimi Hendrix was all kicking off and he wanted to get more amplified. He wanted to sing as well, which was a problem within The Tony Williams Lifetime, as he wasn't a great singer; he used to sing a quarter-tone flat. He's also the reason John McLaughlin moved to America. Tony heard him on some tape and invited him over, and he introduced him to Miles Davis. And the other member of The Tony Williams Lifetime was this amazing organist called Larry Young. He later had these funk hits like 'Turn Off The Lights' and he's probably more famous for that kind of thing, but he originally started off on Blue Note as this Jimmy Smith-type organist. His style comes from John Coltrane and in actual fact he used to practice with Coltrane. He had a real modernist approach to the organ. The thing about this band is that they did turn it up to 11. They really did over-amplify and distort things. There are no decent recordings of The Tony Williams Lifetime because it's all so overblown. It feels like it's on fire and it's so intense. The drumming is insane and the organ is about texture. This is a record that I've never got fed up with."