"So the The Wolf King Of L.A. and There's A Riot Goin' On were both recorded in the same studio. John Phillips bought Jeanette McDonald, a Hollywood actress, a mansion in Bel Air. And he illegally built a studio in the attic, which was huge. I guess there were building restrictions, but he just wanted to build a recording studio in there. He recorded the album in that place. Now coming on to the transcendent, joyous, pop glory of The Mamas & The Papas, The Wolf King Of L.A. is a very strange album. I think John was hanging out with Gram Parsons and as a result, the record is a country-soul-pop album. In The Mamas & The Papas, he was writing for a pop audience and I guess that was a message to Michelle Phillips because they're both adulterers, I think. John would write a song and get Denny Doherty to sing it because he knew he was having an affair with his wife. John was quite a dark guy! They were very personal songs, but also universal because he was writing for a pop audience. But with Wolf King, he went solo. Phillips became deeply addicted to heroin, coke and everything else. He was a very advanced drug addict. Wolf King Of L.A. is a very soulful album. John wrote and arranged the songs for The Mamas & The Papas but his voice was hidden in the mix as Denny and Michelle had incredible voices. But on this album, it's just his voice. And I believe that the session musicians were Phil Spector's Wrecking Crew and are the same guys who played on The Mamas & The Papas records. They loved John Phillips and thought he was a fucking great guy. It's one of those records I haven't stopped playing for 30 years and a great document of rock and LA culture in the late '60s. It's also got a great cover with John wearing a top hat standing on Malibu beach with the sun setting looking absolutely wasted."

"Platoon, I think I was 15 or 16 when I saw that movie in the theater. I was so riveted by it, and the experience around it. I remember when I saw that movie, this is when there was still lines to get in the next one. The movie hadn’t come out yet, and we’re all standing in a line, 400 people to go in, and when the door opened, it was all these Vietnam Vets in their gear, grown men, crying and holding hands and arms around each other. When I sat down, I had no idea what I was about to see. Again, it was a deconstruction of the war film, the antithesis of John Wayne’s The Green Berets."

"[sings] "When am you gonna come down?" That was a late entry. It was another album that my parents had. It was before I got into Elton John, because I knew of him growing up from 'I'm Still Standing'. Then I listened to this record, and I was: "Oh my god, this dude smashed America", and he was one of the biggest pop stars around, but I hadn't discovered how amazing the actual songwriting was, and on that record you really did - each track was so individual. It's also great to hear how groundbreaking it all was, and how extraordinary his music was. Again, a very varied record that you can't pin down, but it's so cohesive in its entirety."

"It’s such a leftfield film for someone like me, but what is has is a very clear plot and it has two people trapped together inextricably. But what it does so well is that you laugh, you feel embarrassed, and then at the end — I cry my eyes out at the end of that film. Even thinking about it makes me upset. When Steve Martin is on the tube and John Candy gets off and he’s standing with his bag and he realises there is no one. It’s just such a beautiful thing. You can clearly see from Midnight Cowboy and Planes, Trains that there’s a pattern with me, and it’s really about loving other men – in a non-sexual way. It’s such a big thing for me — I value my friendships with my male friends. I’ve got a fiancé as well, and she’s certainly part of the action, but it’s a very different thing and you can’t get the same sort of friendship with a woman that you can with a man. And interestingly the filmmaking in Planes, Trains isn’t great. It looks so bad, it’s really televisual, but it’s got massive heart. ”"

"This goes back to when I was a child, and me and my older brother were in the house together. This is the era video games come into play too, because this is where me and my brother started fighting over the TV and what's being played loud in the house. This was me and my brother fighting over the over Nintendo and Sega Genesis, while he's practising on a drum pillow. Dave Weckl was a massive musician to us when we were young, and John Patitucci, we were into him a little bit, and Frank Gambale of course. We would listen to this album a bit religiously – this is how we wanted our instruments. We would play with this and we would learn the album. I actually wasn't excited about this album until my later years, because it being tied to such an emotional place. When I got of age and realised how important this album was, I revisited it and there's nothing like it still, sonically. For who it was and what it did, there's nothing like this album. There's actually a moment where I do get synaesthesia from this album, it's somewhere between 'No Zone' and 'India Town'. I literally remember standing up in front of TV playing The Karate Kid, and I remember listening to this and feeling so happy, I felt weightless. This is me, the musician, the one that was practicing, playing jazz band. I didn't know too much about anything, but I knew that I couldn't play Nintendo without Chick Corea in the background."