"Since I’ve gone back to learn these early Ride songs for the reunion tour, I’ve noticed how much Robin Guthrie’s playing influenced me, and it harks back to Johnny Marr and George Harrison with little patterns and little sort of partial chords with open strings. “Johnny Marr had a little bit of chorus and a bit of echo and a bit of reverb but Robin Guthrie had an absolute grand canyon of reverb! And, talking to him, he is an absolute connoisseur of reverbs and stuff like that. “The Cocteau Twins were very otherworldly and were very influential on the Ride sound. [Record label] 4AD as a whole was a massive influence on us."

"This is the record that made me a guitar player. I got given a guitar aged nine and had been taught a couple of things on it, but it’d basically stayed propped against the corner of the room and not used that much… until I first heard The Smiths when I was 13. It was just like, ‘This is what I want to do – I’m doing this! I’m going to be a guitarist in a band!’ “Johnny Marr was like a surrogate guitar teacher right through my early teens - 13, 14, 15 years old - to when I met Mark Gardener at school. We became mates because he heard I could play the riff off Bigmouth Strikes Again and asked me to show him. "That’s how we became friends, so Ride’s got a lot to thank The Smiths for. I still find some of Johnny Marr’s playing totally baffling, like those swoopy lead parts on How Soon Is Now?.”"

"Johnny Marr was quite young around this time, wasn't he? And Morrissey…some people are more lyrical than others and their conversation can use the language more [stylishly]. And he must have found that it came easily to him. But how does Johnny Marr play like that! Even people who hate The Smiths agree that Johnny Marr was a genius. To be honest, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce weren't a bad rhythm section either. How did they do that quite young? I don't know. One of my older brothers was into The Smiths and we shared a bedroom so I heard a lot of their music. We would have been teens about this time. I loved the fact that they were from Manchester. I saw Andy Rourke around this time in town and it made me think 'fucking hell! It happens! I've just seen HIM! He's in this band that are totally credible, cool, has put Manchester on the map and I've just seen him walk out of the Arndale Centre!' And so yeah, we bought records and got drunk in Manchester and it felt like the town was happening at the time. The first time I saw them was on a north west television show and they did 'This Charming Man' and I was like [mouth agape]. We had had the Duran Durans and Spandau Ballets who looked great and were very glamorous and then you're confronted with these guys from Manchester – very ordinary in a way you might actually see them in Manchester but they weren't ordinary in their music. They didn't dress in clothes made by someone in Soho. It was like they got their shirts in Afflecks Palace! It was almost anti-glamour. And that felt very touchable. What do I think of Morrissey now? For me, lyrically he's still incredible. I can't say I know the last album well but I just think, like anybody who is an artist, you can tell a story a number of times and it has a freshness about it but we know Morrissey's way [by now]. I don't want to judge him but I don't really get into what he says off record because sometimes you wonder if he's taking the piss? But I don't know, I haven't really followed it. Is he doing that to create something going? Will he come back and say 'I didn't mean it like that'? Surely he must know [his recent comments around Britain First] are not a cool thing to do. But he's bizarre and thank God he's bizarre. I don't want him to be normal in any way, shape or form."

"Hatful of Hollow by the Great Ones. It’s funny really, because it’s not a proper Smiths album in many ways, it’s all the sessions and everything, but I think a lot of people realise it’s the best version of ‘Reel Around The Fountain’, the best version of ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’, there’s so many variations and I think every best version is on that album. ‘William It Was Really Nothing’ is two minutes long, but it packs such a punch. ‘Still Ill’, ‘You’ve Got Everything Now’, the bleakness of the cover, the grey and blue, it sums up the time. I can remember every lyric off it. The level of artistry on that record is staggering. To think that half the time they were in a shitty studio in the BBC with an engineer who didn’t know what they’re fucking doing. Johnny Marr must have been so on it. Right from the start. I know it’s predictable to pick a Smiths album but they’re just such a massive part of my youth. That’s what I’ve realised - there’s records you always go back to. It bothers me a bit, because I should be picking different records, but there you go."