"You can hear it's making, in the same way you can hear Joni in her lonely love cabin. Just the idea of the moon cast out on the water. That paints a picture. I can hear excitement and new love all over that Melody's Echo Chamber record. When my last relationship ended a few years ago now, I pissed off to New York for a bit, just to sort of gather my thoughts, and I would take to sitting in a cafe with my headphones on, listening to a piece of music and I had put together words to it in a book. And I remember being quite pleased with something I had just written, taking my headphones off, and that music, Melody's Echo Chamber, was playing on the sound system in the cafe. I listened to it, spellbound, you could just feel the excitement in it. I was listening to that, and I just looked away, who is this? And I shut my book and felt like giving up music. It was just so fucking good. And actually at the end of a tune, you hear them all whooping in the studio. It's like when you hear the Kinks whooping during 'Victoria' – when you're hitting a certain level of energy, bang on the nose, you're allowed to record yourself whooping at your own efforts I think."

"We'd finished recording the Ziggy Stardust album at that time and it went into the record company. They said: 'We can't release this. It doesn't have a single on it!' I think it was more of a thing to have a single to promote an album in those days – maybe it still is, but it's not as significant as it was then. So, we came out of the studio and in about a month he had written 'Starman' and we were back in the studio by January. It was an obvious single! I think Mick and I went out in the car after David played it for us the first time, and we were already singing it, having only heard it only once. At the time, we thought it might be a bit too poppy, a bit too commercial. It might seem strange, but we just hadn't done anything that commercial before. I always thought Bowie had that ability, that any time he felt like it, he could write a hit single. He just had that about him. I think he chose not to right through his career. If he felt like it, he would write one, and if he didn't, he wouldn't. That was just the impression of working with him. It's not a fluke to be able to write all those amazing tunes. Like with 'Starman', he didn't try a few out, he just went bang, 'Alright, I'll write one'. But if it wasn't for that song, the whole thing might not have taken off. It pulled it all together."

"All the Presidents Men. Alan Pakula. I lived in Washington, D.C. all throughout Watergate and my mother worked for the government so she was hyper-aware of Nixon and all of this. The Watergate [Hotel] was a bike ride away from my home. It was just a building in a series of buildings that you drove by all the time. And the Howard Johnson’s where the plumbers all had their dinner before break-in? I used to eat at that Howard Johnson’s. This was a local story for me. The Woodward and Bernstein book is a read and a half, and I’ve watched that film I don’t know how many times — it is just perfect. I watched it like 10 days ago. I watched it on the Drake Passage on my way to the Antarctic peninsula. That’s the last time I saw it, like three weeks ago. It was then as it is now — a beautiful piece of work. It’s suspenseful. Again, there’s Hoffman. I guess I come off as some massive Hoffman fan. It’s merely coincidence, although I do think he’s great. Him and Redford together are just amazing. And again you see the genius of Hoffman. You see just how ready-to-go Robert Redford is as an actor. Handsome, leading guy, believable as hell. And that whole cast — I just love seeing older people in films who don’t necessarily look good, but they’re good actors. And that the entire weather-beaten, hard-chewed staff at the post that were cast in that film. They sit around and have those meetings, “Well screw that; what d’you got?” They’re just these tough newsmen, and I love it. They took down Nixon, these two young guys. I hung out with Bernstein; he’s just a true maniac. It’s an honor to hang out with him. I said, “Man, it’s an honor to meet you.” And he said, “I’m gonna tell my son that and boy, he’s gonna respect me now.” [Laughing] I’m like, “Yeah, right!” It speaks of a huge moment in American history when every American now had proof that you cannot trust your government, that you’d be stupid to trust the government. Like yes, vote. Elect these people. But you gotta keep a very Jeffersonian jaundiced eye on every politician: the ones you voted for, the ones you voted against, the ones you say you like. As Gore Vidal said, by the time anyone gets to the Oval Office, they’ve been bought and sold at least ten times. And All the President’s Men is a case study of that. Hal Holbrook’s character, you find out 30 years later, that dude did exist. It was Deep Throat. That was a real guy. And the fact that these little clandestine meetings happened in a place I may have well pumped my skateboard by makes that film very relevant to me."

"Oh my gosh, that was another pivotal moment. Queen – for me – is the most unique rock band in history. I love Deep Purple, Zeppelin and all those rock bands from that time but nobody sounded like Queen and nobody could sound remotely like that. There was a magic to them – almost like the band was blessed with something. That band was such a perfect storm because with Freddie Mercury, how could you even quantify his confidence? You couldn’t –it was boundless and he just expressed that constantly in the music. The way Brian May approached the guitar was absolutely unique. You can compare me to other guitar players, you can compare Page to other players but you can’t compare Brian May to anybody because his touch on the instrument had a life of its own and the way that he heard the songs and was able to apply this unbelievable touch to serve the song – as opposed to just saying ‘here’s a guitar solo’ –meant he was the sound of Queen. In fact everyone in that band was the sound of Queen. When ¬Queen II came out it was the most musical, aggressive rock record of that period, for me."

"It’s All Coming Back To Me Now’ was on the first CD that I remember buying. I had a little purple plastic CD rack and it was one of the most played on that. I loved the piano and I started playing the piano around that age, so it felt relatable for me. Again, I just loved the drama; it’s like a seven or eight minute long song, it’s so amazing, who does that? No one does that! It took me on such a story, the visuals are so clear, even now I can still feel that intense drama. Celine Dion’s amazing, it’s like watching a movie, honestly, listening to those kinds of songs. “So that was ’96, so I was nine. I was quite a melancholy child. My mum would put me to bed and I’d always get up and walk around upstairs, where there wasn’t really anywhere to walk around. I would just walk around the bathroom, sit at the top of the stairs, hold the staircase and stare out. I really was quite melancholy and I now understand mental health issues as an adult - like I had, you know, anxiety, OCD, depression; I had so much emotion. I mean that was just me as a really morose, melancholy nine year old, I really felt that intensity. “Those emotional songs can be the cloak that you wrap yourself in. I was drawn to the drama of those kinds of songs, definitely. I mean, those are pretty intense sad songs for a little kid."