"As a kid in the middle of Illinois, it was really a culture vacuum. I mean, we had the Eagles on the radio and John Denver, which are fine in their own right, but you want a little more variety, especially if you’re going to end up being an underground hedonist like myself. When Mel Brooks movies came my way, it was just like, “Holy shit. These were made in heaven and sent straight to my VCR.” You know, come on, just Mongo. If you’re 12, all you care about is Mongo farting and punching out a horse. Literature does not become any more refined than that of the great Mel Brooks."

"As a very young kid, A Hard Days Night [editor’s note: by the Beatles, in case you’re an idiot] was a big deal. Probably, and when you say “my own money,” keep in mind I grew up very poor, so I didn’t have a lot of my own money; but I probably bought, like, Boston’s first album or the Beach Boys Endless Summer. And after that, when CDs came around, I would just buy The Best of Steely Dan, The Best of BTO, The Best of Deep Purple and I’d really just buy “the best” because a CD was like 13, 14 bucks and I was making six bucks an hour – you do the math."

"As a very young kid, A Hard Days Night [editor’s note: by the Beatles, in case you’re an idiot] was a big deal. Probably, and when you say “my own money,” keep in mind I grew up very poor, so I didn’t have a lot of my own money; but I probably bought, like, Boston’s first album or the Beach Boys Endless Summer. And after that, when CDs came around, I would just buy The Best of Steely Dan, The Best of BTO, The Best of Deep Purple and I’d really just buy “the best” because a CD was like 13, 14 bucks and I was making six bucks an hour – you do the math."

"As a very young kid, A Hard Days Night [editor’s note: by the Beatles, in case you’re an idiot] was a big deal. Probably, and when you say “my own money,” keep in mind I grew up very poor, so I didn’t have a lot of my own money; but I probably bought, like, Boston’s first album or the Beach Boys Endless Summer. And after that, when CDs came around, I would just buy The Best of Steely Dan, The Best of BTO, The Best of Deep Purple and I’d really just buy “the best” because a CD was like 13, 14 bucks and I was making six bucks an hour – you do the math."

"As a very young kid, A Hard Days Night [editor’s note: by the Beatles, in case you’re an idiot] was a big deal. Probably, and when you say “my own money,” keep in mind I grew up very poor, so I didn’t have a lot of my own money; but I probably bought, like, Boston’s first album or the Beach Boys Endless Summer. And after that, when CDs came around, I would just buy The Best of Steely Dan, The Best of BTO, The Best of Deep Purple and I’d really just buy “the best” because a CD was like 13, 14 bucks and I was making six bucks an hour – you do the math."

"As a very young kid, A Hard Days Night [editor’s note: by the Beatles, in case you’re an idiot] was a big deal. Probably, and when you say “my own money,” keep in mind I grew up very poor, so I didn’t have a lot of my own money; but I probably bought, like, Boston’s first album or the Beach Boys Endless Summer. And after that, when CDs came around, I would just buy The Best of Steely Dan, The Best of BTO, The Best of Deep Purple and I’d really just buy “the best” because a CD was like 13, 14 bucks and I was making six bucks an hour – you do the math."

"My first memory was being in the movie theater — the strongest one up to this date, 60 or 48 years later. I still remember the shock of being transported into another dimension. Also, going through the gate of light like if I’d taken a huge dose of acid, like discovering other dimensions. But when you discover dimensions in a safe context as a movie theater, it looks even better. When I came out from that movie, I felt someone had injected me with something in the brain. I was obsessed with going to see the end of 2001. I liked the ape scenes, I like the beginning, but I just wanted to go again and again to see the movie, to go through the Stargate. And I’m happy, I met lately Douglas Trumbull [who did the visual effects on 2001], and we discussed Love, and he’s seen Enter the Void. For me, Douglas Trumbull was one of the very best partners in crime in this masterpiece, and just meeting him for me was just like discovering what was happening behind the curtain of the movie. This is the guy who like opened my mind when I was six years old."

"People kept saying that Odessey and Oracle was a forgotten classic and that The Zombies never got the attention they deserve, that’s when I checked them out and this song really stood out to me. It’s just on the right side of being over the top, because he’s picked this unsettling line - 'My hands won’t stop shaking,' - and he’s just repeating it again and again and the repetition alone is so powerful. “It’s not judging, it’s not saying what was so terrible, just that his hands won’t stop shaking. The more times you hear that the more you think, 'Why? What the hell’s going on?' I think that’s much more powerful than some big description about what happened, or even how he’s feeling about it. “It’s definitely something I’ve used lots of times in our songs, repeating something that might not seem that big, but once you’ve heard it a few times it starts to play with your mind a bit. Meaning becomes doubled and tripled and you begin to wonder why they’re repeating it. It’s a weird thing to do, repeating yourself; if you’re talking to someone, it’s kind of insane. I like the insanity that comes across in that."