"Another great live record. Once I started playing the guitar, Judas Priest was one of those bands that went immediately into my playlist, although back then there were obviously no playlists, as we know them now. It was just a case of what vinyl you had. The band that I was in prior to Metallica, a band called Panic, had a guy called Dave Harmon playing in it. He was a huge Judas Priest fan and while we were trying to get that first Panic formation together, he and I would jam 'Victim Of Changes' over and over again. To me it was the heaviest thing I'd heard in my life up to that point. I think we all have our own idea of what a great twin guitar attack is. I always loved K. K. Downing. I haven't seen Priest with this new cat that's in the band, but the key to the dual guitar is how the two interrelate. In Thin Lizzy, for example, the riffs were a little happy. In Iron Maiden they were somewhere in the middle. But with Priest they were a lot darker and I always gravitated towards that. Regarding the rumours that the record was heavily overdubbed, I never heard that and frankly I don't care. We have had to fix some live performances and whenever you say that people automatically assume that you did it because your performance wasn't good or that you want to fake a really great performance. But sometimes stuff just happens. For example, we did a live broadcast of a show in Mesa, Arizona during the Cryptic Writings era. They went ahead and released a live show and I had not heard it. They said: ""Just trust us."" I had never let anything go out unapproved up until that point and the one time I did it, I noticed that one of the kick drums was turned off. And also David Ellefson's background vocals were completely missing. I thought: ""I will never let this happen again."" Sometimes you get into the studio and hear that things are wrong, like a microphone is inverted and it sounds like it was recorded in a fishbowl. But are you going to shitcan all the audio and video just for that? No, you fix it. But if you're going in there and replacing stuff because you play like shit live, then that's different."

"I was driving through Iceland listening to this song and it’s just really gorgeous. I think this is how people feel when they take drugs - they begin on this floating cloud and then it becomes a bit chaotic at the end. “It sounds like they were on drugs when they made it, but it doesn’t make me sad when I think about it, there’s something with it, it’s positive without making me vomit, which I really enjoy. Sometimes happier music is hard to listen to, because you can question as to why you aren’t as happy as the people in the song, but I like this song. “I discovered this song much later, after ‘Rez’. When I hear one song I don’t automatically go and find the whole album, I kind of stop and just have fun with that song for months - I get really patient with songs and I can listen to them for months. I saw that ‘Born Slippy’ was on the same album as ‘Rez’ and now of course I have the whole album and I have rave parties for myself, just me. “I also love to listen to this song whilst I paint, when I paint something without meaning. I’m full of opposites or coherent contrasts, one day I like to be at rave parties and then I like to be in forests. I like to see what the world has to offer me.”"

"It’s a two-disc of live performances. For the most part, I was never really a fan of live music on records, but this one takes all the Talking Heads songs and it totally improves them. You feel the beat more. It’s a solid buy. If you could just come up on that, the two discs are amazing. It’s almost 40 songs. Every single one of them is really rad. A lot of my music that I like puts energy in your body or makes you want to dance or break something or just go mosh or jump around. This is one of those ones that you can put on in the summertime and next thing you know, you’re dancing by the pool."

"I first started listening to The Slits when I was about 8, with my friend Antonia, and we stole all her brother's Slits records and used to dance around the room pretending we were the Slits. I just picked this because I'm sure it was a huge part of my life. If I could have been any kind of singer, I would have been a punk - I thought I was a little punk growing up! I wanted to be in The Slits, I wanted to be that kind of a woman, but I grew up to be a folk singer, and that's alright too - I like that. It's just the attitude - I hear The Slits and I'm immediately back in that time. It was a one-off period, it was an exciting time and they kind of encapsulated a sense of anarchic joy. The songs are fucking fantastic as well. There's that ska element, punk, reggae and they're British and they're fantastic. I don't know if there's ever been anyone like them since."

"Westside Story was probably the biggest thing in my life as teenager walking along the streets of London, me and my friends were always trying to imitate the Jets’ dancing! My favourite songs? There were so many, but Leonard Bernstein was a genius and I just thought if I could be anybody, I would be a composer like Bernstein because his music was just so powerful and it also has a jazz tilt. He was doing things with music that I discovered much later. a lot of it was inspired by The Planets by Holst, with this jagged, staccato, kicking in the music with songs like ‘America’. And I thought, yeah I wanted to be in America, although I wanted to avoid all the gang fights! There were so many messages in that film and my all-time favourite song would probably be ‘Somewhere’. That reflects that ultimate aim in life to find a place away from the turmoil, pain and suffering to a place of peace, happiness"

"[It] would have to be up there for sheer enthusiasm. I love it for a million reasons. It’s just such a celebration. But I think I also — god not to sound like too much of a shrink — I grew up in a family with lots of divorces and things. Growing up, the first couple I knew that were really, truly like Disney movie in love and devoted to each other was a gay couple. And then one of them died — of AIDS — and I remember I was so young; I was in junior high when it happened. It was still at a time when gay culture was so judged and so reviled in so many places. The movie was such a celebration of song and dance, but also of a gay lifestyle, and it was a beautiful thing to see at that point in my life. For there to be something out there in pop culture that was celebrating and not apologizing [for] all of that — I just thought it was brilliant."