"Obviously, Pet Sounds is a massive record and a defining influence on me when I was about 12 or 13 when I first heard it; a huge impact. But weirdly, my younger brother told me that he never really got on with Pet Sounds because he found it to be really hard work in the beginning and it took him many years to fall in love with it. I was really familiar with that throughout my teens, but then later on I discovered The Beach Boys' 'Brother Years', as that period's known, and I just really loved a lot of that stuff. In hindsight, you knew that this was a band that were, I guess, nearing the end of the road and things were changing and they were veering off. Dennis Wilson had his shit and things ended very tragically for him and Brian, with that well publicised walking disaster and they were really tough times. But Holland doesn't sound like a record where they're all struggling or coming to an end or that it's a swansong; it doesn't really feel like that and it still has that really fresh Beach Boys approach. I get this warmth from it and it feels like a big hug. It's this big, lovely Californian cuddle. What I gravitate to here are the musical changes which are almost like scene changes. You've got stuff like 'The Trader' where the second half just goes to another place and that's always inspiring. Of course they're not the only band that does that but it's something that's very inspiring to me, especially on this record. And it's like that on Matador where I'm not constrained by the typical pop structure of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle eight-double chorus and The Beach Boys are always brilliant for that where they take you off in a completely different direction. And it never feels as if it's self-indulgent, weirdly, when it should be because all of these tracks are so good and so technically proficient. You almost wouldn't forgive them for those self-indulgent touches were it not for the fact that these are guys on top of their game and you can really hear it. It's a great album. I've got my record collection in the studio and my main record player is out in the studio's kitchen and that's where I've got my box of select records. It always changes from week to week and Holland's been there for about four months now. There's always a good time for it."

"I’m a big Marx Brothers fan. And just picking one Marx Brothers film is difficult. But I’ll go with Duck Soup, which has four of the brothers in it –everyone except Gummo. The one is the leader – there’s like a coup of this country called Freedonia – it’s just kind of out there. All the Marx Brothers movies are obviously ridiculous, and rely a lot on visual gags and sort of one-liners. But the comedy is so sort of pure. It is very sort of uncomplicated, simple, and cuts right to – you either like it or you don’t. I’m a little nervous about showing my son The Marx Brothers because comedy has changed so much. And not for the worse — I think in a lot of ways for the better. There are circumstantial comedies… For me, some of my favorite comedy is much more subtle stuff. Stuff that is more situational and circumstantial and character driven than gag driven but this is just old school gag driven comedy and there’s something that’s just so great about that. And The Marx Brothers do it better than anyone."

"Andrea Arnold’s films in general, and particularly this one, just feel so real. They gaze at women living on the outskirts of society, behaving outside conventional morality, without seeming sensational. The way the camera follows its protagonist in this film is so gentle and so unlike the cinematography in films with similar subject matter that are trying to give a piercing revelation of what it’s like for women in desperate circumstances. In Arnold’s film, no matter how deep into the pits we go, I never feel like I’m watching poverty porn. I feel like I’m watching flawed characters play themselves out to their logical conclusion."

"I was brought up on this album. It had a poster in it of naked women on bikes which, you know, in certain parts of Europe I think that’s pretty normal, but in England that’s not quite the case and that was super outrageous. We hung it on our wall. Roy Thomas Baker produced that album so there are loads and loads of dynamics. It’s too quiet in bits and then so loud it takes your face off. From when ‘Mustapha’ starts it lets you believe that the album is going to be a certain way and then halfway through that song it completely changes. It keeps you on your toes. I think all their great albums are like that to some degree, but I think that one is the most Queen of the Queen albums. Or at least the most Roy Thomas Baker of the Queen albums. It’s got ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ on it, which is a real favourite. I particularly used to like the more playful Queen tracks, and there’s one called ‘Dreamers Ball’ which sounds like swing music, but instead of the big band being all brassy, it’s just Brian May’s guitars."

"It was such a turning point, this album. I remember putting it on the Dansette and 'Purple Haze' coming on, and those opening notes, and going bloody hell I want this. When you hear something that really works for you it's almost not a conscious decision. It's a chemical reaction that your ears and your soul have. I heard it and it was like being grabbed on the inside and told you're going to go with this. You like this, whether you want to or not. I've pretty much always had a copy of this album, and I don't think it does everything that Jimi Hendrix does best, but it does a lot of it. I think he was very smart because he never overdid the solos, certainly not on this album. They're all fairly short songs. And also seeing the cover, back then, it was like wow, here's this black bloke, and he's dressed as a hippy. That was quite a shocking image for then, and you knew it was going to be great, just by looking at it. But it had that terrible lettering on the cover and it said ""Smash Hits"" and you immediately went oh my god, because that was what you had every Christmas, those K-Tel Smash Hits records. You never expected a serious musician, let alone one who played like that, to have that kind of title."