"I was about 16. We had this great art room in school and an absolutely brilliant teacher, Bob White. This art room was really well equipped with dark rooms and screen printing and painting. Bob was quite happy for us to play records. If you were in there, you could hear what other people were putting on. Somebody older than me was hip and put on Velvet Underground & Nico. That was just so influential. I often think that the ones that have lasted really well for me are songs like 'Sunday Morning', some of the kind of quieter, more reflective ones."

"One of those records that caught me at the right minute. As you know, I was a huge fan of Spiders-era Bowie. I was distraught when they split, but I followed Ronson's solo career. He was a little bit more mainstream; these were stunning songs. Very French, somehow - it had that 'I'm wondering around down the docks in Amsterdam' kind of vibe! It also has the second greatest guitar solo of all time on 'Women' and in between you have these fantastic ballads like 'The Empty Bed', a stunning song. His lead playing on that record is just incredible."

"Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream), a song on my new album, was written about New Moon. The song is about what happens when a relationship breaks down or, more specifically, when you are abandoned in some way. I could totally relate to that. I think that Meyer’s stories are magnificent and I’m amazed at how she built her complex world. Writing a song seems much simpler that writing a novel – a song is just five verses and a chorus! I think the love story between Edward and Bella is going to live on forever, like Beauty and the Beast."

"I love that movie, when I was a kid I went to the movie theater and saw it 14 times the first weekend. You could see it over and over, they wouldn’t kick you out of the theater back then, so I would just stay there everyday and watch it. To this day, I still love that movie. I think it was brilliant. Sometimes with things like that, you attach a certain period of your life to it, and I saw this when I was a kid. If I’d been 40 years old in 1966, maybe I would have felt differently."

"I was so caught up in that book and when I got off the bus I was beside myself. The book just wrecked me. I was like twenty-four years old. All that stuff with the tiger. People have a lot of opinions about Conroy, but that book is very, very moving. I remember being incredibly upset and moved and I had to go to work in two hours. It screwed me up so bad. All I could think about was this damn book, and I had to play this impressionable kid who could really give a shit about reading books."