"Dirty Mind is the first one where I feel Prince became the Prince we all know and love. There had been somewhat suggestive lyrics with 'Soft & Wet', which came out earlier, but this is where he went full force with songs like 'Sister' and 'Head'. The record cover, the whole package, really says something to me. Instead of looking like a black guy from Minneapolis, he looks New Wave and you can't really tell what he is. He's got bed springs behind him and the album is called Dirty Mind, the first song is called 'Dirty Mind' and it just hits you over the head with this new direction. Maybe my favourite song on the record is 'Partyup', the last song on it. I understand there's rumours that he sort of traded that song with Morris Day. He said if you give me that song I'll record an album for you or I'll put together The Time For You. It's just an amazing song. Spoon covered it a long time ago for this Prince compilation."

"I mean, Scorsese has to be in there. I always feel bad for these, because there’s always about 50 films I wish I could have put in there. Scorsese for sure, and I always get torn between Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. That’s my top three Scorsese films. I have a amazing soft spot for Mean Streets — I just think there’s something incredibly raw and energetic about that movie. But I think Raging Bull just shocked me to my core. I couldn’t believe that he could make me care about someone who was so animalistic, who was so brutal, who was so violent. And then I still felt sympathy for him. I still felt like I got to know a well-rounded human being, I got to know this character in that performance. De Niro is astounding. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it in my life. And those boxing sequences, they’ve never been matched, they’ve never been bettered for me. So, I think Raging Bull is definitely up there."

"Goonies, yeah. I mean maybe Goonies is better than Jerry Maguire, though I do love Jerry Maguire. Goonies is just like… I have no words for how awesome Goonies is. I happen to be working with Josh Brolin on this Everest movie I’m about to do, and I still geek out. You know, I want him to wear a headband in the Everest movie because it’s such an amazing character choice. If I remember correctly I feel like he wore sweatpants over jeans in that movie? I’m pretty sure. I might be wrong about that. And that was a pretty dope character choice as well. Just incredible acting, and the scenes with Chunk still move me. And Butterfinger… Oh wait, no. Snickers? What is it, Snickers? My first crush was in Goonies too: Kerri Green. She was in Lucas. She was in Summer Rental. OK? Dude, she… Lucas is a very formidable… I had such a crush on her. Oh my god. If you see her in Lucas, you’d understand."

"These are all films vying for my favorite film. The thing I love about all the films I chose for the list is that they still feel extraordinarily fresh, as if they were made yesterday. There’s a timeless quality to them and a vibrancy and an energy to all of them, but particularly A Hard Day’s Night really struck me, being a huge fan of rock and roll. It’s a film that really defies any sort of — it’s difficult to put it into a specific genre — it’s a rock and roll film, right? It’s also sort of like a documentary of the early years of Beatlemania, and it’s also comedically like a Marx Brothers film. I just love the combination of all of those things, which give it an intense vibrancy and charm. Also these are five films that I watch at least once a year. I always come back to them and the Criterion collection just restored [Hard Day’s Night]. It was a marvel to see it restored and how beautiful a movie it is."

"Here, Vincent Price is reciting all the witches' spells from a place I can't quite remember in England. It was meant to be around a Halloween vibe, which in the Catskills is everything. That's our Christmas, that's our New Year, May Day, Wicker Man… that's our pagan holiday supreme. Holiday ornaments are already out right now - you can go into any store and buy Halloween stuff. Growing up here, it wasn't a stretch that these kinds of records would be played by my mother or at elementary school almost ad nauseam. I became so inoculated to spooky, scary stories that they just became like urban legends. Another case of a children's story narration that was entrancing. These weren't just songs, these were whole inner emotional moments for young kids like me. When you're six and hearing about witches, ghosts and goblins, it's permeating your whole being and likely to shape the rest of your life, certainly in terms of the possibility of a supernatural world. Or probable, in my case."

"Run-D.M.C came out and it was like some serious gangster shit: bomber jackets and Kangols [laughs]. They were just some serious hood shit and they pushed the limits as far as they possibly could at that time. They laid the building blocks for everything that was to come in that era and for everything where we are right now. It felt so special being able to see that for the first time: I was there at the birth of it and I was watching the first round of this shit build up and up. Their live performances also helped Cypress Hill. We got confidence on stage by originally going to local shows in New York City – Run-D.M.C and the like. All the really big shows too – we'd see 'Ministry' and learn from them as well as all the local acts in the city. I saw bands like Ministry and Run-D.M.C on stage very early on in the game and I drew inspiration [and confidence] from a lot of their live shows and these undoubtedly helped our own future live performances. It was very exciting to be a part of this scene at that time and to see Run-D.M.C with such unbelievable raw power at that time."

"I was only nine years old in 1976 so I wasn't down the front at the 100 Club, I was still watching Doctor Who. Like everything in those days it probably filtered through slowly to Haywards Heath Market. It was the first record I bought. It was shockingly brilliant, and is one of those records that if you played it in 200 years time it would still sound like that. I think that they perfectly defined their own genre. They were the ultimate punk band. The other so-called punk bands to me sound like a parody of the Sex Pistols. It's a lot to do with John Lydon, he's a huge hero of mine. I was going to have a PiL record in here but I thought you can't have two records by the same person. I saw PiL play recently, and it's the first time I've ever done this, but I went to John Lydon's dressing room door to thank him for everything, but he was asleep. To have created the Sex Pistols was an amazing thing in itself, and then to go and create a new band that was just as groundbreaking in such a different way was unbelievable. John Lennon didn't do that. Jim Morrison didn't do that."

"I go by my original story – greatest album ever made. It’s incredible, beautiful. ‘Killing Moon’ is genius – the best song ever written. It was the first song we recorded before we went to Paris to do the full album, and the chorus came to me. I woke up one morning and I know it was sunny, and I sat upright with words that God had given to me in my sleep. It wasn’t like a dream, I just woke up with the words, and that has never happened before or since. I legged it to find a guitar to get the chords down, and obviously to write the words down. Divine inspiration, and that was it. I haven’t really credited Our Lord with the lyrics before. Would I change anything about the album? I like my voice better now, but having said that, most people would disagree, so no, not really. I think it’s a complete thing. ‘The Yo-Yo Man’ is not my favourite, but it sets it up right for that album. I always used to do the first track and last tracks of the two sides as the core songs. People were familiar with ‘Killing Moon’ by then anyway, but imagine if they’d got to the album without hearing it – it would have been like, “Whoa, what the fuck?” And then ‘Ocean Rain’ - the closer of closers. All in under 40 minutes – it’s like a Sixties record. It wasn’t the easiest album to sell to America, but it certainly inspired other people in bands in America to go on and reap more rewards than we did. I’m surprised that Warners didn’t press the button [and promote it properly in the US]. In those days you’d hire a plugger. Wayne Coyne thinks it’s the best album ever, but it just didn’t have the exposure. And we weren’t really a band that toured for long periods - I’d miss Liverpool too much. More European influences I suppose. But then we were the best band in the world and we’d just created that… and you’re not going to bribe people?"