"Jonathan Richman sounded a bit like Lou Reed. The songs were fantastic. The only place you could buy that album was the Rock On store in Camden Town. I think everybody, including John Rotten and all of the Pistols, had been down there at some point to buy it. Anybody that later got into the punk rock scene had bought this record. It still sounds really good. John Cale produced it. It's under-produced if anything, which is what's so good about it. His voice is great. American punk rock was completely different from the London scene – you had Richard Hell & the Voidoids and Television and that, and it all seemed a bit arty. But this was four college kids from California who had got together and made a dark record. It sounds like a guy who's had his heart broken. It's a romantic punk record, really. 'Roadrunner' is the one everybody learnt when they were rehearsing or trying to get into a band. The way he sang, he just sort of threw it away. I can't really think of anybody who'd done it like that before. The solos were great, just one or two notes. Very simple stuff, which was what appealed to the punks. The whole punk thing was about stripping things down because people couldn't play very well. Get the band first and worry about the music later. I saw Jonathan Richman last year doing a festival somewhere, just him and a drummer. He's the only person I know who tells the sound guy to turn it down. But back then he was streets ahead of everyone."

"Trading Places. Like most people, I don’t love the ending of the movie on the train with the gorilla costume, but I feel like even with that, it’s still a nearly perfect movie. What is it about that movie? Well, there’s a few things. For starters, when I was a kid, I watched Saturday Night Live from a very young age. I was obsessed with Eddie Murphy, and I don’t know why. He captured my imagination. I loved his energy, and he was always such an uninhibited performer on Saturday Night Live, and then later in his movies. I feel like Trading Places is a phenomenal performance by Eddie Murphy as he goes through this kind of metamorphosis, but also, it’s just an insanely funny movie. This image of Dan Aykroyd in a Santa suit, pulling a salmon steak out of his suit, which he’s hid, and he hid a salmon steak in his suit and stole it and ran out in the street, starts eating it, and he’s pulling his Santa beard hair out of the fish while he’s eating it because it’s all getting mashed… It’s genius. So, the physical comedy, the dialogue comedy is top-notch, but also, I think thematically it’s a piece of social satire that I’d love to see more of. I feel like it’s really what storytelling is at its best, where it’s kind of pointing out some social ills. In this case, it’s inequality, it’s corrupt influence, it’s corrupt power, it’s racial tension, racial disparity. It’s all baked into this hilarious comedy, and if you’re paying attention, you’re hopefully maybe learning a little something as well, or it’s just kind of seeping under the laughs, which is the best stuff. Dan Aykroyd’s character kind of… His performance is so great because it goes from really broad and silly to ultimately very humble and human, and it’s kind of like he and Eddie Murphy are playing these characters that have really great arcs that sort of crisscross right in the middle, right? It gets weirdly poignant, and as soon as it’s poignant, then Clarence Beeks will throw someone down on the pavement and just this explosion of physical comedy, and you’re laughing again."

"Again, a similar time in my life; I was listening to a few American psychedelic bands. There was a band called Long Ryders who did a track called ‘Looking for Lewis and Clark’ that I played, learned, used to sit and sing although I had no idea what the lyrics were. I was pretty much singing nonsense, although the song did get me into Tim Hardin! Anyway, they were one of a few bands [that were important to me], like Opal, Screaming Trees and Rain Parade, but Rain Parade was the one that changed me. This album was like an explosion in my mind. I don’t know what program it was, but I saw them perform ‘No Easy Way Down’ on TV, a filmed concert, and it was like, ‘Here is something I can fully get behind.’ It’s a slow, sludgy, drone rock anthem; the guitarist is doing the Kevin Shields tremolo thing with the guitar, but in 1985. It’s just incredible, and I have to say would have been pretty influential on the early Ride sound for sure."

"The Ramones are quite a cartoon-friendly band and I thought they'd have more illustrated sleeves. Pleasant Dreams is always the album of theirs that gets overlooked even though it's got some great really poppy, bubblegum songs on it in the style for which they're known for. And it kind of looks like a Saul Bass cover. When I was a kid it was my favourite Ramones record, with songs like 'You Sound Like You're Sick'. Just brilliant. How many times can you say "this record's good" as a reason for liking it? I guess I've found there are two types of people: people who find a record, really love it, and don't want anyone else to hear it. Then there are other people that find a record, love it and are almost baffled as to why more people haven't heard it and make it their mission to spread it around. And I guess I'm the second type. Pleasant Dreams is one that I was sort of confused as to why it wasn't mentioned more."

"Everything just fell in place. The right people, the right director, the right script, the right timing, what the world was going through. Everything just fell right. So Godfather, Slumdog Millionaire, Laurel & Hardy, and Chaplin. Well, it’s too early to talk about Slumdog, but I’m sure after 50 or 100 years people are going to say that everything just fell in the right [place] for Slumdog. The Godfather is not [just] an American hit, it’s really a worldwide film. Anywhere [you go]: China, Japan, Mexico. Everywhere students of cinema, ordinary people, everybody just loved the film. It’s got that cinematic magic, The Godfather. And, you know, it’s the lighting, the camerawork, the editing, the performances, the casting, the colors, the costumes. It was cinema at its best, and I’m sure it is something which, as you say, was written. Just everything fell in place. It doesn’t happen with everybody, it’s [when] people are [from] a certain kind of work culture [that] these things happen normally. What I like about The Godfather [is that] it’s very classical. [Coppola] just leaves the camera. You never see the camera moving. It’s very static and it’s the actors [who are moving]. [But] still you create the magic. You don’t have to juggle the camera to attract attention. The music also is very subtle. Everything is subtle. Your mind is throbbing, your [hairs are] rising, you’re on the edge of your seat, but still everything is so calm and relaxed. It’s cinema at its best. Slumdog? That’s also cinema at its best but everything [is] movement. There’s so much movement, there’s so much energy, the script is moving, the screenplay, the camera is moving, the actors are moving, everything is moving. But still, you understand the story. It is in control. Still, it moves you."

"Gino Vannelli's albums were what made me feel it was possible to be a songwriter. When I was younger I used to do a lot of production work with my cousin Brian Warfield, we had our own studio. He went on later on to produce artists like Jhené Aiko and Miguel, but before that I feel like I was very much his very first hep artist, his homeboy at least, just making music together. We'd go buy records to sample and then we would work on music and go eat Yoshinoya. I remember my older brother came over, and he picked up Gino Vannelli's album on a fluke. I'd never seen it, I'd never paid attention to it, it was just sitting in the pile of records. My older brother put the first song on to find the sample and the way the record starts out grabbed my attention because of the style progressions that are happening immediately. When he left I put the record on and it washed over me and transformed me. There's songs that when you actually put them on you lose control of yourself almost, and you go into this thing where you start to sing, and all of a sudden you are a singer because this is something that you love so much. And when I would hear Gino Vannelli, I would pay attention to the lyrics, I'd pay attention to what he was singing about; some love loss or some mythology or something weird that a woman that has done to him. This is one of my favourite albums, Gist of the Gemini. Along with Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, he kind of shaped my songwriting and kind of let me know what it was to write songs. I was always told that you have to be honest in the music, but I was like 'well how do you do that?', and the people that taught me how to do that were Gino Vannelli, Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, with a couple of other people too."