"When I first appeared, after I did this EP in 1982 with Robert Wyatt [Summer Into Winter], I got a feature in the Melody Maker. The headline was something-or-other "in a blue afternoon". I was likened to him, but had never heard him – I was just a teenager when I made it, after all – and it took my years to find the actual album. It took years to find anything back then. Also, it'd been out of print for years, but eventually I found it, and still love it. 

It's only been since I've got older that I've thought about the roots of that culture, about these men like Fred Neil, Tim Hardin and Tim Buckley who grew up in that New York 1960s culture clash between jazz, folk and the blues, playing supperclubs, smoking weed. This is the first album Buckley produced himself, and it sounds like it. It's got the sense of someone reaching for something beyond his capabilities at that point. It doesn't always work, it's not always perfect, but it's all about human ambition, in its feel and it execution. I love that. All the best albums have that.
"

"A rather lofty title, but it’s totally misleading because it wasn’t recorded at Carnegie Hall at all. It was a kind of attempt to suggest a concert at that venue. I guess the label wanted people to think, Wow, he played at Carnegie Hall. He must be important! “Which, of course, he was. From the singles he did, like Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby to Baby, Where You Going? to albums like I’m Jimmy Reed, the man was a treasure. “This was a two-disc set, and that in itself was a novelty. I got it when I was around 10 or 11. I don’t think I ever saw a record that had two discs in it before. Such a cool album. “Musically, somebody might listen to this and go, ‘Oh, that’s just three-chord stuff.’ But the complexity that takes place between the exchange of [co-guitarist] Eddie Taylor and Jimmy Reed is fascinating. A Mississippi mystery. Even though they’re playing two entirely different figures, it all meshes in a way that makes it impossible to figure out who’s playing what. I think this record influenced many, many guitarists. Check it out, it’s a party"

"""I first got a copy of Raw Power in high school, so this was my first exposure to Iggy and The Stooges. At that point, I was more familiar with the more overt versions of punk, like the Sex Pistols or The Banned, and as much as I knew that The Stooges were punk rock they just weren't described in those terms, and that felt about right. They somehow felt more sensual - they were harder to define. It seemed as if they were teetering on the edge of something the whole time. "This song is a perfect example of that. Is it a ballad? Is it a rock song? Is it a soul screamer kind of thing? Really, it's all of those and it says a lot about my limited understanding of the style at the time that it didn't sound like punk to me when I first heard it. It's maybe the most feminine, least male-aggressive track on there. It's not 'Search and Destroy', and it's not ‘Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell'. I mean, he's saying ""penetrate me!"" It's my favourite song on that record."

"What don't I say about Aja? We all have our different experiences with Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, but everything that they've created throughout the years is really awesome. I have a few albums of theirs I love; Can't Buy A Thrill, Katy Lied, Pretzel Logic, but there's a number of reasons why I am totally in love with Aja. It stems from the personnel, the feel, and how much it was a stab in another direction of pop culture. It was anti-pop, it was a bit on the outskirts of everything, I think. It's always funny listening to Donald Fagen singing about stuff because it's like, 'what's the guy rambling on about?' sometimes. A couple of my favourite musicians are on it; like Steve Gadd and, again, Michael McDonald. When I realised this was Michael McDonald singing background I lost my fucking mind, like, straight up. I always loved the Doobie Brothers and I knew his hits because of hip hop and stuff, but I remember being like 'Who's this magical person singing these dissonant chords behind the changes with ease with this weird timbre of voice?' – and you look at the credits and of course it's Michael McDonald. Aja, if I can't listen to it in its entirety then I get mad; I get pissed because I want to go through the whole album every time. One of my favourite moments on the album is Steve Gadd playing out on actual song 'Aja'; the way that just like the drum feels and everything – I don't know how to play drums but I love to try to act like I play drums to that one moment when he takes a slight solo at the end. Steve Gadd was always one of my favourite drummers ever because of the choices of records and stuff that he would do. Aja is he was he was one of those moments that it spanned out to everybody at that point. It was like at the height of their popularity. That was what happened and it was perfect."

"I listened to that record non-stop, it was a record that was in my house when I was really small and I knew the whole thing back and forward by the time I was six years old, as that's one of the many times we moved. I remember listening to the song 'So Far Away' in our station wagon as it pulled away from my neighbourhood and waving goodbye to my best friend. Throughout my life I've had a different favourite song on that record for a different reason and it sort of stayed with me. When I was a karaoke host, one of the first songs I did was 'I Feel The Earth Move'. I think her story is so interesting, too, of starting out as a songwriter and not feeling confident and then deciding to put out her own songs with her own voice. That was a really empowering story when I finally learnt it. I just thought she was this cool, powerful '70s woman with her curly hair and swirly skirts. I found her fascinating as a person as well, like a role model. She played piano, sang and wrote the songs, and everyone knew that, it was really implicit at the time, that it was her album. A lot of singers, male and female, were singing songs written by other people and Carole King had been writing songs for those people, then this album was like, "I'm writing it for myself." I didn't know she wrote 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow?' until I heard her sing it and her version was so different than the popular version that I'd heard and I was like, "Wow!" It was a great album in the vein of Thriller – every song on that record could be a hit. And it was like she made it; I knew a woman made it from start to finish and I knew I could write songs. It was something that everybody had that was very popular that actually still holds water and it's really good."