"Just like we had a group of friends in Toulouse, we had a group of friends in Chicago, with everybody playing in each other's bands, and really we found a family there. Those were wonderful years, but since then a lot of people have moved to LA, or just moved out. Sam I believe still lives in Chicago. I don't know if he's still making music. I sure hope so. He moved away from this type of music to buying analogue electronic machines and playing around with those a lot and it was divine, but he'd moved away from the pop format the last time I heard him. But I do love Sam Prekop, and I probably have even more of a soft spot for his solo albums than for his work with The Sea And Cake, which I also find superb, but the solo stuff has always touched me more somehow. Maybe it's because there's less at stake. Maybe they're more free and therefore more direct. You don't have to show off your prowess so much, I don't know. But I do like the freedom of them. It's like laughter, the way it comes out. I really like that. I find that in beautiful, well-crafted songs we approach perfection. Not that we should seek perfection necessarily; we're perfect as we are. But for me, artistically and aesthetically, we're coming close to something quite perfect, and therefore it makes it into my list. The album feels so lightly or deeply attuned that you don't have to force it down. You don't force it, you just let it be and follow it. You let it guide you, and that's a big quality to Sam's writing. Sam could probably have been a much bigger star in terms of having more fans, but I think he's probably always protected himself from that, knowing very well it would probably destroy his muse. It's very difficult to not get crushed by too much popularity. You want to please people and meet their expectations, and expectations are just the worst thing. They're the worst poison. They should be absolutely prohibited and fought against, actively. I sense that also: that people when they meet me have expectations. They have a whole story in their mind and then when they meet me and I'm just me it's somehow ah, I'm not what you expected me to be. But that's a trap, the expectation, and I try to avoid it. I try to not have expectations, because most of the time you're going to be disappointed. So why live a life of disappointment, when you can live a life of joy?"

"The irony about Berlin is that it was delivered as a concept album, but its component parts are from all over the place. The earliest songs off it are demos for the Velvet Underground. It's intriguing because 'Berlin' the song is from his first solo album, and then you've got 'Stephanie Says' [from VU] which has been changed to 'Caroline Says I'. He rejigged everything and came up with a concept album, but it's a hodge podge really. I interviewed him about Berlin and just about got away with it because I love the album. And I don't think it would have been as good if Bob Ezrin hadn't been producer. As much as David Bowie and Mick Ronson turned Transformer into the album it is, Bob Ezrin turned Berlin into the album that it is. The story goes that Bob Ezrin told his own kids that their mum had died just so he could record them crying for the album, and then when he had that on tape he told them, nah, she's alright really, I just made it up. That's what I heard anyway. You want to know why Lou Reed punched David Bowie that time? Well, I heard it was because Bowie offered to produce Berlin, but on the condition that Reed quit heroin. But Berlin is just an amazing album, especially coming straight off the back of Transformer, and you can tell that Lou Reed is not comfortable with being a pop star as presented by David Bowie. Somebody like Lou Reed [who] actually did reinvent the wheel – with some help from John Cale – with the Velvet Underground, and then one of his acolytes is seen to be helping him on his way. He was probably smarting a little bit from that. Really, Berlin shouldn't have worked, it was constructed from waifs and strays, but it has that great production with all the brass on it. 'Sad Song' is so beautiful. It's probably the most beautiful song you'll hear in your life."

"I think this might be one of my least favourite sleeves of all time. It's truly awful. That style of dodgy seventies graphic artwork is fucking disgusting. It almost looks like the side of a waltzer, but that actually makes it sound a little better because I'm a big funfair fan. To the point where I actually went to Blackpool Pleasure Beach on my own once, but more about that later. I think this sleeve is really fucking horrible and the record only just about redeems it. ‘Baker Street' is the one everyone knows with the long sax solo, but there's another song called ‘Right Down The Line' which is really cool. It was actually Honor [Titus] from Cerebral Ballzy that introduced me to that song. There's a lot more narrative here than in most of my interviews."

"I think this is one of the best war movies ever made. It covered the heroics of World War 2 which we’re all familiar with from the greatest generation, but it was the first movie to ever capture the absolute terror of being a soldier in the war. It was okay to be absolutely terrified during that world war. Every other movie is mostly about showing bravery in such an unrealistic context, it’s like every soldier that fought there died gracefully. But I know people who fought in that war who saw that movie when it came out, and it brought back a lot of memories and fears and terrors. You weren’t encouraged to get help after the war for the trauma back then. And that movie did more for a lot of those soldiers and veterans, and it is just great filmmaking."

"Another documentary. [Director Errol Morris has] got so many movies that I love and there are so many other documentaries that I love too. But The Thin Blue Line is interesting to choose right now because now there is a resurgence of true crime documentaries — a lot of them [are] series like Making a Murderer or The Jinx. But Thin Blue Line was kind of the original true crime documentary that really sort of made you question police tactics and I think anyone who’s into Making a Murderer or Serial or The Jinx — or any of these shows right now, and podcasts — and hasn’t seen Thin Blue Line should check that out. It’s just a well-made movie in general but it’s also a fascinating story of a crime that someone may or may not have done."