"Bands have their anthems, you know, 'You Shook Me All Night Long', all that for AC/DC sure. For Those About To Rock is the call to arms, it's the definitive anthemic album. Back In Black probably had better songs, but the band started to have a sense of itself because a band stands or should stand for something, like when you have a country you have a flag for that country. But when a flag stands for something, it takes on a meaning of its own, and then people realise that the flag doesn't just represent the country, but it represents what the country stands for. The platform - in our case, platform boots. So, For Those About To Rock We Salute You is what AC/DC is all about. The graphics and that cannon and the title - and it's why they always end their set with it - it's anthemic. 'You Shook Me All Night Long' is probably the best song they've written in my estimation, but it's not an anthem. It's because the lyrics aren't on that same level. They aren't big and bold. 'For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)' means something, it's a connection. It's like nationhood. Put your fist up in the air and say, 'Yeah! This is what I believe in!' 'You Shook Me' doesn't have that, it's just a rockin' great song. When the band realises its own meaning, when a band can see itself clearly, that's when it connects. It happened to us on Destroyer. That album cover had no guitars on it, no drums, no guitars, no stage, nothing. That's when we understood that we were bigger than the music we played. But you don't see that until someone points that out to you. When you start to see your face in parades and on walls and on tattoos and all that. And when you see that there just aren't any guitars or drums in there. People are attracted to the personas. The personas are bigger than the guitars. Whereas, it's hard to have an image of AC/DC without a guitar. Without a guitar, you would say, 'Who's that?' The same goes for Metallica or almost anybody. They're musicians. We are iconic images. That's fine for me. That's bigger. That's part of pop culture."

"This album is a real folly. I don't want to defend Phil Collins for a second, and when I see footage of the Slipperman [a naked lumpy monster with inflatable genitalia who emerged onto the stage by crawling out of a giant penis - Ed] I just chuckle at the thought that it just didn't make any sense to Phil Collins and it really pissed him off. He didn't like seeing Peter Gabriel in this costume. Gabriel didn't give a fuck though, he just wanted to do this piece of theatre. Just round the corner from here is the Palace Theatre, and that's where I saw them do The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, two nights running, when I was 15. We just used to sneak into all the gigs, me and my mates. We were desperate to get into this one because we'd seen them on the Whistle Test but we couldn't get in for love nor money. We were stood outside and the guy who ran Virgin Records on Lever Street was there. I used to go to that shop three or four times a week to buy all my albums, and at about five to eight he came to the door and he recognised me from the shop because I used to ask him for advice, and he beckoned me over and put a ticket in my hand. It was sixth row from the front, and I was just blown away by it. It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. It was presented as theatre. There were a lot of props. There was a big mesh cage that Gabriel performed in, there were a load of strobes going off. How did they represent a wall of nothingness sweeping across Times Square? Just a bit of smoke I think."

"I adore this song, my wife and I played it at our wedding and it’s a ringtone on my phone. Every now and then you hear something and think ‘I wish I could write a song like that, something that gets to the essence of what it means to be alive.’ I remember the first time I heard ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ on the radio and I was like ‘Damn, I wish I’d written that song.’ The strings work so well with Richard Ashcroft’s singing and lyrics, which sum up a lot of the complicated feelings you have as an individual trying to get through each day. It’s a perfect wedding of the two of them. It’s wrapped around this glorious production and the sound of the band is really minimal, it’s mainly the string arrangement, which of course was from The Rolling Stones. If they’d just cleared it ahead of time they probably would have done a 50/50 deal on the publishing, but they didn’t, it was too late and they didn’t have any control. The Rolling Stones didn’t need the royalties as badly! I also admire ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ from a producer’s standpoint because I love its simplicity. The drums are the same pattern over and over, I think it’s a drum-loop, for the bass it sounds like they got a two or four bar loop, because the chords don’t change, and the guitar overdubs are all textural, it’s just these blips, bleeps and little echoes flowing through the mix. It’s a brilliant soundscape, it doesn’t really sound like a rock song, where you have blazing, loud distorted guitar amps, it’s got this atmospheric vibe to it and I think that fits the lyrics and the singing perfectly."