"There’s just so much on this: It’s a double album and by the time you finish it—if you can finish it—you can’t remember what you heard at the beginning. I liked that,” he said of Beefheart. “It was anti-music in the most interesting and insane way, like kids learning to play violin—which I was going through at the time. So all the bum notes I was being told off for by the teachers were finally being released by well-known artists. “That was my confirmation. From then on, there was room for everything"

"Look at it this way: The Twilight Zone is your memories of growing up, of learning to understand a certain language of cinematic storytelling that embraces fantastic twists of plot and character. Then, when you’re older, and it occurs to you to ask your parents what things were really like back in the day, the answer is Patterns, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and The Comedian, all written by Rod Serling. Of course, there’s more than Serling’s writing to love here: the immediacy of the productions and the adrenaline of the performances make for a perfect record of this incredibly pivotal era of storytelling."

"I don’t know how controversial it is in Beach Boys fan circles but I really like the Brother years. It’s as if they’ve all spent years with a genius, learning how to do it, soaking up musical know-how like sponges and then just gone for it themselves. There are some great songs – The Trader is one of my favourites, and Sail On Sailor is one of my wife’s all-time favourite songs. I’m drawn to beauty in music. You can put three chords together and it does something weird to me. It feels a little bit like magic."