"Talking of the modern poet in modern music and listening to Lou Reed as a part of The Velvet Underground, we are really listening to the WH Auden of the modern world. Once again, not existing in print poetry but in recorded noise"

"This was the point where I did start to accept there were other kinds of music than the stuff I’d grown up with. Because I’d listened to so much hip hop and soul, I was very dismissive, even of Bowie. I never began to negotiate with that until I was much older. A real Velvet underground obsessive is less favourable to this album because it’s less pure in their eyes than the cold, earlier stuff, but it’s the first one that got me and drew me into that kind of music. It’s soulful as well. Lou Reed is brilliant. He’s a cunt, but he’s brilliant. I met him once, I did a TV show with him, Metallica and Lana Del Rey in France. It was the most awful panel of people I’d ever had to sit with. The only person that was nice was Lars from Metallica. They lined us all up and we had to stand and look as if we were all bonding. Lou Reed was like a melted mannequin, he had about four breaths left in him, while Lana Del Rey looked like someone had kidnapped everyone she knew. Lars had been to so many AA meetings he was all ‘Oh hey! So nice to meet you!’ Weirdly enough Lou and dad had a bit of a history, because dad’s only tour of America was with Lou Reed and they really hated each other. Lou hated everybody arbitrarily, and dad just hated America. I think that tour ended because dad knew Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood and they met them in LA. He complained about Lou Reed, so Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood went and de-tuned all of Lou Reed’s guitars."

"It’s a tough one. A sad song... I guess it would have to be Sad Song by Lou Reed, that’s a pretty good one. It’s really hard though, I’ll have to pick that one because we’ll be here all day otherwise, there are so many. [Sings in Lou Reed’s voice] ‘Sad Song, sad song.’ Yeah, go with that one, it’s definitely a bit of a ballad, definitely sad."

"I like a lot of Lou Reed’s records but before I got into him, I heard this record in my college dorm, courtesy of [Pixies guitarist] Joey Santiago. I knew that I liked the record but when I got into listening to it again, some years ago, I realised: I know the record really well. I really like the production and sound of it. It’s very toppy and it’s got some really good sounds. It’s very thin, 70s rock radio production. I’ve never really met Lou. I mean, I’ve been in the room with him on a number of occasions on tour and hanging out in the same breakfast rooms, but they’re situations when you don’t want to bother someone. I don’t remember the Quietus interview where the guy compared me to Lou Reed, but right now if someone wanted to mention me and Lou Reed in the same breath, it’d be a huge compliment. He’s obviously one of my rock & roll heroes."

"It’s interesting to see an artist like Lou Reed, whose persona is so masculine and no-bullshit, try on something so glammy and fey. There’s something tenuous about it; it doesn’t quite fit like it does Bowie and the others. It’s kind of unexpected and wrong, which is why I love it."

"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."

"The Marble Index is a record that sounds like no other in the history of rock. It has a dark, European, stoic atmosphere with an intensity with Nico's singing and songwriting. You have to remember that with the Velvet Underground, she had to rely on Lou Reed writing songs for her. She wasn't exactly Lou Reed or John Cale either. She wrote a song with Jim Morrison, whom she described as her soul brother, and he said she should write songs and lyrics. Nico was a very cultured lady, she worked and hung out with the Stones, she was older and had been around. In fact, I think The Marble Index is a line from a Wordsworth poem. John Cale said that nobody was quoting Wordsworth in 1968. It's one of the first art rock albums and I think that there's an intensity of vision and focus on that record, unlike any other record I've heard. I mean these are the first songs that she wrote! Where did these come from? It's so otherworldly. This album was a huge influence when we were making Screamadelica, I listened to The Marble Index all the time."

"It's not just an album to me; it's like a movie. It's a whole story—there's cruel, tragic storytelling. I listened to it for the first time in Berlin. Sometimes when I travel, I like to find things that relate to where I am. So I listened to this, and for the whole afternoon, I was like, Oh man. How am I going to leave the apartment? Something changed after I listened to this album. I love Lou Reed, because his voice sounds like your inner conscience. When I read a book, it's Lou Reed's voice narrating it. It's very intimate. I can't really listen to this album casually. It's like going to a museum and seeing a painting that really means something to you—a sacred moment. I don't have many albums that do that for me."