"This was a bit of a dodgy situation at the time but I didn’t know that. Tom had asked me to work with him and it was a solo record and that was all I knew. It wasn’t with the group. He used Mike [Campbell, Heartbreakers lead guitarist] for guitar and it was Mike’s studio that we recorded in, in his garage in LA. Tom just stopped me in the street one day in Beverley Hills somewhere and he said, ""I’ve just been listening to George Harrison’s new album. I love it. I’m having a barbecue. Do you wanna come?"" I couldn’t go so he said, ""do you fancy writing some songs together and see what we come up with?"" and I said, ""yeah, I’d love to!"" So I went round his house the next day and after we wrote one, we then wrote, believe it or not, ‘Freefalling’ which was such a big hit for him. So it worked out great and we carried on doing them in Mike’s garage, which was an amazingly sparse studio. It was a garage full of motorbikes and oil cans and bedsteads and things like that - it was pretty amazing! Where him and George looking for that panoramic ELO sound? Well, it wasn’t always that panoramic a sound. I was gradually quietening that sound down that ELO had done and there were less strings. In ELO, it used to be a case of, ""oooh! String day tomorrow!"" and then by about the tenth album it became [adopts dismayed voice] ""oh, fucking hell! It’s string day tomorrow."" I’d had enough of them. I grew tired of the strings. But that’s not why they asked me. It was more the punch I was doing later on and they just liked the sound that I made, whatever it was. They liked something about it."

"We saw their show a couple of weeks back, and of course I love the Black Moth Super Rainbow stuff, and Tobacco too. But I have to say when I was at the show there was a lot of new music he played and I was like 'Fuck, that's cool'. And then he gave me the new record and I discovered that a lot of what they played is on that, so to me it's the best that they've, or he's, done. He does the same song, over and over. He's working in the same colour palette every time, and he knows it, and he knows he's trapped in it, and I know it too. And it's rejuvenating. Even though you've heard these sounds he does a lot, it still comes back at you. Very effective. It's very evocative. He uses all these reverbs and echoes and distortions and it doesn't become music to you, it becomes an atmosphere, a mood. That's what a lot of this music I've talked about does: you don't think it's about drugs, you don't think it's about guitar playing, it's about a world that's created in your mind as these sounds are playing. It's fantastic."

"Then, my last one is going to be — this might be slightly more obscure, though it really shouldn’t be. I fell in love with this film when I first saw it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film as beautiful, as contemplative. The film After Life by Hirokazu Koreeda. I remember when I first saw it, just being totally blown away by every single frame of it. The honesty of it, the fact that it celebrated life, the fact that it was so unbelievably profound and spoke volumes about living life to the fullest and cherishing every moment. I don’t think there’s been a more beautiful film about life itself. It’s so understated in the way he tells his story. It’s obviously a collection of vignettes and a collection of talking heads, but woven into this narrative. Again, I might be wrong, but I seem to remember that the number of the people who contributed to the experiences of life are real people — it’s almost like documentary-styled elements to the film itself. So you got these really personal memories that are very private. Sometimes they’re nostalgic, sometimes they are beautiful, sometimes they’re funny and amusing. That, for me, is the ultimate win. When the Blu-rays of that came out in Japan, straight away I was like, “I’m buying this film! I need this film in HD.”"

"What I love about Culture Club is how they took inspiration from reggae and made it into this beautiful pop that didn’t sound like much else at the time. Boy George was one of the first pop stars to come out and showcase that side of himself publicly, and in a time when it was more frowned upon than it is now. He’s always been so outspoken too, which is incredible. “I got the opportunity to meet him when he was a judge on The Voice Australia and to work with one of the artists that he mentored, Sheldon Riley. He auditioned with ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’, but it was a really dramatic version of the song - it was so powerful. It was really encouraging to see Boy George work with an artist who chose one of his songs to cover, which would be a challenge for a lot of people. “Boy George is such a great frontman, with all his flamboyance - his outfits and his makeup. I would be jealous sometimes when I would walk in the room and be like, “Man, who made that?” and he would say, “Oh I made this outfit”’ And the fact that he’s still doing it and works so hard, I have the utmost respect for that."