"I first heard 'Frank Sinatra' when Erasure where recording the album Erasure in 1994 at the Strongroom in Shoreditch East London, which has now become metrosexual electro Grand Central. I love her completely nonchalant don't give a fuck attitude on Hollywood Star, it kind of reminds me of my pre-Erasure work with Pierre Cope - very minimal. On 'Frank Sinatra' she sounds like a Russian Mafia gangster that would kill you stone dead. They're also brilliant live."

"The Iron Giant is the movie that makes me cry the hardest. It’s just the best movie. It’s so good. It was sort of my test movie with girls — which is gross — but I would show it to them, and if they didn’t love it, I was like, “Alright, there’s something wrong with you.” The ending is great, when he says “Superman” is great, “I am not a gun.” I mean, so many moving moments. It’s just perfect."

"I guess I probably knew Dylan before I knew about The Band and kind of found The Band through Dylan. But I like the way that all of them sing. The three of them in particular, they've got really great, really characterful voices. And they do that thing of switching voices so you get the first verse with Rick Danko and then the bridge will be Robbie Robertson and that changes the perspective and stuff. And that's something that when Gang Of Four started, by the time we got to Entertainment!, one of the things we wanted was different characters. I kind of saw songs sometimes as being a little play, a little drama, so you have different characters. You have the main protagonist and maybe the other voice would be making comments about that character or somebody else would be a different character. To a certain extent, some of that came from The Band, I think. They're a weird bunch, they came from Canada, ended up in America and they kind of drew parallels between themselves and North American history and the way a lot of Canadians ended up in New Orleans and they called them Acadian driftwood. And they kind of sing about aspects of the Civil War and stuff like that. And also they've got a sense of history. It's very much not standard rock & roll subject matter, you know. It's not cars, girls, guitars, and I love that. And they're emotionally touching. They didn't have easy lives, things didn't pan out brilliantly. I'm touched by the way that you can hear their struggles through life in their music and what they're saying."

"Another time travel movie, as I call it. I love the pacing of the film and how strange it was. When I saw it I just fell into the reality of the movie, just seeing him get on the train and head out to this place that he’s not excited about going to, and then getting there and being trapped by the forces of nature. Again, for me, some films just have an immersive atmosphere—and the music, and all the shots, the period that’s it’s in, and the casting, it just really transported me to that time period. And I love Sigourney Weaver. I’ve seen other things that she’s been in, but for the most part I think of her as the, you know, Alien. So to see her in something that I was excited about, and just as a character, that was great. But it was a very transporting movie. If a piece is going to take place in the past, I want it to feel like that, whatever that means. If the details aren’t right, it will take me out of the movie. And with The Ice Storm I just fell into that reality so hard-core. I just remember it being like, “Oh my god.” I think I saw it twice because I worked in the movie theater at that time and saw it for free."

"I discovered this album relatively late. I liked funk, and disco was an earlier discovery for me when I was in my late teens. But, around 1985, I found Sly And The Family Stone. I was about 23 at the time and – wow – was that a discovery, not knowing that that particular album was out there before then. I played it from morning until night before we were doing the Notorious album, which was very influenced by Fresh. For me, it is the greatest funk album. I could have picked a James Brown album – I love Live At The Apollo, which was such a terrific record – but the songs on Fresh like ‘If You Want Me To Stay’ and ‘In Time’ are just masterpieces. Fresh has got such a mood to it. It is very difficult in the studio to capture a mood. In a live show it is easier because there is an atmosphere there already – you’ve got the audience, you are playing together, there is a danger something can go wrong any minute and you will take a song off somewhere and you cannot get yourselves back. But, doing it in a studio and capturing a real vibe is the apex of music. If you can do that and you can get that – then you have something great. The Stones were always very good at that, as were The Who early on. But, this album, Fresh, is just pure vibe and every time I listen to the organ swells in the songs I can almost feel the guy playing them. You don’t get that so much in modern records. That’s what we’ve lost. Andy Newmark played drums on the album and they are some of the greatest drum tracks ever recorded. It’s not just feel – it is vibe. Love it."