"When I was 18 and had a job framing pictures in a gallery, the guy working next to me would always play opera, and I thought he was a nutter. But now I adore it. Maria Callas will never go missing in my listening, because she rocks."

"The Future came out at around the same moment I discovered Maria Callas, and I got into it somewhat, but it was really Martha who was affected most by that record when it was released, along with a few of my friends. I could see it having its effect on the world around me. But I didn't really understand it for a long time, and then years later when we did the Leonard Cohen tribute shows in Australia, which were filmed for the I'm Your Man film, I really started looking at his material, and I realised that record was so seminal in his career. It was really when he became Leonard Cohen, in a lot of ways, in terms of how he ended up. I can pinpoint that transition as a useful guide in terms of my own career, where you hit a certain age and you have to kind of reinvent yourself – not totally, but you have to settle into a theme, and Leonard really did that with The Future so successfully. I think there's other albums that do that: Paul Simon with Graceland, Neil Young with Harvest Moon, so that's what I admire the most about that record."

"I discovered opera when I was about 13 with Verdi's Requiem . I started off a normal child and within two hours I became this opera queen. It was a religious conversion. Then after that, Maria Callas released La Divina 1 and La Divina 2, her greatest studio recordings from a particular period when I would say her voice wasn't quite at its zenith, but it was in this very interesting stage where it was matched with beauty and experience. So even though not all the notes were perfect you could definitely hear the angst and the pain and the passion that she had experienced in her career and life. I became enraptured by those records. They also had very iconic covers, that amazing photograph of her washed out against a black or white backdrop. It was also the kind of record that I could use to show others my point, and my passion, about opera. I could play it for a bunch of skinheads, heroin addicts, mods or punk rockers or whatever and they would physically freeze at the most dramatic points, because there's no way to deny her power at certain moments – whereas with a lot of opera it can be a hard sell. So they were my little secret weapons I could bring to my crazy underground parties and have a moment of respite from the horror of existence."