"This is my favourite Smiths track, with ‘How Soon Is Now?’ a close second. Andy and I had a real shared history with The Smiths when we were growing up. We saw them at Maxwell Hall in Salford in 1986, which is remembered as being this legendary gig now, or so I’m told. The thing is, it really was that good - it’s in my top five gigs of all time. I saw them a lot of times, but there was something about that one, the energy was incredible. I think the place was oversold, so there was already a sort of danger in the air, and there was a sense that you were seeing a very special band at the peak of their powers, because it was just after The Queen Is Dead had come out. I can’t think of anything else that sounds like ‘The Headmaster Ritual’. The guitar tuning that Johnny Marr’s using is weird, so there’s this otherworldly feel to the way it sounds, but in terms of what Morrissey is singing about, that was very much rooted in reality; brutality in schools was still a thing during my upbringing and corporal punishment was still around, so this track in particular really resonated with me. I think any time you get one of the greatest lyricists of all time together with one of the greatest guitarists something special’s going to happen, but for me, ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ is probably the top example of what that band could do."

"I dropped out of university because the band was starting to be quite busy and my friend Daniel Stone, who was an artist, made me a mix CD. It had a different Daniel Johnson song called “Speeding Motorcycle” and when I heard it, I went down a Daniel Johnston rabbit hole. I’ve been down there ever since. “Johnston taught me a lot of lessons. When we started the band, I was the drummer, which was my first instrument, but when the lead singer left I reluctantly took over lead vocals. I really hated the sound of my voice and it's taken me many years to get comfortable with it. ""Johnston was the first artist I heard who really sang in his own voice, he had this really squeaky teenagers warble. It sounds like a kid lost in his own world, in a basement, pouring his heart out into a tape recorder. It had such a profound influence on me.When I discovered his music, between Making Dens and Twenty One, I felt that it was okay to not like your own voice, and it was okay that I’m not Morrissey or Thom Yorke - the people I was trying to emulate at that time. ""Discovering his music taught me that but it also taught me to sing your own truth, to tell your own story, and to not be afraid of revealing your ugliest and most private parts of yourself in your music, because that’s actually how people relate to songs. “A song is a place to hide your ghosts. When you write a song, you’re building a house for your demons to live in. I think Johnston taught me that too. Maybe with A Billion Heartbeats I’ve built a house for a generation’s ghosts, but I’ll have to let other people decide that"