"I really love heavy metal. I’m very open, so I don’t really care about genres and often with heavy metal I just like it. I was a huge fan of many heavy metal bands when I was a kid, the first concert I went to was Gojira and then Mastodon and then Slayer. I was eleven and I really loved it. “None of my friends liked the music and so I remember feeling at home at the shows, because I met people who understood it. It’s so angry without being hostile if you really listen to it, but it can sound hostile to people who don’t understand it. “This is quite a calm song by Mastodon. It’s a childhood memory, but a song that allowed me to discover Mastodon with a more melodic song than most heavy metal bands I knew. I saw them play two times actually. “I try and turn what I love about heavy metal into something that more people can understand, like in songs like “Under The Water” and “The Seed”, the single I just released, is more heavy. I like the weight"

"If you were an American kid, then Aerosmith was a huge influence. They were probably what T Rex was to the English fans - whether you were a punk or a metaller, anything, Aerosmith was cool. I’m choosing Toys In The Attic just because it’s a great entry level album for someone checking out Aerosmith. They did this tour a few years ago where they just played stuff from the early records and, fuck, the songs were good. And I just saw them again with my wife, Mike from Pearl jam and his wife, and it was great; there were mistakes and they jammed and there was no... you know, maybe they went through a time where they were playing too many ballads, but there was none of that and even the mistakes made it seem more real. I mean how do you write songs like that? Mike and I went backstage to meet Joe Perry and we’re still those young American kids we used to be when we meet the band. I mean, what do you say to Joe Perry? Those guys are classic, every guy has their own thing."

"[Laughs.] They’re classic, I know — I’m not really picking ’em deep from my quiver — but I’ll go with The Godfather. I can watch it any day, any time. The original Godfather. The sequels were good, but the original Godfather was masterfully done. All those characters who you come to know; 30 years later you still talk about Sonny Corleone. It really sticks with you. It just felt so real. I’d read the book before I saw the movie, and usually when you read a book and then see the movie you say, “Eh, the movie didn’t live up to it,” but on that one I really think that [Coppola] captured it. Just a powerful, powerful story. And it felt real. I’m not really a fan of violence, but in that movie it didn’t bother me in the least — because none of it felt gratuitous, like they were just doing it for effect. I really believed it was the lives that those guys lived. I really thought it was just a beautiful movie. All those tremendous actors in it, too — years later, you realize he did a pretty nice job of casting it."