"In more recent years, I decided if I was going to play acoustic punk music I wasn’t going to be the guy that just bangs on a guitar. I wanted to learn how to play guitar and use it to dictate what I needed to say, as well as my lyrics. So I took online lessons to learn about finger picking and I learnt Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits, note for note. I think it’s one of the most beautiful love songs in the world, and I love the fact that he doesn’t even sing it. He just talks it. I adore Mark Knopfler for that. He seems so unaffected in this song. He didn’t care about Wham! or Oingo Boingo or whatever was popular at the time. He just said, ‘I’m singing like this and I’m finger picking because that’s what I love.’ That goes right back to Bob Dylan for me: from Just Like a Woman to Romeo and Juliet. And when I finally learn how to play that song note for note I’m going to play it for people."

"During our first ever rehearsal as The Horrors we were doing a load of garage covers and then we started doing our first original song - it was called ‘The Fall Of Winter'. There's a bootleg of it somewhere online and it sounds like a complete mess, a racket. When we wrote it, Josh [Hayward, guitarist] said, "That song sounds a bit like The Jesus Lizard". And I said, "Who are The Jesus Lizard?" and I went and checked them out. Down was the first record of theirs I bought. There's something about that cover itself... I think it's the actual painting style. It puts ideas in your head. There's an important difference between an illustration or painting that puts ideas in your head and one that turns you off. This does a little of both and that's probably what they're going for - trying to turn you off in a good way. Even the way all their records have four-letter word titles is trying to piss you off. There's also an element of the grotesque about them that I guess people like."