"I came to Beefheart late. As a youngster, a lot of the older lads were into Beefheart but I didn’t like the way they dressed or their attitude I didn’t think they were cool. They were borderline radical hippies and I wasn’t having any of that. It didn’t look like fun to me. So I steered cleared of Beefheart. And then years later, somebody sat me down and played me Trout Mask Replica and I went, "oh my GOD!" and went out and bought everything. It was his use of language – he was writing like an abstract impressionist painter, fusing together chunks of English language that made more sense to me than something written straight. He was writing emotions through raw chunks of images that were coming to him. He was the first lyricist that made complete sense to me. Then I read that this music that I’d thought was badly played was in fact played amazingly well. He would write these very emotional piano pieces and then hand them to the guitarist who was the MD (musical director) and say, score that for the whole band to play. Often they weren’t even played to a rhythm – they were kinda random – and the band had to play along with them. They’re astonishing renditions of something that is so abstract that it needs great musicians to play them. He was fusing the blues and finding new ways of playing it. Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) is one of his later albums where he returned to the style which people loved – trying to be less commercial than his Virgin Records years. There’s a track called ‘Tropical Hot Dog Night’, (quotes lyrics) “like two flamingos in a fruit fight… Everything’s wrong, at the same time it’s right… Like steppin’ out of a triangle into striped light” – and this reminded me of my drinking years. That’s exactly what it was like, where you’re in shadow and you’re in white light. This man knows exactly what’s going on in my head. He wrote such beautiful poetry. In later life, I made contact with him through Anton Corbijn and he’d send me music of his that wasn’t quite so well known. But I never got to meet him sadly. As a painter he was a massive influence on me because his titles were so fantastic. I take that same approach when I’m titling paintings for exhibition."

"Trevor Nelson had a show on Radio 1 called Rhythm Nation, and every Thursday night he would play all this music that would literally become my musical education. Again, it helped me understand myself on a new level. I got introduced to the neo-soul era through him; a lot of the Philadelphia artists like Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, and D’Angelo. ""I just love D’Angelo. He’s a musical genius. His gentleness was something that really stood out to me, as did Lauryn Hill’s. It was a real subtlety to what he was doing – very considered in where the notes went, and what word was used. At the same time, it was then like a jam! He really nailed this sweet spot in between virtuoso and jamming. ""When I was in Glasgow, my first ever record deal was signed to this guy called Souljawn. He was a massive soul fan, and he said ‘Oh, I found this snippet online of D’Angelo’s new album!’ It was literally a two-minute, really scratchy clip of him singing this song, 'Real Love'. We’d all wondered where he’d gone, ‘cause it had been six years in between albums! We were up there in Glasgow obsessing over this two-minute clip, playing it over and over and over again! Like with 'My Love is Your Love' there was this want and need for music, and real appreciation of when it’s going to come. The willingness to wait for it – it had been six years and we were willing to wait another six ‘cause we just appreciated his genius so much! ""When his most recent album finally came out, the song was there, fully finished. It was so rewarding and satisfying to hear it all finished. To finally hear it now, and still love it… only D’Angelo! He’s incredible. ""I saw him at the Roundhouse recently and he really blew me away. He inspires me to learn more instruments, and to also just relax in music and allow more of an artistic spirit to come through – to not try and control things too much. It was really cool how he went offstage: each musician would slowly walk off and then he was left there, on his Rhodes piano. Playing piano is one thing, but playing a Wurlitzer or a Rhodes is a different, softer approach. He’s really inspired me to look into more of that jazz-soul realm on that instrument."

"Let me try and think of a comedy. At university, I wrote about Annie Hall. I know Woody Allen is currently a contentious issue, but that film as a comedy, if we can separate the art from the person for whatever reason, is such a clever, poetic film, but it’s written in the same way that a poem is… When you read a piece of prose, it’s very formal and everything follows one after the other. It’s very conventional. Poetry is different because it draws attention to itself as writing, and it rhymes and does different things, and it uses rhythm. Annie Hall in the same way does that cinematically. It’s kind of like a cinematic poem, and it’s just really, really smartly made. It’s one of the few comedies that ever got nominated or actually won any Oscars. Comedy, I think, is one of the most underrated art forms that there is, particularly in terms of material rewards. There is no Oscar for best comedy. There is no Oscar for best comic performance. I think that’s a shame, and I think if there was, then Jim Carrey would be laden down with scones. It’s not something everybody can do. You might dismiss Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as a ridiculous, goofy, throwaway movie, but it is a virtuoso performance from Jim Carrey, as often is with his work. You see a lot of so-called straight actors, serious actors, trying to do comedy, and they cannot do it. I think comedy is something which is underestimated because it is literally not serious. It’s like people think that seriousness equals serious, if you know what I mean. But Annie Hall, I think, it’s such a well-crafted film. It says a lot. Diane Keaton is just unbelievable in that movie. I got to meet her at CinemaCon. She was there promoting Book Club, and I said to the people I was with at CinemaCon, I said, “I have to meet Diane Keaton. Please, can you introduce me to her? I just need to tell her how much I love her. I won’t bother her too much.” I found a moment and I went over and I just told her I had written a thesis about her at university. She said, “Oh, I’d love to read that.” And I said, “No, you wouldn’t. It’s boring and dense.” But she was delightful. For her performance alone, that film, as controversial as it might be, would definitely be on my list."

"Foreigner was a band that had an anthemic sophistication about their musical approach. It was educated, well-formed, well turned-out British-American music. The primary songwriter and leader of the band [Mick Jones] was a Brit, and the vocal talents of probably rock’s finest ever tenor, Lou Gramm, fitted perfectly with their sound. I got to know Lou many years later after his horrendous illness. When he was making his comeback to singing after brain surgery, me and some other guys played with him on a big German TV show, and we had to change the key of the song we were doing. We dropped it before he came over to Germany and then when he got there we dropped it another couple of steps. I said to him that the Lou Gramm of 20 or 30 years prior, when he was singing at the top of his range, was a pretty hard act to follow. He said that he didn’t write the songs, and just had to sing what was written, and that he could do that in the studio but it was very tough to do night after night on stage. In a sense I have been there myself. I made records in 1982 [The Broadsword And The Beast] and 1984 [Under Wraps] where I sang really well on record, absolutely at the top of my range. I’m a baritone, and my range is usually up to an E or an occasional hasty F, and then I was singing F# and G. I was singing at the top of my range and singing consistently up there, not just the occasional high note. It was something I couldn’t keep up night after night and I lost my voice in 1984 and had to pretty much take a year off to recover. I cancelled three shows in Australia and two shows in the USA. Over the period of a month I cancelled more than 50 per cent of all the shows that I’ve cancelled in my entire 44 years in music. I still have a soft spot for Lou because of his incredible vocal ability and the wonderful controlled quality of his voice. I do believe he is rock’s finest tenor. His diction was good, his articulation and rhythm was great, he was a truly great singer. It doesn’t mean he’s rock’s best singer or best-known singer, because the usually out of tune Rod Stewart and gymnastic Robert Plant were probably more charismatic. Lou was more mainstream, but it was nevertheless a joy to listen to someone, rather like Alfie Boe, who is in complete control of their vocal ability as the result of hard work and a huge amount of natural talent. He may not be the most exciting pop singer, but for me he is the best."

"I saw the New York Dolls support Rod Stewart when he was in The Faces. That was at Wembley Empire Pool. It was the Dolls, the Pink Fairies and the Faces. I was there to see the Faces, and when the Dolls came on you've never seen a room empty so fast. Everybody just headed for the bar. David Johansen had a top hat on and Arthur Kane had some pink patent thigh-length boots and was being propped up at the back. They did a 15-minute version of 'Frankenstein', and that was good enough for me. I hadn't seen anything like it before. I gather Steve Jones was there as well – a few people were there who would go on to form groups. They were these five tough New York kids and dressed like that, it was so provocative, so over the top. They went on The Old Grey Whistle Test and Whisperin' Bob Harris said, ""I want nothing to do with this lot behind me."" I lived in Chelsea in this flat with an American writer and I woke up in the middle of the night once and went in his room and Johnny Thunders was there. He asked me if I had a guitar and showed me a few chords. He was quite a nice bloke. That was when I was first starting out, in '77. He'd been over with the Heartbreakers doing the Anarchy tour with the Pistols. But to wake up and see him sitting there was bizarre. He'd had his hair cut by then. He always looked really smart. I loved the whole look of the New York Dolls. They had a real influence on me. They looked good wearing make-up, but there was no doubt that they were blokes. It was like, ""Come on then, come and do something about it!"" To walk around like that in the 1970s anywhere in America you were risking your life. Tracks like 'Personality Crisis' – I think Malcolm [McLaren] lifted that wholesale for the Pistols, the rhythm section and the guitar sound, the heaviness, the weight of the rock & roll sound they made. That was a big influence on Malcolm. What you saw was what you got with the Dolls. I last saw Johnny Thunders at Dingwalls in Camden. I bought him a brandy. He was sitting there scowling. He was quite a dangerous person. When I was with him once, some girl came up to bug him or say something and he did that thing like in that James Cagney film – he just put his hand on her and pushed her away. He was a real tough nut. A real rotter."

"Johnny Marr was quite young around this time, wasn't he? And Morrissey…some people are more lyrical than others and their conversation can use the language more [stylishly]. And he must have found that it came easily to him. But how does Johnny Marr play like that! Even people who hate The Smiths agree that Johnny Marr was a genius. To be honest, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce weren't a bad rhythm section either. How did they do that quite young? I don't know. One of my older brothers was into The Smiths and we shared a bedroom so I heard a lot of their music. We would have been teens about this time. I loved the fact that they were from Manchester. I saw Andy Rourke around this time in town and it made me think 'fucking hell! It happens! I've just seen HIM! He's in this band that are totally credible, cool, has put Manchester on the map and I've just seen him walk out of the Arndale Centre!' And so yeah, we bought records and got drunk in Manchester and it felt like the town was happening at the time. The first time I saw them was on a north west television show and they did 'This Charming Man' and I was like [mouth agape]. We had had the Duran Durans and Spandau Ballets who looked great and were very glamorous and then you're confronted with these guys from Manchester – very ordinary in a way you might actually see them in Manchester but they weren't ordinary in their music. They didn't dress in clothes made by someone in Soho. It was like they got their shirts in Afflecks Palace! It was almost anti-glamour. And that felt very touchable. What do I think of Morrissey now? For me, lyrically he's still incredible. I can't say I know the last album well but I just think, like anybody who is an artist, you can tell a story a number of times and it has a freshness about it but we know Morrissey's way [by now]. I don't want to judge him but I don't really get into what he says off record because sometimes you wonder if he's taking the piss? But I don't know, I haven't really followed it. Is he doing that to create something going? Will he come back and say 'I didn't mean it like that'? Surely he must know [his recent comments around Britain First] are not a cool thing to do. But he's bizarre and thank God he's bizarre. I don't want him to be normal in any way, shape or form."