"I remember when I was in high school someone signed my yearbook - this guy Guy Blakeslee who's now in the band The Entrance - amazing guitarist and he told me how to play the A minor chord. He signed my yearbook, "Hey hey, my my, rock and roll will never die", and I remember thinking, oh my god this guy's a genius, and then I found out it was the genius Neil Young. A genius steal. He probably thought I should have known it, but anyway I think I got the album after I found that out and it became one of those albums that feel like they're your own secret album. My mum listened to Harvest a lot so I knew the 'Heart Of Gold' era, which I also love. Rust Never Sleeps became my personal Neil Young treasure. It has such a raw sound, I guess because it was recorded live. I didn't even know there were overdubs on it. Actually a lot of the albums I chose were those live albums that are what is live, what isn't live?. But on one song on the musical we were stuck on the opening and I went back to Rust Never Sleeps and pretty much ripped off the song 'Thrasher' - the opening to that song. That was 'Fathers And Brothers' - it's just a stupid little simple [thing], we were just going for something really simple and I remember we worked on it all night, trying to get this arpeggiated thing working and we just went for the straight strum in the end, and the engineer/mixer guy came back and said, "Thank god you you went for the simple thing". 'Powderfinger', 'Pocahontas', they're all great. Young is somehow able to pull off these songs all about the plight of American man that would just seem so cheesy nowadays, but I think there was this experimentation with subject matter in 70s songwriting that was kind of innocent and is not really done today. I enjoy the storytelling of Neil Young, the simplicity of it all, and just that voice [that] can sing just about anything and make it sound good."

"""Whole Lotta Shakin'', was the first time I heard him, in Pontypridd, being played from Freddy Fey's record shop. People used to ask me, because I loved music so much, 'What do you think of this record, what do you think of that record?' When Elvis Presley came out, I said he can't be the only one - a white man being influenced by black music in the South. So when 'Whole Lotta Shakin'' came out, my friends said, 'Is that what you're talking about?' I said, 'That's exactly what I'm talking about!' Another guy, playing piano, similar to what Elvis was doing, but even more syncopated, white and from the South. It was unbelievable to hear that record. Then 'Great Balls Of Fire' followed, and 'High School Confidential' was a great record. When you listen to his records, he always sings up, except towards when he got older and the pressures of life got on him. In the beginning, he was always up, you know the ends of everything came up. Little Richard was pushing the shit out of everything but Jerry Lee, he had his syncopation, it was like he floated. He fell out of favour, because he married his cousin - it was a shame, he was still making great records. There's one called 'Loving Up A Storm' and that's equally good. That's on The Sun Years, they're all there. I saw him live in Cardiff in 1962, and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates were there and they were slick... I thought, 'Shit, how's Jerry Lee going to get over this?', because they closed the first half. He came on, and instead of how Johnny Kidd and the Pirates were very aggressive, Jerry Lee was the opposite, he opened up with 'Move On Down The Line' and the band were like [sings] and he just walked on and was like [gestures] showing us the the chord he was going to play. He just sat down at the piano and - boom - went into it. It was like 'Jesus Christ!' You know, it was smooth, it was slick, it was rock & roll but he wasn't like, screaming - he had a different take on it and yet it was rocking."""

"There are certain bands that are hard to talk about, OMD, Simple Minds, where their earlier records were just phenomenal, and later on they made records that were too commercial and not quite as strong as their earlier ones. The first OMD album, Dazzle Ships and Architecture & Morality were flawless. They were beautiful, experimental, inspiring records, then a few years on they were making music for John Hughes movies, and they were good at it and I'm glad that they had success with it, but it wasn't nearly as creatively inspiring as the first three records. Architecture & Morality, I mean it's not hard to overdo the hyperbole, but it's a perfect album, so cohesive, and every song perfectly speaks to the other song, the unapologetic emotional quality of it is really inspiring. Even the artwork by Peter Saville, everything about it is perfectly crafted. One of my very odd musical moments was years ago when I was at South By South West in Austin and OMD were doing a reunion show at a BBQ at three in the afternoon, and they asked me to play bass with them. I found myself playing bass with OMD on 'Enola Gay' at a BBQ at three in the afternoon in Texas. It was one of those moments where you told me that actually I'd just done way too much mescaline and I was currently lying on a bed somewhere and making up the whole thing, I'd believe you. It's a shame that a lot of people came to know of OMD through the last couple of records that were more commercial. It's like Simple Minds, the first five albums are amazing, and then they became a stadium rock band. Now you mention Simple Minds and people think about 'Alive And Kicking' and 'Don't You Forget About Me' which aren't terrible songs, but the earlier stuff was experimental and textural and weird. Maybe someone sees OMD on this list and immediately thinks of a John Hughes movie, maybe they'll be inspired to back and listen to Architecture & Morality."