"I just love the songs on this. I’m not into the whole religious aspect of the band but I’ve been a fan since I saw them on Top Of The Pops doing ‘Fire’. The reason that I picked this over Achtung Baby - which is one of my favourite U2 albums from my favourite period of U2 – is that it’s just a massive album for me. When I get time to have a quiet moment on my own, I could sit and play all the songs off this on an acoustic guitar for ages. They’re just great. You don’t like it? I don’t give a fuck! Everyone that I’ve ever known – EVER KNOWN – apart from my wife – hates them. Me and my wife love them. It wasn’t the reason we got married… But everyone else I have ever met from my earliest memory in Manchester to right now talking to you has gone, 'They are fucking shit. They are what’s wrong with music.' For me it’s about the songwriting. If I could write a song like ‘Running To Stand Still’ and ‘Nobody’s Home’ by Pink Floyd then I could die happy with never writing another song again."

"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."

"I remember seeing Kurt Cobain wearing a Daniel Johnston t-shirt when I was young and it looking so weird that I wanted to know what it was, but I only really got into him in 2007 when Gallows were playing in Austin, Texas, where they've got the big mural to him at SXSW. I saw the record in the store next door and fell in love with it. It was very pure; there was nothing to it, just great, genius songwriting that's full of emotion. Then I watched the documentary, The Devil And Daniel Johnston, and became a fan for life. The man is fairly tortured, but always undeniably himself. I just love musicians who are themselves, there's so much to be said for that. 'Outsider Music' is a tough term because it implies he's not welcome here, but those types of characters are beacons, they're the people that other musicians to go out and do what they to do. It's musicians like Daniel Johnston that inspire the Kurt Cobains of the world, who then inspire a generation of people to pick up a guitar. I think it's insider music."

"Having lost Robert Altman in 2006, it’s so moving to hear his commentary on this wild, dreamy movie. I saw this film in the theaters when it was released and always loved it. I don’t care what anyone says, Robert Altman has directed more interesting roles for women than just about any director alive or dead. On his commentary, Altman reveals how all Millie’s diary entries, the menus she makes up for her “dinner parties” (which she’s “famous for”), and even her eye makeup were created by actress Shelley Duvall herself. I could never get enough of Janice Rule, and seeing her in this movie, so beautiful and soulful, I get the same ache as when I see Warren Oates on-screen . . . knowing they’re gone and I will never get that chance to work with either one of them. So Janice Rule’s performance here is all the more precious to me. Sissy Spacek is able to go from completely naturalistic to totally surreal . . . and still hold her character—it’s amazing. She was very young and novice at the time, yet she completely pulls it off brilliantly."

"I was working on a film with another writer friend that didn’t happen. It was going to happen in Europe if it happened, and I had been scouting for it, and I saw this film when I was thinking about that movie, and that maybe kind of bled into First Cow. Suddenly First Cow did come together, and they were both in the same period, and they both were sort of films of peasants in their little hutches. [In Wooden Clogs], this is like a little community of workers who are working on the property of their landlord; the Chief Factor in First Cow isn’t really a property owner, but he’s more like the CEO of Firestone going to another continent and using all the resources; he’s holding this kind of power in the region. There were some thematic things, but again, it’s people in their little houses working all day – always sewing, fixing things, feeding the animals – and then around the candlelight at night telling stories and cooking in their fires and everything is very tactile. All the hay, the thatch roofs, the wooden floors, all those things – the chores, the chores, the chores."

"I forget who turned us on to this, but it came out in the era of films like Shaft and Superfly. The guy from Harlem is supposed to be this cool suave detective fella’ who found that there were too many cool, fly detectives in Harlem and moved to Florida. That’s the whole thing. Honest to God, it’s the kind of thing — if Tim Meadows saw this, it could have been one of his characters, because nothing ruffles him but he acts like a spaz and an idiot so many times during the film that you can’t help but laugh. He’s always trying to be super suave at the same time, though, so it’s amazing. I think that it’s one of those films where the producers hired a lot of friends and family members to do onscreen performances, because there’s at least one moment when you can tell the guy on camera, he doesn’t know a single one of his lines. And yet he flubs his way through what you think is ostensibly what he’s supposed to say, and then gets to the end and that’s all he does in the film."

"I'd never heard of Connie Converse before I saw Anna & Elizabeth – this amazing American duo – singing one of her songs, Father Neptune. I'm always drawn to sea shanties, but I remember thinking, wow, where does this come from? Her songs felt very different to me, but also familiar – I like to think it's me. ‘One By One' is about a woman walking in the dark, and it's heartbreaking, but so beautiful. ‘Trouble Man In The Sky' is about her falling in love with Orion, and it all going wrong. Even in her humorous and philosophical moments there's an underlying sadness, which for a folk singer is very attractive [laughs]. And then she left home one day, left her family a letter, saying, I'm going, just let me be. So ambiguous. Then she wasn't heard of again. But even before that, he's a fascinating songwriter. Her songs reminded me of Molly Drake's. They're so unusual, but so human. And I'm not a songwriter, I'm a singer, so I'm always about finding songs to sing. Ones full of intelligence, humour and melancholy that feel a bit apart, they always speak to me.
"

"This was after a trip to Brazil when I went down there with my mum and my sister and we did some shows. It was an intense moment in my life because Kate had been diagnosed with cancer and her health was pretty precarious. We saw there was a fairly decent run for the next couple of months – the treatment was kind of working and she was feeling relatively okay – so I booked some gigs in Brazil. We proceeded to have one of the most beautiful, decadent, life-affirming trips I ever took in my life, and it was during that little working vacation that I discovered Tim Maia's music, and I've been a fan ever since. He sadly passed away in the 1990s. I love that he represents a real amalgam of so many cultures, as a lot of great Brazilian artists do: African, Spanish, Portuguese, he's just this melting pot of great culture and music and also tremendously individual at the same time. He is certainly well known in large sections of the world, but is a bit of a kept secret in the West."

"My father was a film buff. He instilled in me an appreciation of the art of movies. He felt that there was no cinema artist greater than Kurosawa. At a very young age he took me to see Throne of Blood and Seven Samurai. Since then I’ve seen Seven Samurai over fifty times, in theaters, on VHS, laserdisc, and DVD. The latest Criterion edition is my favorite version of my favorite action movie. I love all the extras, especially the history of the samurai, which really enhances the movie’s historical context. In the second season of Heroes, we did a story line set in seventeenth-century Japan. The Seven Samurai box set was an invaluable resource for the costume and art department. About half of our crew watched it and were really inspired by what they saw. It’s one of those movies that I can’t turn off. One minute of viewing and I’m hooked. I’ve heard many people say that about the first two Godfather films, but for me Seven Samurai is the one that lures me into watching multiple hours of a movie I know by heart."

"[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."