"If you wanna talk about soul music, I was a big Motown fan and I came a bit later to Otis Redding, but he just had that bit more edge. Obviously it wasn’t rock, but he could do a Motown song, like ‘My Girl’, but with everything roughed-up. I remember reading that when they recorded it, he’d do three or four takes of each track, and they’d all be different, and you could have used any one of them. And you can hear that: it’s like jazz, almost, these wild interpretations. He was in his prime, and that band was in its prime, Steve Cropper was really flying, and there’s nothing much more to say about it, just an extremely powerful album."

"He's new to me, a Londoner, and relatively recent. Again I fall back on the challenge of digging through so many day-to-day musical releases in that grandiose search for something satisfying. This came as a pleasant surprise, without any backstory whatsoever. I first came as a visitor to London in the ‘70s and it was a period of discovery. London was probably the liveliest place to experience something new. Here it's probably the lyrical content and a consistency that strikes me most. Some people can even find messaging musical offerings that have no singer whatsoever: it's messaging. I think that's a good word. 

I was just wrapping up an appearance where I bumped into the great guitarist Steve Cropper from Booker T. & The M.G.'s and of course they were the backing band for so many of the great artists on the Stax label. I said, ""Gee, Steve, the Stax records had a remarkable sound. Release by release they had a consistency you could identify. How did you dream up the idea?"" And he said, ""Well… we didn't. I agree that the Stax records have a recognisable character. But the studio in Memphis was in one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods. To avoid having the gear stolen after a probable break-in, we nailed everything to the floor!""

"The Blues Brothers was a big movie for me, because I was about 13 to 14 years old, and it was my first introduction to James Brown, my first introduction to Aretha Franklin. I knew about Murph and the Magic Tones, which was made up of Booker T and the MGs, essentially. Steve Cropper and “Duck” Dunn, the two guys in there, they were two members of Booker T and the MGs, and then the drummer, you know, he’s got one of my favorite lines in movie history; his name’s Willie Hall. There’s this great line where Willie Hall goes, “Jake, Elwood, you’re out of prison, things are lookin’ good for you. You got the money you owe us, mother f***er?” That’s Willie Hall. He actually plays at my kids’ birthday parties here in Memphis, Tennessee. But, it was a movie that just had the… I mean, my dad and I watched that, and the whole scene where the nun is just beating them up; I’ve never seen my dad laugh so hard. It’s an electrifying, fun movie, and Steven Spielberg makes a cameo at the end of it."