"Now, some people give you shit for picking a best of over a studio album but The Who are totally one of those bands. I do not dig any of their albums. The only album that isn’t a hits collection that I can sit through from start to finish is Live At Leeds. On their studio albums there is always some half-arsed concept hung on a few good tunes. But, The Ultimate Collection is… fucking hell. If you’re of a certain age and you play guitar based music, they’re up there with the Beatles to me. You just have to look at the singles, ‘My Generation’, ‘The Kids Are Alright’ all the way through to ‘Pinball Wizard’ and even ‘You Better You Bet’ is fucking good. The thing about best-ofs is right from the time when I was a teenager right up until the point I actually earned some proper money, all I could afford was best-ofs. I’m not interested in David Bowie’s albums, do you know what I mean? Give me ChangesOneBowie and ChangesTwoBowie. When you can only afford to buy one album a fortnight or whatever it’s too much of a gamble to buy an actual album. Give me a best of. It’s the best… of… that person!"

"Then each one becomes more difficult as I go along. On the Waterfront — you go straight to Marlon Brando. It was a good picture all around, a good script, and Kazan directed it brilliantly. And the shooting on location, I would assume they would have never shot in a studio — the look of the film gives a great sense of realism, that you are there on the waterfront, you’re there in cold weather, you can see the breath coming out of the actors mouths. I would say it’s probably — probably — Marlon’s best performance, although you would have to give a nod to Godfather."

"Already their second studio album, they had scored hit singles with 'Denis Denis' (I first heard that on my Grandad's window cleaning round) and the sublime 'I'm Always Touched By Your (Presence Dear)', still one of my favourites to this very day. As a whole album, it sounds like a spy movie soundtrack with 'Contact In Red Square' and 'Kidnapper'. Highlights for me include 'I'm On E' and 'Love At The Pier'. The very definition of late 70s New York pop art and punk glamour; Deborah Harry, for me, will remain forever the Queen of New Wave."

"A film soundtrack so good no film is deserving of it. I've been listening to this record for 20 years. Eno's one of the forefathers of using the studio as an instrument. He gets credit for that, but actually maybe he reduced what pop music was – produced, studio pop music into its essence, to create this ambient music. He's definitely someone who I fell in love with as I was getting into a lot of new approaches in music, all of his music I really love. Another Green World, Music For Films, Apollo - those are the ones I really took to. There is an odd parallel between this record and the Morricone record for me – because once you really get into this stuff, you think "What film would be worthy of this kind of music?". You can't really imagine it. I don't know how liberal he is about licensing his music, but I wonder if any film has dared to license this music– because that's a tall order."

"This one just hits the spot with me. I don't know. I found the first album [Innerspeaker] too derivative of stuff I was familiar with. I loved it, don't get me wrong, and a true test of whether or not I love a record is if I bring it into the studio and try it on the guys, because they are unequivocal in their tastes. So if I take a record in and say listen to this, if one of them doesn't like it, it makes me like it a little less. So I've got to be really sure that a band is great and the guys will love it before I even chance taking it near them. I took the first album in and said, "This sounds like a lot of stuff like you love already." But it's punchy. It's from Australia, and it is amazing."