"I think this is the first Byrds album I owned. I bought it because it had all the singles on it. When I was a kid I didn't have a lot of money so I'd probably go and buy a band's greatest hits album, just to give a taste of the band – I love singles and greatest hits albums. I love this record because every time I hear it, it's joyous, it's transcendental and it makes my spirit soar. Whenever the Beatles and Byrds released 45s, they were all in mono because they were more powerful in terms of mixes. I watched repeats of Ready Steady Go! in the mid-'80s and was entranced by performances of 'Mr Tambourine Man', and also when The Beatles covered it too. The Byrds helped us dream away the greyness and bleakness of Glasgow and the repressiveness of Thatcherist Britain. The Byrds are better than The Beatles for me. I'm more of a Stones guy myself, but The Byrds just portrayed this image of beautiful Californian transcendent sound. That run between '65 and '67 in this compilation of A-sides and B-sides is unbeatable. I almost don't want to use this word, but it's a perfect record and basically formed the foundation of Primal Scream."

"This is a record I love so much. I remember the first night that I heard this I put it on and I was working late on some visual stuff and I left it on for about seven hours and I just didn't want to change it, and I had it on random shuffle so it just kept coming up with surprises. Track two ['Keep The Dog Quiet'] starts with the oddest note that any song could start with. It really is an off note. The main thing about this album is that I'd never heard anything remotely like it – when I heard it I just thought that it was really one of a kind. Still is, actually. This harmonic danger that he puts himself in, of just creating a world that is sonically so tense or dangerous. It's the opposite of secure or comforting but it's not the dangerous of someone like Boulez where, to me, it's sort of contrived danger – "Ooh, wouldn't it be original to put this like this?" It's not that. It's got something that's more intuitive and organic than that. It's having a taste for the other side and a feeling of, "Wouldn't it be nice to be in a place like that?" I love the darkness of it."

"Here’s another film of which so much has been said and written over the years that you wind up thinking: There’s nothing left to say . . . But of course, that’s always a cop-out because it’s never true—there’s always more to say about a film, to see it again is to see it anew, to see it in 2014 as opposed to 1960 is a very different experience, and for some people it will literally be brand-new (to those people, I would say, simply: See it! Now!!). It’s difficult to think of a film that has a more powerful understanding of the way that people are bound to the world around them, by what they see and touch and taste and hear. I realize that L’avventura is supposed to be about characters who are “alienated” from their surroundings, but that word has been used so often to describe this film and Antonioni’s films in general that it more or less shuts down thought. In fact, I see it, more than ever, as a movie about people in spiritual distress: their spiritual signals are disrupted, which is why they see the world around them as hostile and unforgiving. Visually, sensually, thematically, dramatically, in every way, it’s one of the great works of cinema."

"This album was a statement – here we are, Deep Purple. I think it changed a lot of musicians and the way they looked at music, in the same way Zeppelin did. But this rang British bells. They had other great albums, but this was the first one I got into – it’s great from beginning to end. Before this line-up, with Ian Gillan, they weren’t so heavy, then they went funky with Glenn Hughes, because he was a big R&B singer, though David Coverdale’s singing was brilliant. Come Taste the Band was when it went truly funky, after Ritchie Blackmore left. We toured with Blackmore in Rainbow a few times – nice guy one minute, then the next he could be odd. Once, someone threw a lighter on stage and he walked off and went back to the hotel. Other times he would play all night. He was very moody. First time we played with them was Donnington but we didn’t have much to do with them. One time we toured with them we did two shows and went down really well and they kicked us off – we turned up at Wembley for the next show and the gates were closed and we were told to go home."