"I was just being honest. The most listened-to records in my collection, I'm just astounded at the extraordinary thing that they did. I'm from a generation of people who listen to music, or who listened, past tense, to music. I really wanted to belong to it, you know, you'd paint an album sleeve on the back of your coat to say this is who I am and what I listen to. And I was very happy throughout my teen years to be defined by what I was listening to. And I wanted the world to know about that, claiming a band as my own. I was a total fan when they did what I still consider to be the bravest thing that any band in rock music has done, which was after creating this amazing, successful commercial record that nevertheless is so incredibly creative and artistic, to then go further into the arts and completely disregard the fiscal side of what they had done with the success of The Colour Of Spring."

"After getting my brain stretched by Kubrick, the next “favorite director” I started to discover as a preteen and teen was Nicolas Roeg. Like 2001 before it, The Man Who Fell to Earth was sci-fi that reached out and grabbed my mind, spun it around, and made me want to see it over and over again. Roeg’s use of music and surreal imagery made the film both a visceral and an intellectual experience simultaneously—a heartbreaking puzzle—still my favorite kind of film experience. Don’t Look Now is probably my favorite scary movie of all time, and a model for the now overused and underachieved expression “a smart genre film.” Now, that might mean a movie that’s marginally less dopey than most mainstream films that deal with the occult, but in the days of this and Rosemary’s Baby, etc., the emphasis was much more on smart than on genre. And Walkabout is an amazing piece of nearly wordless visual storytelling that left me desperately in love with Jenny Agutter for years afterward."

"After getting my brain stretched by Kubrick, the next “favorite director” I started to discover as a preteen and teen was Nicolas Roeg. Like 2001 before it, The Man Who Fell to Earth was sci-fi that reached out and grabbed my mind, spun it around, and made me want to see it over and over again. Roeg’s use of music and surreal imagery made the film both a visceral and an intellectual experience simultaneously—a heartbreaking puzzle—still my favorite kind of film experience. Don’t Look Now is probably my favorite scary movie of all time, and a model for the now overused and underachieved expression “a smart genre film.” Now, that might mean a movie that’s marginally less dopey than most mainstream films that deal with the occult, but in the days of this and Rosemary’s Baby, etc., the emphasis was much more on smart than on genre. And Walkabout is an amazing piece of nearly wordless visual storytelling that left me desperately in love with Jenny Agutter for years afterward."

"In my formative years, there was Roxy Music, David Bowie and Cockney Rebel. And I loved Roxy and Bowie, but Cockney Rebel had a big part in my heart, even though they didn’t become as massive as the other two. Seeing Steve Harley in a bowler hat on Top Of The Pops doing ‘Judy Teen’ really sticks in my mind. There are loads of really great songs on that album, like ‘Mr Soft’, and I love the whole vibe of it. He’s an underrated lyricist, like Bryan Ferry. This was one of those albums you’d walk around the playground with, under your arm, to show that you were a bit of a Jack The Lad. And he sang with this nasal whine, and I’m sure old Johnny Rotten borrowed a bit of that. And I’m sure there’s a bit in one of the songs where he goes “DESTROY!”, and I’m sure Johnny Rotten got a smidge of that. And he didn’t hide his London accent either, which definitely resonated."

"It's just fucking mental! I saw it in the cinema at the time and I remember getting up to leave and then the hand coming out of the grave! So great. It goes back to what I was saying about a lot of teen films being about the different kid, who stands apart from their peers. That always resonated with me. I wasn't unpopular as a teenager, I was fine. I wasn't bullied or anything, but I did stand apart from my school mates, because I didn't want to go along with the peer culture in every single sense. I didn't like people telling me what to do, I was too independent. So films about outsiders are always tops in my book. And of course poor old Carrie is a text book example of evangelistic religiosity turning sour. It's the most amazing revenge film ever. I interviewed Kurt Cobain and he said 'I'm the guy that would be most likely to kill everyone at a high school dance' and I said, 'you mean like Carrie?' He really liked that."

"After getting my brain stretched by Kubrick, the next “favorite director” I started to discover as a preteen and teen was Nicolas Roeg. Like 2001 before it, The Man Who Fell to Earth was sci-fi that reached out and grabbed my mind, spun it around, and made me want to see it over and over again. Roeg’s use of music and surreal imagery made the film both a visceral and an intellectual experience simultaneously—a heartbreaking puzzle—still my favorite kind of film experience. Don’t Look Now is probably my favorite scary movie of all time, and a model for the now overused and underachieved expression “a smart genre film.” Now, that might mean a movie that’s marginally less dopey than most mainstream films that deal with the occult, but in the days of this and Rosemary’s Baby, etc., the emphasis was much more on smart than on genre. And Walkabout is an amazing piece of nearly wordless visual storytelling that left me desperately in love with Jenny Agutter for years afterward."