"I'm so excited about being on the same bill as Patti Smith at Field Day! I think it's going to be fucking brilliant as well. I think she's going to be amazing. You can sometimes be disappointed because of all the baggage and preconceptions that an artist can bring from back in the day but I think she'll be a killer. She's going to be all over it and I'm really excited. But yeah, this album was a massive mainstay in our tour bus and throughout our working life and it still is now. I always wanted our band to sound like Patti Smith Group - they've got the piano, they've got the hard and fast edgy guitar, the bass… that's how I wanted Supergrass to sound like. How close did we come to achieving that? Well, there were the odd songs where we had that energy where Danny [Goffey] was on drums and keeping quite simple 4/4 beats and punky beats but without having screaming and distorted guitars all over the place. We had those moments of guitar, bass, piano and drums and we had that energy. I mean, can you imagine Sex Pistols with a piano? And that's what Patti Smith Group did so brilliantly - they had that raw energy. They had that piano but it wasn't used in that flowery way. It's a bit like how Bowie used piano in that rhythmic way. This record is an utter classic. That moment in 'Horses' where it all kicks off, I think we've searched to write our own version of that over the years. It's like, 'Woah! Take me away!'"

"This album is fucking awesome. Right from the moment I heard it. I discovered Iggy and the MC5 through the NME in 1976, after I saw the Sex Pistols in June of '76, and was reading about it. That was the place to go to find out about gigs and whatever. A family friend of mine who was a bit older than me, he was fantastic at finding this stuff, he was the guy that actually took us to the show, Ian – his brother Neil was about my oldest friend, and he took us down there. That is an experience in itself. And then you find out without doubt Iggy really is the godfather of punk. That's one of the best titles. You hear about J.B. being the godfather of soul; Iggy without doubt is the godfather of punk. Again, what's brilliant about Fun House is the engineering, the sound is so heavy, it's just magnificent. His voice, the grooves, everything about it, it's as great as it was when it was released. It – will – never – die. This is an eternal record. I think I might have freaked Iggy out a little. He did a small show in Cannes, during the film festival. It was a tiny gig, but he was awesome. And I'm standing in the front of the audience, literally singing along to every word. He played most of the stuff from that thing, and I don't think he knew who I was or anything, but I'm like bobbing my head, going nuts, it was the first time I'd ever seen him perform live; he's such a great live performer. Obviously the music I make isn't influenced by it, but that doesn't mean to say you can't love it. I have a profound respect for him. I even love Raw Power – the sound is very odd on Raw Power, but that's what's kind of great about it, it sounds so weird. But Fun House is the one that just encapsulates them for me."

"I just knew that this was a classic as soon as I heard it. If I'm going to be really hyper-critical of it, then it's about three songs off from bring a true classic but there are so many great songs on there. It just felt like the first record I'd heard for a long time - maybe since Figure 8 by Elliot Smith - which is a really complete classic album. You know, I was thinking that this was a record that should've been there when I raided my uncle's record collection when I was 13, alongside Neil Young and Patti Smith and JJ Cale and Sex Pistols and The Trials Of Van Occupanther is one of those. That's the highest praise that I can give it; that it should sit amongst those greats. What an amazing record with a really amazing sound. Tim Smith's voice is brilliant to listen to and lyrically it's such an emotive record. You really hear the visual setting that the music is set against and that just pours off the record and out of the grooves. I loved it from the first minute I heard it. And there's something about the aesthetics of it that I really connected with. Technically, I love the bass sound and the sound of the snare and we in Supergrass really gravitated towards that. It's like the first time you hear that snare sound on Air's Moon Safari and we were like: 'That's the snare sound that we really love too!' You know, when you're in a band you look around at other bands. We listened a lot to Elliott Smith when we made Road To Rouen and when you have that connection, then it takes the album to a whole different level. That's what we all felt with the Midlake record, and me and my brother Charlie definitely rate it in the top five records of the last ten or fifteen years."

"I was about fifteen-years-old and I had just started playing drums and somebody played this album in its entirety on the radio. My Dad had a garden centre at the time and I used to sit in the pickup truck listening to the radio – you know, in its own bizarre way [at that age], you just want to be on your own. So I remember being in that van and the radio DJ saying something about AC/DC and they put it on – I was nailed to my seat. And I'm a drummer, I've always liked rock bands and I've got a mid-life crisis band with some friends – we're called The Luddites. We just play three-piece punk or rock. We murder some of the classics for charity – that's how we get away with it. We go from Sex Pistols to Clash to Foo Fighters to Kings of Leon and so on. Really anthemic songs! Those last two bands have got an odd place in a lot of people's music world – certainly that very guitar heavy rock sound of the Foo Fighters – you would be shocked at some of the people who are into this heavy rock sound. Certain people – a mom with three kids for example – are really into this music! But it's all melodically very strong. Where were we? Oh yes, AC/DC. I made a cassette of this album. I used to drum to this album. Phil Rudd was a monster on the drums. He doesn't do anything – he's the rock Ringo. Whatever he's done needs to be done. People take the piss out of Ringo but everything he did was where it should be. How did I change from being a drummer to a singer? I borrowed a guitar from a guy in the band and fumbled through a few chords and tried to write songs and I became the singer because of that."

"On the first Strokes tour we had a Libertines demo on the bus. I remember thinking 'Oh man there's already a British version of The Strokes? That's fast, this is only the first tour!' Not that they were, but that was the perception around them. What is so cool about The Libertines is in fact that they're in that tradition of great British bands that really draw on being British to make a very special version of rock. The Sex Pistols are in that tradition, The Clash, all these really cool English bands that make you want to be some sort of geezer and know what a "two bob cunt" is. So being label mates with The Libertines and becoming friend with them they indoctrinated me into this whole British universe: listening to Chas And Dave, that comedian Tony Hancock and all kinds of weird British shit. In a way they became this vital group that almost channeled Lord Byron or Percy Shelley. They were almost a subculture unto themselves. At a time when England is in such a flux, their music reminds everyone why people love what being British is. The way they re-appropriated Albion and Blake's vision of England, it was just really beautiful. Their version of British, for me as a New Yorker, immediately made me want to learn about London and go to all these places. Their first record was a calling for people to learn about the history of England, their music made you want to educate yourself, but it is also so fucking catchy. I covered their song 'What A Waster' while they were in New York. They were recording 'Don't Look Back Into The Sun' at a studio but they were making these endless demo tapes that eventually appeared as the 'Babyshambles Sessions'. My version of their song was recorded while they were doing those. For me they were a band that birthed a new romantic movement in England."

"Look, I'm a hits only person. When I go see a show, I don't want filler. Unless you're Sonic Youth or Tori Amos, I don't want your B-sides. Hits only. It's so self-indulgent. I picked Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady because I like that it's a little campy and gay. And the harmonies are good. It's that simple. I think with music sometimes it is that simple. It was pop punk, not pop punk as it is now, but it was poppy. I got into punk late because what I thought punk was did not appeal to me at all. I was like I couldn't care less about [whispers conspiratorially] Sex Pistols. But Buzzcocks, Gang Of Four, Wire, that's my jam. Melodic and smart and put together and catchy and the rest of it? I don't care. It's self-indulgent, like you say you don't care what we think of you but, yes you do. Singles Going Steady doesn't take itself too seriously, and it's gay. It's so gay. I think it's cool to think about being gay in the punk scene, I don't think it could have been too easy but to me that's ultimately not giving a fuck. It must be easy to be some straight, white dude and be anti-establishment. Well you're part of the problem, get out of here. You're anti what? What are you talking about? We were so lucky to come along in the 90s, because it was really a turning point for pop culture. Look at Riot Grrl, it made punk a safer place for women, and then Queercore came along and made it a safer place for queers. I think, there is a refuge in punk rock now, but that's the thing why I think the Buzzcocks was more punk than punk, because I don't necessarily think there was a refuge then. I think it probably felt pretty lonely, because you weren't disco, you weren't pop, that's where queer culture, or the gay scene really was, and to be a punk then? I don't think you could seek refuge in that. "