"Again, a similar time in my life; I was listening to a few American psychedelic bands. There was a band called Long Ryders who did a track called ‘Looking for Lewis and Clark’ that I played, learned, used to sit and sing although I had no idea what the lyrics were. I was pretty much singing nonsense, although the song did get me into Tim Hardin! Anyway, they were one of a few bands [that were important to me], like Opal, Screaming Trees and Rain Parade, but Rain Parade was the one that changed me. This album was like an explosion in my mind. I don’t know what program it was, but I saw them perform ‘No Easy Way Down’ on TV, a filmed concert, and it was like, ‘Here is something I can fully get behind.’ It’s a slow, sludgy, drone rock anthem; the guitarist is doing the Kevin Shields tremolo thing with the guitar, but in 1985. It’s just incredible, and I have to say would have been pretty influential on the early Ride sound for sure."

"Let’s see… American Graffiti. People have constantly been telling me to watch it, because they’re like, “It’s teenagers — you would love it, it’s high school,” and I never did. Then recently, on a flight home from Australia — which is, you know, a really long flight, and when you’re on a flight you have less oxygen and all of your emotions are heightened — I started watching it for the first time. And I was like, you know, it’s nice, but I feel like I’m enjoying it from a distance; it’s not really relatable, like “Gee, life sure was different back then and blah, blah, blah.” And then there was this scene between Ron Howard and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend — like, they’re in the midst of breaking up and they’re at the school dance, and then they’re called to slow dance in front of everyone, in the spotlight — and she just starts crying onto his shoulder and he holds her tighter, and she’s like “Go to Hell”, and I just started bawling."