"""Great songs. I had it on 8-track in my car. I heard 'Fingertips' first, and I thought ""Shit! Who's playing harmonica on that for a start off?"" So those Motown records were happy records, great for dancing and parties and things. But then it got deeper, more personal, which is why I picked that record. I think people should try things and if you have something to say, something in you, then do it. That can happen in different times of your life, and I think for him, he had that to prove - you know he had done the jolly records, and wanted to get deep. And he did. Favourite song would be 'Blame It On The Sun'. It was different, ""but my heart blames it on me"" - blame it on this, blame it on that, but at the end of that day, my heart blames it on me. I love clever lyrics... and its a simple story but the way he put it together was very clever."

"Jonathan Cott is somebody we all know in our circle to be a quiet genius. Rolling Stone asked him to interview us a few times. This book is a collection of those interviews. Nothing more. Reading it, I thought “Wow, we weren’t bad at all.” Because most writers wanted to sensationalize us, thinking that if they didn’t do that, it might be boring – and nobody would buy the book! So their ‘interviews’ usually came out nothing like what we were like. I have never recommended any books about John and Yoko. But this book made me choke up. I heard John in my ears and felt him in my heart. This is a good book for Lennon fans. And I.. Well, I come out as the second banana (okay, okay!) You will get an inkling of two people in love, sometimes making daring remarks, yet not forgetting to protect each other in the interviews. In fact, this is really the way we were, folks! Have a good read."

"I love all of Stanley Donen’s movies and I wanna put one of them in there. I’ll put Two for the Road, which I love. Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Donen’s movie. Those would be my five. Today. [Laughs] Tomorrow I’m gonna pick Claude Lelouch — And Now My Love. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that. It is amazing. It’s with an actress named Marthe Keller who made Bobby Deerfield with Al Pacino. And Now My Love is the story of two people who never meet until the end of the movie, and the protagonist is a kid who is a thief and gets sent to jail and learns how to use the camera in jail — and goes from making porno movies to making, you know, great movies, like Truffaut and Godard and Lelouch and the French new Wave. It’s really the best love story, and he’s an unsung hero of cinema, Claude Lelouch. Actually, that would be tied for Two for the Road — that way I get a sixth choice, and I’m greedy. [Laughs] Tie it. That’s a tie."

"I love all of Stanley Donen’s movies and I wanna put one of them in there. I’ll put Two for the Road, which I love. Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Donen’s movie. Those would be my five. Today. [Laughs] Tomorrow I’m gonna pick Claude Lelouch — And Now My Love. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that. It is amazing. It’s with an actress named Marthe Keller who made Bobby Deerfield with Al Pacino. And Now My Love is the story of two people who never meet until the end of the movie, and the protagonist is a kid who is a thief and gets sent to jail and learns how to use the camera in jail — and goes from making porno movies to making, you know, great movies, like Truffaut and Godard and Lelouch and the French new Wave. It’s really the best love story, and he’s an unsung hero of cinema, Claude Lelouch. Actually, that would be tied for Two for the Road — that way I get a sixth choice, and I’m greedy. [Laughs] Tie it. That’s a tie."

"This is a compilation of Zakir playing different concerts, and it blew my mind when I was 16. Its one of the albums I've listened to 1000 times. It's bizarre that that would be something I'd listen to so many times, because it's so sparse - there's only the tabla and occasionally one other instrument, but never more than two at any one time. I once got to see him play with John McLaughlin, they really opened up my whole understanding of rhythm. I felt like my brain was getting bigger, it felt like I was learning about music. It's probably the most sophisticated rhythm I've heard from any country at any time, but it's not show-offy and designed to impress you technically. It has so much soul, it's such passionate music. Some people can't stand listening to it, but it's one of those albums that I could be in a terrible state but still happy to hear it. It relaxes me. That album really opened me up to listening to Ali Farka Touré, Indian classical musicians and so much more."

"I was aware of Bill Callahan through Smog and that, but I think these latest records that he's done are amazing. They're quite abstract in a way, it's really quite something, the lyrics are really good but the music is also really imaginative and the song structures are quite weird. He definitely doesn't stick to the pop song structure that I was talking about earlier on, but it is melodic, it's not atonal or anything. His records have a natural, very close sound, but it isn't straight folk or anything like that, the instruments are acoustic but then he goes off into these different realms. I think the latest record, that I'm just trying to get my head around at the moment, continues that. He's really thought of it as an album, it's a double and it's split up into four sides, and I know that when he was letting people know about it they released a side at a time, so it's conceived as those four or five songs sitting together as a suite. It's the best record I've heard in ages."

"’She’s Always a Woman’ is a good complement to ‘Something’ I think and lyrically they compare to each other. For me, Billy Joel is hands-down one of the best lyricists of all time. He came up singing in bars and he’s about to have his 100th sold-out show in Madison Square Garden, which I hope to go to! “When I listen to this song I obviously think about the closest women in my life, the people that I respect the most, but especially my Mother. Me and my mom would listen to this song together when I was growing up. It’s one of those songs that I can remember the exact place I was when I first heard it, and it was in the kitchen with her. “Thinking about my mom when I was a kid, she would go through all the different contrasts described in the lyrics - she’d be hot and cold and angry, but then soft. For me, the title lyric reflects how she’ll always be amazing in my eyes. It’s a really respectful but playful song."

"When Peeping Tom was released in 1960 it was savaged by critics who’d seen the film at a special press screening. Those British critics must have been outraged with Michael Powell, whom they had trusted as a director who would reinforce their British identity and value system. That trust must have been completely broken by this scathing indictment of voyeurism and extreme violence. There are many similarities between this and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, released the same year, and Hitchcock shrewdly avoided press screening his film after having seen Powell’s fate just a few months before. Powell’s career was over, with the exception of a few obscure projects, but the culture of slasher films was just beginning. And whether people realized it or not, this was ground zero. Critical reappraisal of Peeping Tom has secured the film where it belongs, in the category of crucially important cinema. Personally, I prefer Powell’s film to Hitchcock’s, but both should be regarded as examples of great horror cinema that demands critical thought and analysis."