"Maybe it’s a thing to do with ageing, but I listen to classical music more and more, and there’s just so much. I chose this because I saw it at the Royal Festival Hall, and it was probably the most powerful performance of a piece of music that I’ve ever been to. Its 100 years old now isn’t it? I was reading that the other day and of course there are all those stories about how shocking it was at the time. I wonder how much of it was down to Stravinsky's hype at the time, that this music was making people so upset. I mean, if they were going to the concert they must have known vaguely what to expect. I love the myth around it all. It also does two of my favourite things. Intellectually it’s untouchable theoretically in the way it’s composed and how unrelated it is to anything that went before it and how revolutionary it was, yet when you listen to the music you don’t consider that at all. The reaction to the music has nothing to do with your brain, it’s purely emotional, and if you’re trying to listen to it and analyse it you are missing the point, you've just got to totally open yourself up to it."

"Now, some people give you shit for picking a best of over a studio album but The Who are totally one of those bands. I do not dig any of their albums. The only album that isn’t a hits collection that I can sit through from start to finish is Live At Leeds. On their studio albums there is always some half-arsed concept hung on a few good tunes. But, The Ultimate Collection is… fucking hell. If you’re of a certain age and you play guitar based music, they’re up there with the Beatles to me. You just have to look at the singles, ‘My Generation’, ‘The Kids Are Alright’ all the way through to ‘Pinball Wizard’ and even ‘You Better You Bet’ is fucking good. The thing about best-ofs is right from the time when I was a teenager right up until the point I actually earned some proper money, all I could afford was best-ofs. I’m not interested in David Bowie’s albums, do you know what I mean? Give me ChangesOneBowie and ChangesTwoBowie. When you can only afford to buy one album a fortnight or whatever it’s too much of a gamble to buy an actual album. Give me a best of. It’s the best… of… that person!"

"I got into him a long time ago; again, around the time I was going to university. I think I had a collection that came out around then called Way To Blue. I remember really liking it but perhaps I was too young for it at the time. It wasn’t until a few years later that I went back to it and they’re all just genius. There’s not a bad song on any of those records but I particularly got into the story of him. It’s so sad, you just want to go back in time and try and change it. It must have been so frustrating for him to craft these... I don’t think anyone sounds like Nick Drake and I get furious when people say he’s a kind of folk musician because I just think that’s bullshit. [laughs] Well, maybe it’s not bullshit because he comes from a tradition of songs that have a kind of folk influence in the way that they’re played, and the use of the natural world with stories removed from modern society, I suppose that’s kind of folksy, but for me it’s a bit more, dare I say, a bit more special than that."

"This song was a whole other cool factor for me. There was something so cool about it - the sound of it, the synthesiser and what he was singing about. It made such an impression on me, and I’m in love with Benjamin Orr’s vocal performance, it’s incredible. “A lot of these songs are based on vocal performances and guys that I idolise as having a vocal quality, but I also loved the guitar solo. It was the first solo I ever learned to play and it’s a pretty bitchin’, advanced, badass solo. It’s one of the best, so I was pretty stoked about it, but don’t ask me to play it today! I also learnt a bunch of Squeeze solos, Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford are two more of my favourites and the solo on ""Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)” is unbelievable. “With “Just What I Needed” it’s the solo because I’m a guitar player, the sound of it because I’m an engineer and producer and the lyrics because I’m a songwriter. People who aren’t musicians might be surprised by these songs, but they’ve had a big effect on me. I picked these songs based on being pivotal and this was one of those songs for many reasons. I’m still trying to write that song."

"It was his first great album. All of his early albums have their own sound, and the atmosphere and some kind of other-worldly quality is what first grabbed me. Hunky Dory was where his lyrics got much better. The songs sound very simple, but in terms of the chords they are really complex. ‘Changes’ has got lots of weird things going on but it never sounds muso. It’s his first classic album. What are the standout tracks? It’s easier to say the ones that aren’t. Every day of my life I sing them. ‘Kooks’, ‘Changes’ and ‘Bewlay Brothers’ are my favourites. I like ‘Andy Warhol’ and ‘Queen Bitch’, but I think those are the two that don’t stack up as much. Charisma goes a long way – so people have told me anyway. Even now he doesn’t overdo it. I saw it in a shop in Norris Green, and I used to stare at it for ages, it wasn’t a sexual thing, but I couldn’t stop being lost in the world of his music. It was spiritual, there was nothing else I thought about. It was Bowie was who got me interested in music, then I got into the Velvets and Iggy."