"Another one that I was very inspired by and touched by in all its ugliness and brutality, but its daring story structure, was Gasper Noe’s Irréversible, which is an odd one, but I just found the idea of starting at the end and telling it backwards as such a conceit. And the world it took you in, and the way it took you in, I felt that was something new that I’d never seen before. It’s a journey through hell, starting at the end and working backwards to the beginning. So it’s sort of Paris’ underground, and it has a rape scene in it of Monica Belluci that’s one of the most frank, most brutal… You know, people kid about rape, you just say, “Yeah, I think you should watch this movie and see what rape really looks like. You should see how violent and terrible it is and then you’ll not make any jokes anymore.” It’s so balls-out, this film. It’s so unafraid. It’s so in-your-face. It’s one of those movies that, once you see [it], you will never forget it, and it keeps coming back to you and back to you. It’s not necessarily a pleasant thing, but it was definitely a filmmaker who said, “I don’t give a f— what anyone thinks. Anybody. Not the critics, not my friends, not the finance producers, nobody. I’m just going out to tell my story the way I want to tell it.” Vincent Cassel is so great in it, and Belluci. It’s really a very powerful movie."

"I have a weird relationship with David Bowie. There's a part of me that didn't want to include him out of bloody-mindedness, not out of any disrespect to him but because I get sick of talking about David Bowie, what with all those comparisons we drew. People said that Suede were like a mixture of The Smiths and Bowie, when actually there are all these other comparisons that could have been made. But I can't get away from the fact that he is a huge influence on what I do, and you can't get away from the fact that he simply is one of the greatest artists of all time and he made some of the greatest music of the 1970s, and six or seven unbelievably good records. Low is just one of them, I could have chosen Hunky Dory, Space Oddity, Scary Monsters, Young Americans. But I've chosen Low because I love the mystery of it, even though it's not his best song album - there's no 'Quicksand' or anything like that. You can tell that he's shifting, and looking for something else. My favourite track on it is 'Warszawa', with its amazing Wagnerian stirring in the music. Suede's 'Europe Is Our Playground' had a sense that it was a version of that. I love the way Low doesn't explain itself, and that it's a really odd record. I love the chronology of it, the fact that three of my favourite records ever were all made around the same time: Low, Never Mind The Bollocks and Music For Airports."

"There’s a funny story here. When I was with Dave Roth he would always talk about Tom Waits in a very respectful way which was rare. I never heard Dave speak reverently about anybody and I didn’t even know who Tom Waits was. I had never come across his music. But all through the years, Dave would always say, ‘Yeah, like Tom Waits’ and I’d just say ‘Yeah, yeah!’ And then I was on tour with Whitesnake and there was this band opening up called Bad English whose singer was a guy called John Waite and I thought “Wow, this was what Dave was talking about? Hmm, it’s kind of strange because it’s not the kind of singer that Dave would be reverent about.” And then I realized I had the wrong guy… So I went to the store and bought about twenty Tom Waits albums and (one of them was Mule Variations), and I remember that I was listening to all these records, getting three tracks in and literally throwing them away. Then I put Mule Variations on and stopped dead in my tracks. It completely leveled me and I can say – out of everybody I’ve talked about – Tom Waits is my favorite artist now. I completely resonate deeply with his music, his voice and his lyrics; I buy everything he ever does. He’s one of those guys who are totally at one with the creative element with no excuses or concerns about what’s going on around him – totally uncompromising.A lot of people think they’re uncompromising, but they’re not…"

"Last summer we were playing some versions of Dark Side of the Moon that were more like our versions, that we did with my nephew [Star Death and White Dwarves] and Henry Rollins and Peaches. This summer we're playing another version that has some of the Wizard of Oz themes and ideas running through it, so that'll be a lot of fun. It's just great emotional music. Judy Garland, when they picked her to be the singer, and the embodiment of that longing... she's so perfect for that Dorothy character. There are bits on the Wizard of Oz soundtrack CD that I have - and it's an old CD, maybe 15, 20 years old - when you take the movie away and just hear her singing, and there's a song where she cries. I've put it on to a room full of people and they tear up, it's so real. There's not many pieces of music that can do that. She's so perfect, but it's not just the singing - she's an actor. She's on camera at the same time, she's wearing this ridiculous costume, there's fake backdrops behind her, there's a lot of elements that have gone into this thing, and so for her to be so pure, so potent: it's uncanny. That's why that movie is so good. There's a lot of fantastical, ridiculous, musical movies out there that, to me, are nauseating. Wizard of Oz should be one of those - out-dated, overdone, with horrible music – but it rises above what it's made of. It's unbelievable."

"I was playing Scott 3 quite a lot at Christmas and there’s something about this song that’s more Christmassy than Christmas songs. It’s just kind of magical, that’s how I’d describe ‘Copenhagen’, it’s magical. “I think this song is my highlight from Scott 3, there’s something about ‘Copenhagen’ for me. I think it’s the instrumentation and the orchestration on it, it’s utterly gorgeous, the sound of it is really, really beautiful and then there’s his voice over the top, the lyrics and his delivery. I guess it’s rooted in that crooner area but there’s a tenderness to it. ‘Copenhagen’ has a delicacy to it and I’ve always loved the vulnerability of it as well, like there’s crack in his voice. I’m just in love with this song. “I think a lot of people like Scott Walker songs because they touch on stylistic elements that could be seen as more commercial or just normal or standard in some way, but they’re not. When you hear how he delivers this there’s an off-kilter feel to it, an oddness to it. It’s got a beauty but it’s not really an obvious beauty and he manages to walk that line really well, between darkness and beauty. “That’s another thing that I love about the whole album Scott 3, it is quite dark, but it’s dark and beautiful and those two things are something that I’m really in tune with, a sort of dark beauty and that’s what Scott Walker does really well."

"I could have chosen I, II, III, IV, Houses Of The Holy or Physical Graffiti. Not totally sure why I chose this one, but it starts with ‘The Song Remains The Same’ and ends with ‘The Ocean’, so it almost doesn’t matter what’s in the middle! With those bookends, it was always going to be a classic. But of course there are things I like in the middle, or else it would be a shit sandwich. Every time I get on guitar I play ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’. I’m not a fan of ‘The Crunge’. ‘Dancing Days’ is like an early version of ‘Kashmir’ and the album’s got some reggae on there. ‘No Quarter’ is a great thing to wake up in the morning to because it sort of builds and builds and builds and then sort of scares you out of bed. And ‘The Ocean’ is what I always play on the drum kit - I think if anything Led Zeppelin is defining what rock drums are supposed to be. And Jimmy is a god – a golden god! And hands down my favourite guitar player of all time. I could just turn off the sound and watch his fingers I’m that obsessed. He never seems to play the same thing twice when you’re looking at live footage. He’s always raucous and doing battle with his guitar, instead of just commanding it. I like to watch people that don’t have amps that do the work for them."