"I thought I don't like it as much as the one I mentioned before, and maybe I still don't, but then once I heard it in the 'phones again, there's something. Then I was listening to that one a lot in the car when I was driving around LA. It just opens your mind. It's undeniable music, untouchable music. Those three people, you just can't really touch them. If you were supposed to pick the greatest musician in the world, I suppose I would have to say John Coltrane. But they're all lumped together because obviously Alice Coltrane does things that John Coltrane can't; same with Pharoah Sanders, it's an extension of John Coltrane. They were put on this planet, they were special beings. I'd appreciated jazz since high school, I played in the jazz band. Then I got some jazz records and enjoyed them, for sure. Growing up, I think the Miles Davis later records hit me first, when I was a late teen, early twenties, Bitches Brew, the classics like Kind Of Blue, and then someone in Boston that I knew turned me on to In A Silent Way, which I really like, it had that Fender Rhodes on it and Chick Corea. But then I read the Miles Davis autobiography, circa 2004: that's like a lesson in jazz in a way, in his cocky way; he saw it all. I remember when I was in Boston, I bought this Thelonius Monk record, Underground, and there's a scatty song on there called 'In Walked Bud' and that always blew my mind. I got heavy back into jazz, and then back into Coltrane circa 2005, 06, 07, I just had some resurgence recently."

"I had an English teacher in high school. You know how every high school has a super hip teacher? Mine was this guy named Leonard Krill. I had been a big fan of David Bowie, and I think Talking Heads had just put out Remain In Light, and of course I knew Brian Eno because he he worked with Bowie and produced Talking Heads and Roxy Music. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts came out and I couldn't afford to buy it, but Leonard Krill loaned it to me so I could tape it. It was again one of those records that I didn't fully understand, because all the vocals come from these weird, disparate sources. I kind of thought because I was listening to a David Byrne and Brian Eno record I would hear David Byrne and Brian Eno's vocals, that it'd sound like one of the records they'd made. On the first listen I didn't quite get it, but after that it became one of my favourite records. In 1999 when I put out the album Play, I was doing some interviews and people were asking where did I get the idea of putting other people's old vocals onto rhythmic music, and I said 'it all started with My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. Without that album I would never ever have had the idea to sample old vocals and put them on my tracks'. It was a direct inspiration - in a really simple way I was copying my heroes. I can't think of any person who has affected modern music more than Brian Eno. If you invented a fictional character like Brian Eno it'd be almost unbelievable."

"I grew up with a lot of my dad's reggae records. I used to always buy the compilations, the Reggae Hits volumes, Ragga Ragga Ragga! We always listened to music in the car and “Murder She Wrote” really captured everything that was great about ‘90s dancehall music. The melodies were right, the emceeing was just the right tone, and the beat itself was of an era of dancehall that I loved so much, from listening to sound systems like Kilimanjaro and Addis. “What I've really enjoyed, having been in this for a minute now, is to see how styles and trends and music are cyclical. I used to think all that was BS; “Oh yeah, don't worry, this is gonna come back round”, but when I start to think, I guess it was around 2015 that there was this new sound everyone was talking about called 'Afrobeats'. I was like “Let's check this out” and to me it's ‘90s dancehall with a twist. You know what I mean? And now we've got Diadora, Kappa, Fila, all these brands that kind of had a moment, and all of a sudden it's retro, it's vintage. It's like “Wow, this is happening in front of my face.” “So to have that wisdom of what those songs were about is exciting for me. I can go in the studio and I can draw samples from a ‘90s dancehall tune, that, if you didn't grow up during that time might be lost in the vaults, because you wouldn't even know about Jigsy King, Sanchez, Beres Hammond and old school dub reggae. “Now I can pull out my tracksuit and people are like 'Mate, where'd you get that?' and I'm like '1990', this is real vintage coming out my mum's cupboard."

"This was the same year as the Roxy record. Mott has split up by that point. They splintered: Mott the Hoople became simply Mott and Mick Ronson and Ian Hunter went off doing their own thing. You could follow them both. I saw Mott at the Top Rank and I saw Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson at Sheffield City Hall. This still sounds fresh today: it was raw, done in a month. His guitar playing here is as good as it was on any record. There was a solo on a song called 'The Truth The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth' - it's one of those things you'd play to a kid whose learning how to play the guitar. The way he winds it up; the sheer pain in the song. Apparently at the time he'd read a scathing review and was fucking furious. He went in and did the whole thing in one take. And I'm thinking 'in a parallel universe, this would have been the next Mott the Hopple record' you know? But my god did the other guys blow it; my god did they blow it. This would have been such a great Mott record. To this day, Phil Collen [Def Leppard guitarist] will say his vibrato is Ronson's vibrato. A lot of people can't do vibrato properly - Phil was definitely influenced by it, also by that beautiful open whammy tone. I'm not sure how it leaks into Leppard as a whole. I think the most logical theft we ever did was the 'Whooaah' section on 'Photograph'. The guys in the band are all great singers; they're arguably better than me. Put the four of us together and it's like Queen round the mike. Well: almost..."

"It’s a very personal choice because when I came to America from mainland China, I was an actress, but I never knew about Hollywood. I had heard of Hollywood but we didn’t have access to see Hollywood movies. A photographer was taking pictures of me and said, “You remind me of this actress named Audrey Hepburn.” I said, “Who is that?” He said, “Bai Ling, you have to watch her films,” and he found me Roman Holiday. That was the first Hollywood movie I’d ever seen. And it’s still one of my favorites, because it first introduced me to Hollywood — beautiful, romantic, very graceful, and elegant. I would like to remake it — I hope some director can help me, maybe Steven Soderbergh or Wong Kar-Wai. [Laughs] What I remember about those old Hollywood films is that when a leading lady and a leading man meet, they don’t have to say anything; you already know they’re in love. You root for them; you want them to be together. That’s the magic of Hollywood. I think somehow today we’ve lost a little bit of it, and you don’t care as much if two characters get together. But Roman Holiday makes you smile, makes your heart smile, makes your heart sing for these two people. Gregory Peck is gentle and elegant, the kind of tall leading man that I like. I think we should remake the film. Everybody in America, in Asia, and in Europe, would appreciate it. The beautiful, pure, romantic story — I wish I would play a role like that, because I have a romantic soul. I’d like to bring that purity to the audience, to have their fantasy fulfilled."

"So I'm mentioning New York nightlife. I'd been born in New York, but I'd been brought up in the suburbs, and I loved New York, I was obsessed with everything pertaining to the New York art scene, the New York music scene, and I would hide in the bathroom in the train that went in and out of New York from my town, so I wouldn't have to buy a ticket. I would go into New York and walk around and look at record stores, clothing stores and nightclubs, so I was exposed to a lot of music that I wouldn't otherwise have been exposed to, like early hip hop. Hip hop, up until Eric B & Rakim, had been very drum machine based, drum machines with synth basslines. Then they rolled up with this song called 'Eric B Is President' which was sample-based. The first time I remember thinking, 'wow this sounds so different from all those other hip hop songs'. Rakim I think is still the most powerful MC of all time. Paid In Full I think is still really the first cohesive hip hop album. It helps that it has four or five huge New York hit singles on it. Paid In Full came out, and Public Enemy's Nation Of Millions came out, and suddenly people realised that hip hop could be a genre that worked on albums and not just tracks. At the time, it was impossible to go out in New York and not hear this record. Every car that drove by, ever nightclub, restaurant, shop, something off Paid In Full was playing at every second of every hour of every day. That and Public Enemy, you just couldn't get away from these records, and it helped that they were amazing records, not ubiquitous and terrible."