"I’m a huge admirer of Grace Jones in many, many ways. She came out of the fashion industry, made a disco record and then went on to make three classic records that I think are some of the greatest sounding things anyone has ever put out there. Those albums were produced by Alex Sadkin and Chris Blackwell, who had worked with Bob Marley before that. We first worked with Alex Sadkin on ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’ and he went on to produce Seven And The Ragged Tiger and the Arcadia album with me. So, we worked very closely with Alex and the reason we wanted to work with him at all was because of the Grace Jones album. I was so astounded when I heard the sound on Nightclubbing – the depth, quality and clarity of instrumentation and the vibe of it. I couldn’t understand how anyone had ever captured that. I needed to work with this person somehow and fortunately Alex turned out to be one of our great collaborations. Grace combined her style with a reggae influence, with a certain pop sensibility and with grooves that people could dance to and created something that only she could have done. It was entirely original and everyone in Duran Duran loves Grace Jones. We’ve played her records more than most other artists. We got to know Grace and hung out with her quite a lot. She did the Bond movie [A View To A Kill] that we were on the soundtrack for and she is did a cameo on ‘Election Day’ for Arcadia. I also think Grace is one of the most fascinating performers out there. The stuff she used to do with Jean-Paul Goude – the photography, the videos, the album covers – was so stylish. They had great taste. I truly love the songs on Nightclubbing. The original of the title track is on Iggy Pop’s The Idiot - which I love – written by Bowie and Iggy. The song had the darkest vibe you could imagine being done in Berlin during that period and that Grace took it and made it so different and beautiful was really something. Often with a cover you either like the original or the cover – with ‘Nightclubbing’ they are both great."

"I can remember being introduced to this album at a very specific moment. I went round to my friend's house, and I think my sister had the CD and put it on, and I heard the introduction to 'Lithium' and those drums and I just thought: ""What the hell is this?"" It was the most exciting thing I'd ever heard. It was like that for a lot of people of course, I was no different. But it was very shortly after we heard that that my friend got a drum kit and my brother got a guitar, and my brother had a bass, and I knew that all I had to do was pick up that bass and we had a band. Nirvana were a three-piece and there were three of us. You didn't have to play very well, and you could play the same thing quietly and then play it loudly and that was kind of a revelation for a little kid. That was all Nirvana ever did and created the most amazing feelings with it. It was a very powerful thing to put into the hands of a little teenager. It's really easy to get together. You just all need to play the same thing on these three instruments and it will work, and you will sound like a band and that's so empowering. In terms of my musical style, Cobain has a really good way with melody and he doesn't really sing very obvious things. He always comes down on the major or minor third of a chord, and it really colours the music both positively and negatively in a way that not a lot of melodies do. The aggression in it and the fact that it can be tender in one moment and then the opposite the next is something which happens in my music. The emotional intensity of Nirvana is something which I definitely think my band is probably guilty of, in terms of high emotional stuff happening. They are really interesting, just in terms of the fact that there's so much depth in it, despite it being very simple, and the lyrics don't actually mean anything, and yet you can get so affected by Nirvana in such a strange way - not necessarily just because of Kurt's story, but because there is something in the music and it's very difficult to describe."

"He had to get in there. He's definitely my all-time favourite singer, vocalist, simply because there's something about the arrangement of his vocal cords that really strikes an instant... I just recognised it from the moment I heard it and I felt, "this is like my surrogate brother or something!" The moment that I heard it, I could sort of sing a bit like him, I'd developed those vibrato tones and I enjoyed doing it so I just felt an instant kinship. Add to that he wrote some great songs, but more than that he was like the foremost interpreter of Jaques Brel in English. I'd not heard of Jaques Brel before I'd heard Scott Walker's songs - after I listened to Scott, I listened to Brel, and enjoyed that hugely also, but in a very different way. Scott and also the Walker brothers, they did make a particularly awesome noise back in the sixties, which many other people tried to do but didn't do as well. The first record that I heard by Scott was the wonderful best of that came out in the early nineties, The Best Of Scott Walker And The Walker Brothers I think. It's pretty much the only collection you need if you want to hear what they did. But Scott Walker Sings Jaques Brel is fantastic - it's only ten songs I think. He only did ten songs, so that seems reasonable, but 'Jackie' is hilarious and wonderful. I stopped sending all my albums to Scott Walker after I read, I think it was in Les Inrockuptibles as well, they managed to get an interview with him, which nobody could at the time and he said "yeah, this wee Irishman keeps sending me his records - I don't know why". And it was simply because I loved him so much I wanted to give my things unto him [laughs]! You know, "I've made this for you Scott!" I suppose I've got a bit older and I don't feel the need anymore. As well as that, I understand where he's coming from these days much better. I enjoy his modern records, his insane modern records, but it's quite obvious that he doesn't care about the old sixties output, so the fact that some guy is really terribly enamoured of them, I'm sure he doesn't give a shit [laughs]! He can buy them in the shops like anybody else!"