"Montrose was one of the really important American statements made at a time when the only rock that was credible was English. They had Led Zeppelin and Humble Pie, just anything that was credible was all English and, out of nowhere, this Montrose record comes out that just kills! The American bands were sloppy and fat and looked like the Grateful Dead, and it was just pathetic. But Montrose came from the same area, the San Francisco Bay Area and it was like a breath of fresh air. That first record, even Montrose couldn't equal it, it was just better than the other American bands of the time. If you ever listen to 'Kickstart My Heart' by Mötley Crüe, that intro was note-for-note, everything was taken from 'Bad Motor Scooter', that sounds like a motorcycle going by. Clearly, Montrose was trying to do, with Sammy Hagar's vocals, a sort of American Led Zeppelin thing. But the songs were undeniable! Song after song, again: consistency. Unfortunately, after that Sammy Hagar left the band and everything changed. Ronnie Montrose never went back, never found his mojo again. Eventually he committed suicide. But when we're putting on makeup and getting ready for shows because we're in the middle of a tour, it never fails. Every other day we put on the Montrose record."

"You can't fail today to be mesmerised by 'Whole Lotta Love'. That was the song that did it for me. A lot of these choices that I've made are either the first or second release from these bands. I always thought that those were great times, because there was never any pressure around artists. You don't have all of the extras that come with being successful. The band is in a very pure place at that point. I always remember playing with them, but it was quite a while after this album came out. We'd just completed a very, very long and gruelling American tour. We were about to fly back to the UK and we had a call from Robert Plant saying, ""I heard you guys are still over in the States, would you like to come and hang out and open for Zeppelin on the Green ['Day On the Green' concert] in Oakland?"" So we got a really cheap, unglamorous motel by the side of the freeway. It was so poor that the walls were basically green, covered with algae. We were there for a week and just waiting and waiting and waiting for the chance to open up for Zeppelin. That was a very important show for Priest, because that was what broke us on the west coast of America."

"This one I discovered more recently. I'm a big Hermeto Pascoal fan; I was turned onto Hermeto by Kamasi Washington when we were teenagers. But, again, it's Brazilian and stuff like that you have to seek out, you have to want to find it yourself because it doesn't always get translated. I didn't know about Egberto Gismonti at first, but I spent a lot of time listening to Hermeto, and I remember I went on tour with Miguel Atwood Ferguson in the band with me at one point. And Miguel is also an astute follower of music, to say the least. We were listening to Hermeto Pascoal backstage and Miguel turns and he goes 'Is this Hermeto? Do you know about his friend Egberto Gismonti?' and I was like, 'no'. Miguel proceeds to tell me this is the person that plays bass with Hermeto Pasqual, and he's a beast of a composer. He played me the album, and I was floored. I was completely overtaken by this album and the composition. It tells such a story – Egberto Gismonti's albums in general tell a story – but this specific album, there's some moments on it that are so intense that it's hard to listen to them. It's hard to play one song for somebody, but if I've ever played the record for somebody, it has to be listened to very loud."