"""Whole Lotta Shakin'', was the first time I heard him, in Pontypridd, being played from Freddy Fey's record shop. People used to ask me, because I loved music so much, 'What do you think of this record, what do you think of that record?' When Elvis Presley came out, I said he can't be the only one - a white man being influenced by black music in the South. So when 'Whole Lotta Shakin'' came out, my friends said, 'Is that what you're talking about?' I said, 'That's exactly what I'm talking about!' Another guy, playing piano, similar to what Elvis was doing, but even more syncopated, white and from the South. It was unbelievable to hear that record. Then 'Great Balls Of Fire' followed, and 'High School Confidential' was a great record. When you listen to his records, he always sings up, except towards when he got older and the pressures of life got on him. In the beginning, he was always up, you know the ends of everything came up. Little Richard was pushing the shit out of everything but Jerry Lee, he had his syncopation, it was like he floated. He fell out of favour, because he married his cousin - it was a shame, he was still making great records. There's one called 'Loving Up A Storm' and that's equally good. That's on The Sun Years, they're all there. I saw him live in Cardiff in 1962, and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates were there and they were slick... I thought, 'Shit, how's Jerry Lee going to get over this?', because they closed the first half. He came on, and instead of how Johnny Kidd and the Pirates were very aggressive, Jerry Lee was the opposite, he opened up with 'Move On Down The Line' and the band were like [sings] and he just walked on and was like [gestures] showing us the the chord he was going to play. He just sat down at the piano and - boom - went into it. It was like 'Jesus Christ!' You know, it was smooth, it was slick, it was rock & roll but he wasn't like, screaming - he had a different take on it and yet it was rocking."""

"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."

"This is like a greatest hits-type thing, and I picked it up at a record fair when I was about 14. Me and my dad would go to record fairs in Oxford Town Hall, and I’d save up and buy a couple of records each time. “In those days, there was no way of hearing a record without buying it, so a lot of the time you’d buy something based on the sleeve or just based on a recommendation, and I think I bought this because of the sleeve. “I’d heard that The Who were a good band but – when I listened to this - I discovered a whole new level of guitar sonics. Everything about the violence of Pete Townshend’s guitar playing really affected me. He changed the rules of what a solo could be… just some noise could be a solo and, obviously, that became a big part of Ride, because we were all about the noise being an instrument.”"