"London Calling is probably my favourite rock record of all time. It’s incredibly powerful and diverse, it’s social, political and has all sorts of musical genres - punk, rock, ska, ballads, jazz and dub - rolled into the song arrangements. The Clash were at their peak when they made it and the kick-off track is the most anthemic song they ever wrote. It’s got everything, brilliant lyrics, a brilliant performance, it just sounds killer and Mick Jones’ guitar playing is phenomenal, when you hear that guitar riff it’s like a fire alarm going off. ‘London Calling’ is like a call to arms, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it, it’s that powerful. I went to see them on that tour at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and it was absolutely rammed. The second they started playing the entire room started jumping up and down and I thought the building was going to collapse, you could feel the whole place shaking. It was an old theatre and I was watching from the balcony, thinking we should maybe get to a safer location but I became so immersed in the music I forgot about it, it was a fantastic show. There were obviously differences between the British and US punk bands and some of that is in the sound of the records. The British records had a bit of a darker sound to them and that could be due to technical stuff in the mastering, but a lot of it had to do with the performances. To me, the British bands have always been ground-breaking, as a whole there were better new wave and punk bands coming out of the UK than the US, it was like the second British invasion. There was a great scene in New York, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie were ground-breaking at the time, but England, a country with a much smaller population than the US, had a larger percentage of iconic bands from that era."

"For the rest of these songs we’re closer to now. My Father-in-law introduced me to this, he’s not a musician by trade but he grew up in the hippy era and was really into blues. He has all of these reference points, music that went totally over the head of my generation. The reference points from that period for my generation are a totally different set of people, Jimi Hendrix or music that even my Father-in-law didn’t know at the time, like the Jim Sullivan record that people are digging out as an undiscovered gem. “I would never have discovered Charlie Musselwhite but for my Father-in-law. He was excited that I was a musician and we could hang out and talk about records, sometimes it doesn’t work and his taste will veer in directions that I totally can’t get into, but he’s introduced me to some great music that I love, like Professor Longhair records. ""I heard this in 2009, after Veckatimest and it was really striking because it’s so straight-up and straightforward. It’s the most minimal 6/8 blues tune and it’s very simple, the drums, organ and guitar line don’t change, the harmonica does the melody and a simple solo and that’s it. There’s these beautiful little contained elements, all the sounds are super lush and it’s another kind of subtlety, the attention to tone is so specific. It’s really elegant and hip, but in a totally different realm, a blues perspective from a totally different era, it’s like what Beach House would have been if they were a blues band in 1962. “It’s not trying to do anything revolutionary, it’s just exactly what it is, great playing without trying to be great playing. It’s so personal and visceral and sometimes you really need that sort of music. It’s the simplicity and soulfulness, it’s so minimal and especially going into Shields we started talking about that more and more, having that sense of space"

"Great record for me. Although I had a hard time comprehending that the guitar player in the band was 19 years old when he did it. I was never really a huge, huge fan of the way Phil Mogg sang, but I loved him as the singer for UFO. To me there was nothing heavier at that time: screaming vocals, shredding guitar and Pete Way was as dangerous a bass player as there was at that time. Also, UFO was my permission to be the guitar player I wanted to be. It was as if there were no age requirements. I remember to this day, when we went from Huntington Beach up to the mountains to go skiing, we always took UFO and AC/DC. Also, Michael Schenker was probably the reason that I picked up a Flying V, because I liked the way that it looked on him. He's a tremendously talented player who has had a very turbulent career. I'd love nothing more than to see him jump back in Scorpions and have them do some dates with Megadeth. Or maybe UFO would get back together and do Force It, Lights Out and Phenomenon live again. Those records set me on my course"

"We have to put a Stones record in there too for good measure. The times I drove down to LA in ‘84 I probably listened to that song 75 times - probably a lot more actually - on my little ghetto blaster in my car. It was kind of the soundtrack to my life that year, again it was another record that got me through a big sea change in my life. There are lots of good Rolling Stones records but that one was given to me at the right time in my life. Playing with them was a big thing of course and we were really built up way beyond what we wanted to be. I was just happy to be opening for The Rolling Stones in any way at all, but someone in the LA Times wrote it up and had a picture of us like we were going to be the next Rolling Stones. It was ‘88 or ’89, we were young guys and how do you handle that? Imagine that pressure, if you’re 24 years old you just want it to go away. And I was thinking, ""I hope none of the guys from the Stones see this article saying we’re going to be the next Rolling Stones…""

"The Eagles are fucking bad ass. I've always been a fan of multiple voices in bands and the Eagles are another example of that. Classy musicians who fucking earned their bones through backing up other musicians. I love that documentary that they did ‘The History Of The Eagles’: the drugs, the fights, the stardom, that's just fascinating. I always really admired that band for its uniqueness and the quality of the records they made, the songwriting, the musicianship. This album and that particular track... it's like bigger than they are. Even though that's them. I mean, sometimes musicians, the song and the actual thing that gets recorded at the production, all three of those things line up at the right time and you get that magical thing, bigger than any one of you, even all of you together... it just goes a little step above. It's the whole thing: music is not about perfection, the closest you're gonna get to reaching perfection is the pursuit of trying to get there, I guess. But every once in a while, there's one song or an album that just kind of poke out, that just goes above the ceiling. That title track does that. It's a very magical song."