"This song polarises opinions. I suppose when people think of Don Henley, or the Eagles, they just think of Dads. It is Dad music, I guess, but there’s something special about this song. It’s hard to describe and hard to pin down. It’s so evocative – it makes you feel nostalgic for something you haven’t even experienced. There’s this word in Japanese, ‘Setsunai’. There isn’t really an English equivalent, but ‘bittersweet’ is close. Setsunai describes a feeling between bittersweet, painful and wistful, and ever since I heard the word I have loved looking for this feeling in songs. When I heard that Japanese word it lit up a lot of things for me. My favourite records have that feeling – that bittersweet longing that you’ve not necessarily experienced first-hand. This song has Setsunai. It feels like Don Henley didn’t necessarily mean to transmit that feeling and it’s a weird accident that he did. It’s got a quality to it that sums up everything I love about music. Some people will hear it and won’t get it, but I think it’s one of the best songs of all time. Some people might say it’s just an overplayed song, but it’s more than that. There’s the dream, the ideal on top, then underneath is the sadness or the end. It reminds me of America. It a strange thing, but I often feel more at home in America than anywhere in England. Places in America feel way more like a hometown to me than England does. And these lyrics are about the American summer, the loop that goes on consistently underneath – the insistence of that loop to me is linked to driving through America. It morphed from a song I would hear everywhere when I was a kid, on car radios or café radios or whatever, to a song I heard objectively and realised how great it was"

"It was a real wake-up call. Hip hop until 1984, 85 was fun but for the most part it was party music. Living outside New York we'd listen to WBLS and Kiss FM where they played a lot of hip hop and me and my friends liked it, but it was very lighthearted. The Fatboys are the perfect example, or the Treacherous Three, where they have disco basslines and this fun vocal. Then almost out of nowhere Public Enemy happened. Everything about it was different. The lyrics were different, Chuck D's vocal approach was different, the subject matter and the production, the Bomb Squad. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking how did they do this, because they've basically made punk rock hip hop, the sounds they were using, the way they were distorting basslines, it was a lot of the same ways industrial records were being made but they were making hip hop. It was so revolutionary. You can refer to musical culture in New York as before and after Public Enemy, it changed the city. New York was so dangerous then, it had the highest murder count, people were getting stabbed and shot and the crack epidemic was decimating communities and people were dying of AIDS. You'd go out to nightclubs in the late 80s and you'd hear these apocalyptic Public Enemy songs that perfectly described the city that you lived in, but they were oddly celebratory and you could dance to them. For better or worse one of the reasons I've left New York is because the city I grew up with is still there, but it's become a much meaner, safer version of its former self. I still love New York, but it's become primarily the domain of hedge fund managers and wealthy tourists, so I don't know how many more Suicides and Silver Apples and Public Enemys and Eric B & Rakims are going to come out New York City."

"This was the first record I took acid to with Richard [Ashcroft]. My dad bought it for 20p in a junk shop. It was the same shop where I used to get all my pedals from. Twenty quid for a flanger and that was what the first Verve record was based on – that flanger. Funkadelic – it didn't even have the proper cover on it, it was just in a tattered white sleeve. I can remember listening to it not under the influence and thinking, ""This is a bit strange!"" Then my folks were away for a week and Richard came and stopped with me for a bit and we did acid. It was my first time, but I think he'd done it a couple of times. We were walking about the field at the back of my house for a bit, but then we went back and inevitably starting ploughing through all the records. Electric Ladyland by Jimi Hendrix, stuff like that. But that Funkadelic record was the one really – we put that up against our first demo and it made our demo sound like toy music. We had a moment of revelation. Not as painful as later on, but just that we were heading in the wrong direction. That's the acid cringe – that portentous, pontificating moment. Because suddenly it was like, ""Oh fucking hell, that really makes sense now"". Those first three Funkadelic albums for me define what a guitar band should sound like. They're just incredible. Eddie Hazel, he sits in the place for me where Ron Asheton does for most people. I love the Stooges but Eddie Hazel crystallised… I don't know if it's as simple as saying psychedelic guitar. He was cramming lots of ideas in. The violence of it to me is what's really appealing. It's the destructive force behind it, but maintaining a beauty about. With Ron Asheton it's all about annihilation, and I like that as well and I do indulge in that. But with Eddie there's texture and space and atmosphere. There's a big fire burning in the middle of it and it is such powerful music. That's what started my love affair with tape echo. I think I had a tape echo at that point, but I wasn't really using it that much. In fact I don't think there's that much on record that caught me using it, which is a shame. But live we were a bit more ferocious than we were presented on record and this is where that came from. I was also into EVOL by Sonic Youth at the time. That's one of my favourite records."

"I picked this mainly because most people are probably familiar with the regular three studio records that came out. I would hope they are. This record, Hendrix In The West, is a compilation of live versions. I think four songs are from this San Diego show in 1969 and shortly after that tour Noel Redding was out of the band so it was the last part of the Experience. There's a version of 'Spanish Castle Magic' on the record that is just so incredible, and the bass is distorted and driving. That song alone is worth the whole record. And if you can get your hands on it, there's actually a bootleg of that whole San Diego show and I recommend that, but Hendrix In The West is a little more accessible. My friend Darren who was the drummer in Mr. Epp, we were in high school and he had one of those portable eight-track players. I think he pretty much only had three eight-tracks I can remember, and one was Jimi Hendrix's Smash Hits and another was The Who: Live At Leeds and we would play those constantly. I've always been really impressed by Mitch Mitchell's drumming. It spoke to me. I think he's maybe the best drummer in rock & roll. I just love that kind of loose, fluid feel. It's not stiff, there's sort of a jazz thing going through it. It's really propulsive. Have you ever seen 'Message To Love', the Isle of Wight set that Hendrix plays? It's weird what happened to Mitch Mitchell over the years he was playing with Hendrix. In the early days he's sitting upright and playing like he does on the records but by that almost last performance he's got a double kick drum which he's just slumped over and his back is hunched and he's really low. It's like he isn't playing the beats at all, he's just playing around it. It's like he's become a rock version of Elvin Jones - it's crazy. Rock & roll has taken its toll on a lot of people. There's a bit in the Isle of Wight thing where a couple of songs in, Hendrix just goes behind the speakers and you can hear his guitar hitting shit. And he comes back out and he's on fire. The song ends and he says "I just woke up two minutes ago!" I was like: "Gee, I wonder what he was doing back there?""