"I was playing guitar when this came out and I tried to learn all the riffs. I loved that idea of transforming the blues into heavy rock – taking blues classics and giving them a twist. A lot of the music was traditional blues songs, but the Stones had done the same thing in taking them and twisting them. So many British bands took blues songs and made them famous –there are people who think ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ was written by the Beatles, and a lot of people didn’t know who BB King was until Zeppelin made him famous. When I was young my friend’s brother played guitar. He was really into blues, playing Chuck Berry, and he would play all these old recordings, so I knew all of them. All those licks I heard, I would then hear Clapton and all those guys play. I saw Zeppelin at Bath Festival [in 1970] from a long way off – the violin bow solo with the echo chamber went on for hours, but they were great. I’d never been to anything like a festival before, and that was the first real one, I was on awe."

"I love all the early stuff - the work rate was insane. In the time we took to do two hi hats on Hysteria they'd done an entire album. Mott was when they really got it together. I didn't think the album they did with Bowie - All The Young Dudes - was a great album. It had its moments but you could tell Bowie had put all his efforts into the one song: the rest of it was a little bit thin. Cut to a year later and they're in on their own and they're basically pushed to the deep end - sink or swim. Everybody in the media had said 'what are you going to do without Bowie?!' but Ian stepped up to the plate, he really did. He came up with truly brilliant songs. Stuff like 'Violence' was taken to a completely new place, with Graham Prescott playing violin. He'd worked with Elton John. Then it ends with the most beautifully understated song 'I Wish I Was Your Mother' - the lyric, the title even. It's a really well made record. I remember Mutt used to test speakers with 'All The Way From Memphis'. As did Roy Thomas Baker, as a matter of fact. They proved they could stand alone with this one."

"This is what I'm listening to most right now. Feldman is on constant rotation, but his series of pieces he wrote throughout the 70s for a solo instrument and orchestra is what I'm continually listening to. This version of Violin and Orchestra that the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt did I'm obsessed with. I've been listening to it everyday for a little over a year. It’s one of my favourite pieces because of the forces that he’s implying but it does not sound like an orchestra piece. He’s so keenly aware of sound. He turns his eye to a different way of way of composing that makes it something that can’t easily be reduced into some formula. You can just get wrapped up in it. It’s mysterious and kind of unknowable. But it’s really compelling - I’m moved by how his mind works. He does away with very basic principles of orchestral writing, an understanding of chord progressions and melody and harmony, even rhythm. He develops the piece in a way that shows he’s clearly operating with another set of variables, like in the way he resolves a chord. You don’t feel the familiarity of that way of operating within Western music."