"This was also in the same house, and the second song that made me cry was on this album. I think it may have been 'Bedtime For Toys': it was a song about how some children didn't get any toys, and made me really sad that actually some children didn't get any toys at Christmas. It seems quite silly now, but it had that effect. Also, his version of 'Ave Maria'. It's an amazing album. It's not a particularly known album though. I had lunch years ago with Nona Hendryx and Vicki Wickham. They're very knowledgeable about Motown, as Vicki had produced Ready Steady Go! and was instrumental in bringing over the Motown sound - and even still calls him 'Little Stevie Wonder' - and they weren't even aware of the album. It just reminds me of a time when I was playing other people's records. My dad was a big country & western fan into Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. There were also six or seven albums by Yma Sumac, which were very bizarre and had amazing covers, and I would think ""who is this?"". I think he may have got them through Reader's Digest or something. They were quite exotic things. And also there were singles like The Monkees' 'Daydream Believer' and 'Everlasting Love' by The Love Affair and '(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay' by Otis Redding. These were already there in the house, and it wasn't until..."

"As a drummer, Klaus Dinger was important to me: [he taught me] how to make one riff last a lifetime! It's a great riff though, don't get me wrong. Neu! was absolutely brilliant; it's another record where the first time you buy it and put it on, you think 'I've never heard anything like this before'. I was into Krautrock and that's why I bought it - I bought anything that came out of Germany - but Neu! were just completely out there. I had no idea who was in the band, there was just a big 'Neu!' image on the front… it was striking, kind of punk. The way that they used cut up music, and bits of ambient sound… as soon as I heard it, I thought 'If I ever start a band, I'd like them to sound a bit like this - as adventurous as this'. A lot of Krautrock was trying to plough its own furrow, but there were other bits that were trying to Germanize Western things. And the odd thing about it is, I never knew that Michael Rother lived in Wilmslow for a time - which is just around the corner from me - in the 70's. I was watching a Krautrock documentary and he was saying: “I've always been surrounded by flowing water, there's always been a river - the Rhine, the Elbe, the Bollin.” And I said: “Hang on, did he just say the Bollin!? That's just down the road!”"

"The Bridge on the River Kwai was one of those movies that my father and I watched for the first time, and he prefaced it by saying, “You’re probably not going to like this movie now, but you’re going to understand it later.” [laughs] And I remember watching it with that I mind — because I was young — and now I’m at the end of… You know, my dad is no longer with me, and I look at Alec Guinness’s character in it, and I now understand him. Where, at a point earlier in my life, I didn’t understand him — I was like, “Why is this guy building a bridge for the enemy? Why would a person get so obsessed with this just to try to keep order?” — I now understand it. It’s one of those movies that means a lot to me, because it was the first time that I think my father showed me that movies can actually speak to an ageless part of your soul. I remember the first time I saw Unforgiven, and I thought it was going to be like this big Western shoot-em-up, and I was like, “Man, I didn’t like that movie at all.” Then, I was at work the next day, and I thought, “I can’t stop thinking about that movie. Maybe I saw it wrong.” And now it’s one of the best movies ever. Bridge on the River Kwai was the first time I ever realized that."