"It was kind of weird because I had forgotten how much I listened to that album. I was introduced to Ronnie [James Dio] at an early stage, loved his voice and Ritchie [Blackmore], as a guitar player, was someone who was just beyond the grasp of my little mind at the time. He was so unique. When you go through all the different eras and songs, there's such variety. Songs like 'Kill The King' were interesting, but by far my favourite was 'Gates Of Babylon'. It has such a hypnotic, dancing gypsy riff. The singing and all the production is just tremendous and if you can copy Blackmore and master what he's doing, it'll take your playing to a whole new level. Not many people have done it either. Yngwie [Malmsteen] did it very well of course, but Yngwie is the master and was influenced by not just Ritchie."

"I’m thinking a lot about both of my parents during this. They were both very ill with Coronavirus, and my dad recently passed away. My parents weren’t really into music, except that everyone bought LPs then because, well, you just did. There was nothing unusual about their taste; The Beatles, Sky and Elkie Brooks for my Dad; Cliff for my mum. A few years back, they wanted to be rid of their records; they had no use for them. “Don't you want them replaced? Get them on CD?” “No, we don't need them.” So now I’m the custodian of all these records. There is nothing wrong with Cliff Richard. Well, he’s a Tory, but apart from that, I will fight you. I’m Nearly Famous kicks off what I like to call ‘The Magnificent Seven’ series of albums that ends with Now You See Me, Now You Don’t. Together these behemoths of art redefine the parameters of music and leave a wake of destruction in their path. He can sing in tune AND in time. He is brilliant. There is something so welcoming about the sound of these records. It’s a period of high-end ‘fabuloso’ production, where everything is exquisite and perfectly placed. These albums sound like Patrick Bateman’s apartment in American Psycho. This album includes ‘Miss You Nights’. There are better songs, but humans haven't heard them."

"It's everything that I love about music. It's hip hop, trip hop, acid jazz, alternative... I don’t want to call it R n B, but there's some soul in there. Very dark and tortured sounding soul, but soul nonetheless. It's fusion, is what it is. What I liked most about rock music, besides the music I make, is when I don't understand what they're talking about. Geoff Barrow... See, I've never seen Geoff Barrow. I don't know how he looks, although he probably doesn't look like he's supposed to be making this kind of music. I heard stories about it, how they’d record certain stuff to wax and then sample it. Just going through a lot of shit to make the record. It's just so grand, and you think of the artist - who gave them the blank cheque to go to that extreme!? Someone could have easily rapped on all of that stuff. It sounds almost like Wu Tang production, something RZA did. I can hear rhyming over it, but Beth Gibbons has this pixie-kind of vocal, with that ethereal and enchanted kind of thing. It's awesome."

"I love it because I feel like I’ve got an insight of what my dad was kind of like. Also, in the movie I did with [director Richard Linklater — Everybody Wants Some!!] too, it was just cool to see this is kind of — like, my dad could’ve been one of these guys easily. It just shows that nothing’s changed. You’re relating to your parents — or any generation really — without having to be in front of them. It’s a really cool time-travelling-of-the-soul type of movie, which I really dig. It really holds up. It’s timeless. It sounds cliché — saying “timeless” — because that’s what I’m going to say about every single one of these movies, but the thing that’s cool about that is that there’s nothing close to what I’ve experienced. I didn’t have the same hair. I didn’t have the same music. I didn’t have the same clothes. I didn’t have the same kind of approach to anything, really, but I feel like I’ve been there still. That’s really cool when a movie can do that. You can see behind the mask and everybody can still relate. It’s really cool, and that movie does that."