"This goes back a long time for me. This was a real defining record for Supergrass around '95 when we were first starting out. It was on the tour bus all the time and I remember our tour manager at the time really loving it. He'd wake us up every morning knocking on our door going, 'baby's on fire!', doing this mad Eno impression and that would always lift us up and make us laugh. There were so many lyrics that we'd sing at each other. I'd meet Danny and go, 'Cindy tells me…' It had this really long lasting effect on us. It's brilliant, just brilliant. It's Eno being kind of clever but dumb, sophisticated but raw and I think it's brilliant. I love his voice and the double-tracking on it and I think it ended up being quite an iconic sound. It's very unique. And for all of his technical ability, I love that he plays dumb on some of these tracks, you know, like on 'Needles In The Camel's Eye' and the guitars are big, filthy, dirty and horrible things. I love it. We almost did work with Brian Eno. We had a meeting with him in Paris before Diamond Hoo Ha and I can't remember exactly what happened but I think our timing schedules didn't work out. It was something frustrating that meant we couldn't work with him. It's weird one. It's kind of like, are they different Brian Enos? Is it a danger to confuse the Here Come The Warm Jets Brian Eno thinking that he was going to walk into a studio with us and create something that gives you that feeling because he's a different person now. I think he's amazing and he's proved to be still a musical force. An incredible guy and he was a really lovely chap when we met him."

"Something about what he does make you feel like he's doing it from this room, it's so intimate. Hang on – have I got his name wrong? Oh wait, I haven't. He has gigged a lot as a singer songwriter so I think he translates that when he makes a record. This record went mad [in terms of popularity] but someone gave this record to me before he blew up. When I listen to this particular album, I just had the feeling like I'm in the room with him. I don't know whether he wants it to be intimate but it is. Some of the arrangements are mad, with the length of the intros and so on. You're never gonna get that on the radio! Who's gonna do that? The intros are 48 bars long or its him scratching around and doing other things. There's a real beauty in that but he also seems to have thought 'I don't really care.' Is this reflected in my own work? I think my own new record is a hotchpotch of things. The first track is called 'Beautiful Life' and anyone who's heard it has said 'you've gone a bit Nile Rodgers there with the guitar!' But that's inescapable, it's the way it is if you use that sound. And the very last track is that love letter back to prog rock and subconsciously, I've thought 'the last record did alright so now I'm doing whatever I want'. And I was doing it without anticipating anyone ever hearing it, if I'm brutally honest. My fans – yes but not Radio 2 or whatever. With this one, I've gone in without a clock and just played. I went in my room, my wife went to States, I had a bit of fun, went mad, had a load of ideas and made a record. And here we are with 'Beautiful Life'."

"""When VU came out in 1985, everyone I knew had absorbed the official Velvets albums from the late 60s and early 70s, and had listened to all the bootlegs they could get their hands on. We had heard in the press mention of lost recordings and there were a couple of those songs on bootlegs that were hard to get. So, when this album came out it was like finding The Commandments 11 to 20. I almost didn't want to get my hopes up too much as it promised amazing things. When I did get it, I couldn't believe how good it was. It has a particularly important part in my life, in that The Smiths were already going at that point and we were a successful band. To be hit by something as a fan of music when you are already number one in the album charts yourself - I think Meat Is Murder had just come out at that point - was an utterly brilliant thing. It dropped into my life like a ton of inspiration. I was obsessed with it and, in particular, the versions of 'I Can't Stand It' and 'Foggy Notion'. I couldn't understand why that version of 'Ocean' hadn't come out before as it was easily the best one. I played 'I Can't Stand It' so many times that it stuck in my subconscious and that came out as the inspiration for the rhythm part on the song 'The Queen Is Dead'. So, the VU album was what I was listening to almost exclusively before I started writing the album The Queen Is Dead. The earlier Velvets albums are so revered that to better them is quite a feat. I have been in many an argument with people who think I am insane for preferring this record. When you take away the reverence for the early albums - which are undeniably incredibly important - VU is my favourite listen."""

"The irony about Berlin is that it was delivered as a concept album, but its component parts are from all over the place. The earliest songs off it are demos for the Velvet Underground. It's intriguing because 'Berlin' the song is from his first solo album, and then you've got 'Stephanie Says' [from VU] which has been changed to 'Caroline Says I'. He rejigged everything and came up with a concept album, but it's a hodge podge really. I interviewed him about Berlin and just about got away with it because I love the album. And I don't think it would have been as good if Bob Ezrin hadn't been producer. As much as David Bowie and Mick Ronson turned Transformer into the album it is, Bob Ezrin turned Berlin into the album that it is. The story goes that Bob Ezrin told his own kids that their mum had died just so he could record them crying for the album, and then when he had that on tape he told them, nah, she's alright really, I just made it up. That's what I heard anyway. You want to know why Lou Reed punched David Bowie that time? Well, I heard it was because Bowie offered to produce Berlin, but on the condition that Reed quit heroin. But Berlin is just an amazing album, especially coming straight off the back of Transformer, and you can tell that Lou Reed is not comfortable with being a pop star as presented by David Bowie. Somebody like Lou Reed [who] actually did reinvent the wheel – with some help from John Cale – with the Velvet Underground, and then one of his acolytes is seen to be helping him on his way. He was probably smarting a little bit from that. Really, Berlin shouldn't have worked, it was constructed from waifs and strays, but it has that great production with all the brass on it. 'Sad Song' is so beautiful. It's probably the most beautiful song you'll hear in your life."