"It's a unique combination of what Zack de la Rocha is doing with his voice and what Tom Morello [guitarist] is doing. If you separate the two, you find yourself thinking: "Well, how could this possibly work?" But again they were game changers. They came along at a time in Los Angeles when there was nobody else doing that style. I don't think anyone has done anything like that successfully. They were a band that were immersed in different kinds of activism and that was something that definitely caught my attention. Who else was doing that? Who was doing that and selling millions of records? And, of course, by doing that they were able to cross over into different scenes and different generations of people that could listen to that type of music. Some of the stuff on here is still just as relevant today as it was when it was released. It's just the intensity of some of those messages for me as a singer. He performs with such conviction. You have got to believe what Zack is saying and he makes you understand what he's talking about. That's the heart of what Rage is all about. They're all behind exactly what he's saying. There's been a lot made in recent years of the idea that bands don't have anything to say anymore, or that they're ambivalent now, but I think everyone is saying something. Even Priest have made a comment in 'Crossfire', where we talk about religion and gun violence. I think a lot of the time these messages just slip under the radar for some people. Priest have never pushed back from making a comment on things that we see in the world or that affect us and think need to be commented on. So I think it's definitely out there. It's just that bands are now doing it a lot more subtly than Rage did."

"I've got no idea what it's about but from what I can tell it's about a monkey that explodes things, a monkey that likes the colour red but doesn't like green apples, so he explodes the apples. I just think it's really cool. I love The White Stripes. I love Jack White. I love Meg White. I love how simple their songs are, and instinctive. It feels like they've just started playing at that moment and they're making it up as they go along, just seeing how and where it goes. Even the lyrics - the ""exploding monkey"" - it feels so random. They let the music go where it wants to go naturally, they don't get bogged down trying to glue together complicated bits of melody. Quite a lot of the process of songwriting is trying to find ways to stick bits together and it becomes mathematical in that way. Sometimes you get swamped and weighed down with two bits of music that you can't find a way of joining. And then I listen to The White Stripes and think ""Ahh! You just play them next to each other, you don't have to join them."" It's like what I said about Pixies, they make me feel like music can be anything and can be as simple and as messy as you want. And as loud as you want! I find it really freeing. A lot of songwriting is getting in the right frame of mind, so it's good to have this music that doesn't make you feel worried about what you're doing and not be overly precious about it. If one bit of music isn't working with another bit you've got, you can just throw it away and write another bit, it actually doesn't take very long and maybe it will be better. Or maybe it will be worse, but whatever! There's something magical about it. I loved the three-colour thing the White Stripes did, the little codes in the lyrics about the number three and the symbolism in the album covers. And the way they pretended to be brother and sister! Or were they? Or weren't they?! They're just so fucking cool. Out of all the bands to come out of the last twenty years I think they're one of the best. I'm also so glad they broke up. I'm so glad they stopped and that Jack White does his other stuff now. They left the things that they did and they didn't change. It was just perfect."