"I remember the exact moment I learned to play this song. It was at my great aunt’s house in Dunstable, Massachusetts. She lived in this old house on a farm and there was this old mouldy, mildewy, acoustic guitar there. “There wasn’t much else to do and I learned to play “Wild Thing” on the guitar. My cousin showed me how to play it and I was hooked, I could sing and play it at the same time and it was like ‘This is amazing.’ I rode a 300cc motorcycle around the backyard and played that guitar. “But the one that really changed the game for me was “Louie Louie”, which was E, A, B Minor. It’s got this sinister, evil vibe to it but it’s very subtle, and the artist in me responded to the drama of the B Minor. Also, it was the fact that the lyrics are incoherent. Apparently, nobody really knows the true lyrics to that song and with “Louie Louie” you can mumble the words, so that was great. “I’m always thinking back to the moment where I realised that was what I wanted to do, ‘When was it and what happened?’ I think it was much later, when I had a cassette deck that had this mic mix feature, where you could plug a microphone in and overdub onto your song. When I started screwing with that, that’s when I think I got the bug. I became obsessed with it and it felt like there was endless potential there. “Louie Louie” is a very historical song, so I chose that as my first. I like to think it’s the first song I really liked to play, because “Wild Thing” was too easy maybe. ‘Mythical’ is a great word for “Louie Louie”, it’s got that folklore to it"

"Ziggy was like the entry level for me. I wasn't aware when I bought it that I was buying a concept album about a constructed creature called Ziggy Stardust. I just thought David Bowie WAS Ziggy Stardust. I must have been 12 or 13. I had a friend at school called Peter May who I sat next to, and we were both totally into the same things, like David and Marc. We both bought acoustic guitars and we'd have jamming sessions on Sunday nights at his parent's house, and I would learn the songs of both of them. It really sparked my imagination, and for a whole generation of people, Angie and David were the It couple for us. Forget about Mick [Jagger] and Bianca - that held no interest for me whatsoever, compared to Angie & David's glittering bisexual glamour. That was all a big part of it too, and that - for me - was when sexuality entered into it and I heard the word 'bisexual'. I'd heard the word 'queer' - but I'd never heard the word 'bisexual' or even an artist claiming they were. That was a huge moment for me. From Ziggy onwards, there was no looking back after that. I played truant from school to queue up to get tickets for that final tour of the Spiders, and Aladdin Sane was out by then, and I went to see him at the Liverpool Empire and it was mindblowing. And you know, Ian McCulloch, Marc Almond, Pete Burns - a whole generation of people who were to be the next wave were all there. It was an incredible world of glamour. I know they call it glam rock, but to me that was Sweet. David and Bryan [Ferry] - they were artists."

"I think I was on MySpace, that's how long ago it was, and I was looking for Omar Souleyman. I ended up finding Ali Hussan Kuban by mistake. I found this track called 'Habibi', and it blew my mind. The first bit of drums when it comes in, it's almost like drum & bass, but it's not but it's not folkloric African either, it feels like rock & roll. It's so direct, and it's speaking our language, but it's from a completely different culture, and I just love that. And when you hear his voice… His voice is killer - it sounds like Joe Strummer. His voice just feels so punk, especially later on when they start dubbing it and putting all this delay on it. It was that one song that made me start Melt Yourself Down. I was playing it at a party and people were going mad. By that point I'd been obsessed with this song for months, I was listening to it over and over again. Everyone I played it to was like: ""Oh my god, what the fuck is that?!"". I thought: I want to make a cover of this song, I want to start a band. Because I didn't have a band at the time. Acoustic Ladyland was over. I said: I think I'm going to form a band just to do that one song. The next day when I was coming down from my birthday party evening, I just thought, let's do that - brilliant idea. I phoned everybody and said: ""let's do it!"". I organised a rehearsal and then the next day I came to and thought: 'oh shit, I think a formed a band yesterday'. And then I thought, 'well OK, let's just start writing'. I went upstairs and wrote 'Fix My Life', and then it all came together really quickly."