"I didn’t come into that record until about two years after it was made - I think I was about 34 and my wife and I were having kids and I was going back to school. In the late nineties rock music was kind of awful and you really had to search, there were a few bands out there doing different stuff but it was kind of an awful time for rock music, so I think I chose the right time to go back to school and have kids. Anyway, it took me two years but someone finally switched me onto the record and it blew my mind. Then I found out the band had split up - I went to see The (International) Noise conspiracy but it wasn’t Refused, so I thought really I missed my chance to see that band ever. But I finally got to see the band a few weeks ago in Seattle. There are gigs you go to on your own, ‘cos it’s not a social event, you don’t want to talk to anybody you just want to go and do your thing and it was really one of those moments where the gig was better than the record. That gig fortified everything I love about that record, that’s probably a top five record for me. Actually that record influenced a lot of the first Velvet Revolver record, we would listen to that band a ton"

"I'd been a fan of Queens of the Stone Age for a long, long time, from early on. I could have picked any of their records but …Like Clockwork is my favourite. It's just a true record, it's a representation of a man that's been in music for a fucking long time, close to as long as I've been alive for, and it's amazing for a man like him to be releasing records like this so late into his career, songs with such power like 'My God Is The Sun' which is a formidable rock song, and 'If I Had A Tail' which has the swagger the Rolling Stones wish they had. I just love that Josh Homme does whatever he wants and it's undeniably Queens. He's invented a sound from his own style. I'd always been a fan and I was waiting for this record for a long, long time, but it took things to a whole other level. I don't get excited over many records, but with this and [Nick Cave's] Skeleton Tree I had the same sort of feeling. Sometimes you worry about your favourite band releasing a new record because you just want it to be good, but this rewrote everything I thought about them, and everything I knew about life. That's what I love about them, and pretty much all of these bands. When a band is able to surprise you late in their career it's a wonderful thing."

"When I was 15 and living in Conneticut, me and my friends started creeping into New York and going to nightclubs in '80, '81. You'd go into New York specifically with the intention of seeing punk rock bands, but a lot of the clubs at the time like Danceteria, Fall Out Shelter, they'd have a punk rock band playing but the DJ before would be playing dub reggae, and the DJ after would be playing early hip hop and electronic music. There was a radio station in New York called WNYU, and they had this three hour long show every afternoon called The New Afternoon Show where they just played new music. I remember them playing 'Der Mussolini' or 'Alles Ist Gut' and having that same reaction as I did to many of my favourite records at the time, which was 'I've never heard anything that sounds like this'. Another reason I loved D.A.F. was because at the time I was living in this very depressing, boring American suburb and I would listen to D.A.F. and imagine how cool it would be to be in Berlin, making weird electronic music with these German guys who only wore black and made songs that, I didn't know what the lyrics were saying, but they sounded cool. I just re-bought Alles Ist Gut, I have the vinyl and CD and just bought the iTunes version of it, and it still sounds amazing."

"Leslie West - formerly Leslie Weinstein - was a New York guitar player who played with The Vagrants and lots of other local bands that were coming up in the New York scene. The thing about that record is the producer was Felix Pappalardi, who produced Cream as well as The Youngbloods, and was also an accomplished bass player. So, originally it was just going to be a Leslie West solo record, there was no Mountain, the name of the record was Mountain, but it was by Leslie West. But he didn't have a bass player so Felix Pappalardi played the bass, but the material started coming together so fast. I mean, songs like 'Long Red', I listened to those growing up and, in fact, a few of my songs had their beginning on Mountain songs. Bow buh duh doo dah duuh dow, that began a song called 'Watchin' You' that I wrote, with a flat third; you can hear where it crosses over, that's from 'Never In My Life', a Mountain song. His guitar playing is just undeniable. And of course 'Mississippi Queen' is great, just three chords! When I picked up the guitar and started to play licks and stuff like that, I sound like Leslie West, because intrinsically he's not about speed, he's about melody. Blues-based melody, I'll grant you, but it still holds up to me. I still play it."

"I was listening to a lot of Cuban music and salsa, a lot of Latin music. I worked with Selena on the last thing she recorded. And there was a whole series of Celia Cruz records I loved. I did a duet with her for a Jonathan Demme movie, Something Wild. Her early Cuban records were done with a band called Sonora Matancera; those are really great. Instead of going to rock clubs, I would go to Salsa Meets Jazz downtown and the Corso Ballroom uptown to hear salsa bands. There was lots of dancing. I liked the idea that you were dancing to live music, not just DJs, and grew to really love the music. It opened me up to a lot of sentimentality and feelings that maybe didn’t come naturally to me. I decided I wanted to do a salsa record, which I did in the early ’90s. And I did another one a few years after that. It was a little less strictly salsa, but it was still in that vein, and I had a wonderful time with a huge band, [Rei Momo]. We toured everywhere, and a lot of folks in the United States did not like it at all. Oddly, people in Latin America really liked it, but not because it was their music. For a lot of their rockers in Argentina or Mexico, it was like, “He's playing our parents’ music.”"

"Another incredible record. Was I always into electronic music? Well, I've always liked all kinds of music but I really like pop tunes. I don't think there's any more validity to an Al Green record over an ABBA record. Some of the ABBA records are absolutely amazing. I met one of he guys who drummed on pretty much all of them and he's a phenomenal drummer. Ludicrous! His name is Per Lindvall. And I kind of think the musicianship is all there, it's just that they were very, very, very, popular records. It's one of the curses of certain bands. They become so big that people don't take them seriously anymore. I don't think anyone is going to take me seriously any more because my first record was 'Never Gonna Give You Up' which is a pop – of its time – dancefloor filler. Handbags on the floor, Saturday night record. That's what it is. And I think once you've nailed [your colours] to the mast, you ain't changing that. I never tried to fight it. It's also why some people drive themselves mad. I'd like to be known as someone who can write a tune and sing one but if people want to put me in a category that other people see as derogatory, I probably don't fight it because I don't want to hurt myself. I played every note on my last record [2016's 50] and it went platinum. Does anybody care? I don't know."

"I had to. I mean, how do you pick one? Syd Barrett, brilliant. One thing he did which just knocked me out, at a very early gig - and we thought we’d imagined it because we were stoned but we read about it in a magazine - in those days a lot of the bands would do an hour set, and then maybe the drummer would do a half-hour drum solo while the others went off to do drugs, or they’d all go off and we’d all be sitting around for half an hour because we’d do drugs. And then they’d come back. So, anyway, they went off, and we thought, “Oh no, drum solo, I guess it’s time to do drugs”. And they changed into workman’s outfits and old macs and one by one they all came back. One of them brought some wood, another one had a toolbox, another one had a flask and tea-cups, and the floor of the stage was miked. They made themselves things to sit on, and it was all done rhythmically, creating this piece of musique concrète. They made a table and sets of chairs, then sat down, turned on a transistor radio and drank cups of tea! Then they left and came back on as Pink Floyd! I was thinking, “Did I really just see that?”, and for years thought we’d imagined it. And we didn’t, it really happened."

"I've been a fan of his since the start, when I heard ‘Didgeridoo'... At our age it was an interesting time, because it was the start of dance culture as we know it, but also I was young enough when I first heard it that I didn't differentiate between hearing a Mary Chain song or hearing an Orb song or a KLF song or a Loop song. I guess of all the bands or musicians that I heard around that first wave of electronic music, I think Richard James is the guy that's continued and kept a high standard and evolved what he did. I mean, that Richard D James record, if you went and listened to half of the brand new IDM vomit they'd be shitty copies of that. What makes his music is so special is that as well as being amazing at concocting interesting sounds and rhythms, he's also musically always doing something brilliant. The piano songs on the Drukqs album are unbelievable. Talking about that, it's completely irrelevant to this, but the most annoyed I've ever got at a music review is the review of Drukqs in Uncut where the journalist said there's no point in making solo piano music because you'd never do anything as good as Satie or Chopin. Well let's just fucking go home then! But anyway. To be able to marry the playfulness with the beauty and the melancholic element, that's just incredible."

"This one is the opposite of eclectic! I was a Cult fan anyway. A lot of people at school were into goth and I wasn’t so popular because I was into rock, but I felt like the Cult fell right between the cracks of those two scenes. And then there was the Manor Sessions and the stuff that they recorded for Electric that was recorded in the more traditional cult style. And I love the story of Rick Rubin telling them to throw all that stuff away and to use Les Pauls and simple sounds – basically trying to make them sound like AC/DC. A lot of bands tried to sound like AC/DC, but the Cult doing AD/DC is its own thing, and it’s really brilliant I think. The first band I was ever in played ‘Lil’ Devil’ and that’s a pub classic, and if you’re writing pub classics then you’re doing something right I think. ‘Wild Flower’ is definitely the one for me, I love that song. The way the drummer [Les Warner] approaches it... it’s like, you know exactly what’s coming, there’s only one fill in it that’s unexpected and then you listen to it twice and you know when it’s coming. But every time the chord changes, he pushes so that he comes in slightly before the bar. And that’s actually brilliant. That’s how all rock drummers should approach rock drumming. It’s a masterclass."

"Really Red are from Texas and they released Teaching You The Fear in 1981. My friend Smithy and I had a fanzine called Attack and that was one of the records that came through. Our first band Mr. Epp eventually played with them. There's a lot going on in that band for a so-called hardcore punk band. There was a lot of cool stuff coming out of Texas in the early 80s like Big Boys and The Dicks, a little later the Butthole Surfers. Really Red was quite a political band. So many political punk bands were really strident like Crass but in the wake of Maximumrocknroll fanzine many of them were 16-year-old kids spouting shit about stuff they didn't really understand. And who wants to take advice from someone with a very small worldview? Really Red were a little older, maybe five to eight years older than me, and I know this because Ronnie Bond eventually moved up to Seattle and I got to know him a little. Those guys were old enough that when The MC5 came through Houston in the early 70s they hung out with them. Really thoughtful guys but most importantly kick-ass songs. Kelly Younger was a really unique guitar player. They also referenced Nico and The Velvet Underground as well as political punk stuff. They just seemed a little broader than a lot of things that were happening at the time in the hardcore scene in particular."