"I heard Nick Drake quite early on, in 1981, when nobody of our generation really knew him. A friend of mine had a big brother who had given him the Fruit Tree box set [first released in 1979]. When I heard it I was all, 'What is this?' Listening to him, I felt like I was going into a world no-one else knew, especially when everyone else was into post-punk. I also found it very sad, as it was the last album he made a few years before he died.

I've got a funny story about it, too. I did one of my first sessions for Manchester Piccadilly Radio in 1981 or so, when Mark Radcliffe was working there. I came down on the bus all the way from Hull, and he was housesitting for someone in the music industry at the time – I can't remember who – but I had nowhere to stay, so I just slept on the floor there. I remember staying up late with Mark going through this music industry guy's record collection, then finding some Nick Drake records and getting really excited. Going, 'Oh, Mark, do you know him?', and Mark going, 'No, who's he? He's great!' He became a big fan."

"That's pretty obvious. When I got turned onto it, I was like, "Okay, I'll pick up the guitar!" My favourite parts of it are the sonics. It's nothing like anyone's heard. Pete Townshend was like, "Alright, I quit the guitar." [laughs] That instrumental, 'Third Stone From The Sun', boy, how good is that? There's a video of Stevie Ray Vaughan - have you seen that? He did it fucking note-for-note! It's incredible! It's like, "Who the fuck is this guy?!" I just love it. I would say around 12 years old when I bought it. Then, I loved the poppier ones, like 'Fire' and obviously 'Purple Haze', had to learn that riff. I figured out what he was playing through a painful process. I'm not as fluid on guitar as my little brother, who can hear it once and just do it. That song has a chord, an E7#9 - I use it a lot! I use it on 'Tame': it's the one where everyone's hitting three chords and I'm hitting that chord and that's all I'm hitting. It's one of those chords that's either a question mark or an answer. It's very neutral, but more interesting than a major chord."

"I also loved Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” My introduction to it was by my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Jeness, who read it aloud to us in class, a chapter at a time. Each day I could hardly wait for him to begin reading. I very closely identified with the heroine, Meg Murry, a girl who felt extremely disenfranchised in her world. She was physically awkward – skinny, with glasses and braces and crazy hair – felt socially inept, and was close only to her very brilliant, but very strange baby brother, Charles Wallace. Their father, a scientist, has been missing for some time – and one night the crazy ladies next door (witches, presumably – science fiction witches) prevail upon the children, and their friend, Calvin to “tesseract” through time and space to rescue Meg’s father. When they reach the planet where their father is held captive, they discover that it is a place where there is no free will, and beings are governed by a tyrannical “IT” a pulsing, logical brain that insists on conformity. Meg triumphs at the end, by using her illogical self – her passion for language, her emotional heart, and her tremendous love for her family. She saves them using only her awkward, non-conforming self as a weapon."