"This band were in a similar-shaped box to Silver Apples. The nucleus of the band – Joe Byrd – was from an academic background; he was part of the Fluxus movement at the same time as Yoko Ono. He looked like a freak but wasn't druggy. The band were definitely writing lyrics that were less utopian than a lot of the stuff the hippies were writing at the time; there's a subversive edge seeping through the record that's evocative of what was going on in the States at the time – Vietnam, conscription, campus violence, the civil rights movement. You can really imagine this lot playing at a proper happening. A track like 'Love Song For The Dead Ché' is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, whereas some of the rest of it has a real jagged edge, a violence almost, that seems to come from Byrd's more experimental side. It's a very political record. Their second album even more so. I could easily have chosen that; this one just edged it for me today."

"There's A Riot Goin' On is an abstract, nihilistic, urban death funk record. Sly documents the times better than anybody – 1971: the whole civil rights movement has been crushed by the murders of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and the whole American state dismantled the Black Panther party. Sly Stone documents the dread and the suffocation of those times. His music before that was transcendent and joyous with stuff like 'Everyday People', which was basically life-affirming music. Then from about 1969, '70, he starts to become darker with these new funk sounds. Even the hit single from the record, 'Family Affair', is dark. He would have never written that four years prior. It was like the utopian idealism of the '60s had gone and America was almost at war with itself. But Sly never made this a political record – his aim was to put the American flag on the cover with no writing on it. The lyrics were internalised, it was kind of like a closed-off, looking-inward record. There's no reverb on this record and it's completely dry. There's no real joy in the record."

"Sam Cooke’s voice on this song is just absolutely... It guts you, it's so emotional. It was written around the time of the civil rights movement, really addressing the struggle and trying to maintain hope throughout that struggle and to push through and to persevere. “""A Change Is Gonna Come"" is something that I sang years ago in this thing called The Zodiac Show in L.A. It was the first time that I was stepping out of the world of musical theatre, singing how I wanted to sing and dressing how I wanted to dress and expressing myself. “The song took on a slightly new meaning for me because I’d been struggling within the theatre world, believe it or not, for sort of being perceived as 'too gay' for a lot of these roles and the things that I was auditioning for. It became a bit frustrating and I thought “Well, fuck, I thought I was in theatre, all the weirdos are in theatre and we're supposed to support each other.” I didn't feel that sense of community as much as I wanted to. “I also ended up signing it on American Idol and it kind of came back around as a full circle thing. Funnily enough, I sang it in the finale and didn't win. Many would say “Oh, maybe that's because of how they perceived you to be.” It was this repeated concept for me, both times. “My interpretation of the song was my personal change, that things were going to get better and things were going to become different hopefully, and that I was going to not give up, and strive towards that. This song has that personal meaning to me."