"I think The Hope Six Demolition Project and Let England Shake are this two pronged attack which is utterly perfect, entirely relevant and so important to be releasing this late into her career. I'd listened to Let England Shake a lot, and I felt PJ Harvey had changed so drastically with that record, and The Hope Six follows on from that so beautifully. I remember hearing 'The Ministry of Defence' and calling Dean [Richardson, Rattlesnakes guitarist] saying, 'Have you heard the new PJ Harvey? How are we going to release our album now? She's written a dirtier record than we could ever do.' It's amazing to see someone with that history in music release something that relevant, here's an artist who's so deep into her career and I think it's one of the greatest records she's made. She's definitely an inspiration; I think any artist writing at the minute would be foolish to not include some of the tragedies we're witnessing in the world. As artists we have a platform and a responsibility to talk about things that matter. They matter to me and they clearly matter to her as well. I find it incredibly frustrating that [more artists aren't addressing issues]. Either say something important or fuck off, essentially. Someone said a long time ago that stupidity was more of a problem than evil. Evil can be fought against, it can be revealed to be what it is, you can see it and name it and rally against it. Stupidity is much more dangerous because it allows evil to grow and breed and become the norm; you can't reason with a stupid person. I think when I see bands that aren't writing about anything important or releasing music that has no importance to them, I'm not trying to be overly political with my new record, it's a record about human relationships, but it was important for me to include [some political themes] because it's what's surrounded me for the last couple of years. We'll see who's got the courage."

"Beefheart was a bit of a dangerous guy. I did know Don Van Vliet quite well during 1972/73 and he was not a very nice man. He was pretty cruel to his musicians, which was pretty hard for them to take because they didn’t have a great opinion of him as a human being, nor as a musician. Don had no musical talent whatsoever, he simply employed other people to translate his maniacal ravings, musically speaking, into something that had a bit of order and discipline. Lyrically, however, Don did have a great talent and was a vivid painter – literally of course as a pictorial artist in that kind of abstract expressionist style. But he also employed that abstract expressionism in his lyric writing, and that makes him special and very worthwhile in spite of the fact he didn’t leave behind him a group of happy or respectful musicians. It’s rather sad that he was a bully. So he and Frank Zappa are my two big American, not influences, but revered examples of musical greatness. In Beefheart’s case it was a musically naïve greatness. Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot were the two albums around 1972, when Captain Beefheart and his band supported Jethro Tull when we were doing Thick As A Brick in America. Don called me himself, as Warner Brothers had told him what hotel I was staying in, and he kind of invited himself on tour. I tried to talk him out of it saying, “Don, this is not the passport to success you might think it is,” as audiences can be very cruel to support bands. But he was very insistent and Warner Brothers were desperate for some kind of outlet for Beefheart’s work and pushed for him to come on tour with us, so somewhat reluctantly I agreed. The audience did hate him and he got a rough ride every night. It was not successful for him in any way whatsoever. It was a misguided but interesting liaison."

"My first concert! I rode my bike to the city, because I lived in the suburbs and I tried to meet Angus Young outside the tour bus, asking the security guy, [imitates younger self] "Can I meet Angus Young?" "No, he's not here!" "Hey dude! What the fuck?! Don't talk to me like that, I bought a ticket!" Also, it was my first experience of how loud - it was the loudest shit I've ever heard! And in the suburbs, they were a dangerous band. It was like, "Oh fuck, the devil", it kind of made Kiss look tame, and it just powers. And when Angus Young solos, it's just magic. I saw them on that tour when Bon Scott had died; he'd just died and Brian Johnson had just taken over, and I was totally sceptical, and then it was like, "Oh, he's fucking good!" And actually, when Kim left the band, and we're going, "Aw shit, we're fucked", and we're talking about what we're going to do, and then we're like, "Fucking AC/DC replaced the fucking lead singer! We can do this! [sombrely] We shall overcome!" And we thought about replacing Kim with a dude, and then we went, "What?! They replaced Bon Scott with a guy that sounds exactly like Bon Scott! Let's not break the plate! We're not broken, we're not broken at all. Give me a fucking break." So I was totally adamant [laughs]! Song two ['Girls Got Rhythm'], it's like: "SEX!" It's about "SEX!" It's not like Foreigner, where it's obvious but it's fucking stupid - come on, you can do better than that! It's like, "I want to have sex with you, what's the problem?" I think it's the ultimate way to get attention: "Come on, we're not here to meet up, let's cut to the chase. I'm not going to waste your time, don't waste my time! Let's fuck, come on, I don't have time for this!" [laughs]"

"It was a real wake-up call. Hip hop until 1984, 85 was fun but for the most part it was party music. Living outside New York we'd listen to WBLS and Kiss FM where they played a lot of hip hop and me and my friends liked it, but it was very lighthearted. The Fatboys are the perfect example, or the Treacherous Three, where they have disco basslines and this fun vocal. Then almost out of nowhere Public Enemy happened. Everything about it was different. The lyrics were different, Chuck D's vocal approach was different, the subject matter and the production, the Bomb Squad. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking how did they do this, because they've basically made punk rock hip hop, the sounds they were using, the way they were distorting basslines, it was a lot of the same ways industrial records were being made but they were making hip hop. It was so revolutionary. You can refer to musical culture in New York as before and after Public Enemy, it changed the city. New York was so dangerous then, it had the highest murder count, people were getting stabbed and shot and the crack epidemic was decimating communities and people were dying of AIDS. You'd go out to nightclubs in the late 80s and you'd hear these apocalyptic Public Enemy songs that perfectly described the city that you lived in, but they were oddly celebratory and you could dance to them. For better or worse one of the reasons I've left New York is because the city I grew up with is still there, but it's become a much meaner, safer version of its former self. I still love New York, but it's become primarily the domain of hedge fund managers and wealthy tourists, so I don't know how many more Suicides and Silver Apples and Public Enemys and Eric B & Rakims are going to come out New York City."