"Take great care with this documentary film of an all-day concert staged by John Phillips in small-town Monterey, California, for it holds within it the greatest single performance by any electric-music instrumentalist you have ever seen, or are likely to: the U.S. debut of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Known as the man who revolutionized the electric guitar, Jimi Hendrix appears onstage in this film a man possessed. As David Bowie sang in “Ziggy Stardust”: “He could lick ’em by smiling/ He could leave ’em to hang/ They came on so loaded, man/ Well hung and snow-white tan/ . . . He was the nazz/ With God-given ass/ He took it all too far/ But boy could he play guitar.” Never will you see a performance so sensual. There are many great films to be found of Jimi playing, but none to rival this. In Monterey Pop, there are many performances worth watching, seminal, even—Janis Joplin, Otis Redding among them—but they are all just warm-up acts to Jimi, the greatest rock-and-roll star to ever tread the boards."

"I often say there's a fight going on for best debut album ever, it might be The Velvet Underground & Nico or it might be Marquee Moon… there's a constant scuffle going on. Marquee Moon is a masterpiece. To come out with that album at that time with punk kicking off… It was cerebral and virtuoso, largely everything that punk wasn't. I remember I went to see them doing the tour when it came to the Free Trade Hall, and they were just another one of those bands who were fully formed when punk happened. If you hear 'Little Johnny Jewel' – there's nothing like that song that comes from anywhere else. I went to see them when they opened for Patti Smith at the Academy and I spent most of the night just watching Lloyd's guitar work. He is one of the greatest guitarists ever; and he's a guitar teacher now in New York. It's just a remarkable album, filmic. This came out when I was 16 and I was a roadie for The Fall in 1977."