"I would say that Nick Cave is the greatest artist of my generation. I saw The Birthday Party about ten times and they only lasted a few years. I was lucky. I went to see them opening for Bauhaus, by accident. They blew Bauhaus away. I was like, ""What the fuck is this?"" There was this man in a vicar's dog collar, slapping the front row with a bible and a bass player wearing an Australian corked hat. They were fucked – they were more fucked than Iggy and I had given up looking for people more fucked than Iggy. I think The Birthday Party were the only band where Nick Cave was matched by other characters as big as he was. The Bad Seeds are a great band but Tracy Pew and Rowland Howard matched Nick Cave, which takes some doing. I was so lucky to have seen that band. I followed them around and saw them degenerate due to heroin abuse. Then, I watched Cave's transition into The Bad Seeds and I still thought he was a fascinating human being. I could have put The Birthday Party's second album, Prayers On Fire, on this list, but it is pretty unlistenable for most people. I chose The Boatman's Call because it was the first time he allowed himself to get really vulnerable through his love songs. I think it is a masterpiece and shows the breadth of his talent. There are five or six love songs on that record that are as good as Leonard Cohen's. It is a remarkable record. I have met him a number of times. Once, I pretended to be a journalist and interviewed him. He was probably still strung out on heroin and we nearly got into a fight. He threatened me and I didn't back down. A few weeks later, he found out who I was and then slagged off James in the NME. It didn't make me love him any less. It was just who he was at the time. I think he is still very damaged and hurt from his dealings with the press. He's been through the Amy Winehouse/Pete Doherty thing, where the press are sitting like vultures, waiting for him to die. I can imagine that he has coloured his view of journalism. I had a dream about Nick Cave on the night I got married, in which he told me his secret, magical voodoo name. I have never had the opportunity to tell him what his secret, magical voodoo name is, but I hope to one day. I guess that Nick Cave may hate James, but I don't care. I recognise his genius and I love him and wish him well."

"Tales Of Terror were this band from Sacramento. Unfortunately this record hasn't physically been reissued yet. They came through Seattle and played a show. It was random, nobody had heard of them, they hadn't got a record out. It was at an all-ages venue where you'd just go for something to do and this band came on and destroyed the place. And this was probably around '84 so at that point I was kind of looking for other things besides hardcore, which I was much more into a year or two previously. Green River had started at this point and I was trying to do something a bit differently, and this band came out and among the covers they played they did 'Search and Destroy' and 'Spanish Castle Magic' and everyone in the band was just an awesome, crazed musician. The singer would do backflips and land on his feet and by the end of the set all of them except for the drummer were wrapped up in cords. Somehow they all got tangled up and it didn't seem like something pre-planned, it was the natural course of events for that particular show. They were just wild, wild dudes and unfortunately a couple of them are dead now, and one of them is severely debilitated due to too much drugs, which is kind of a bummer. They were the kind of people who were just up for everything and they'd push whatever boundaries and envelopes there were. Supposedly they would carry a blender with them and they'd just put whatever in the blender. They'd go to someone's house, find the alcohol and weird shit from the fridge and put it in and then they'd drink it. I even heard they would put dirt in it. I don't know if that's true, it seems a little over the top. They were a great band that unfortunately only lasted for one record. The only flaw of that record is that it starts off with a cover of 'Hound Dog' but once they kick into their own songs after that it's a fantastic fucking record. It's really super loose. The record seems like you can almost hear them getting drunker and drunker as everything continues. Green River covered one of their songs from that record - a song called 'Ozzie' - we didn't do it nearly as good but... we did it. They were a big influence in our approach to live performance. Unfortunately I don't have the limberness and the wherewithal to do that now. There was one crazy Mudhoney show at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London where everybody tried to fit up on stage."