"When I think of classic rock, to me this album defines what that is. This album influenced me at an early age. I recall my parents were watching the Smothers Brothers TV show and The Who were on performing 'My Generation' I think, I can't quite remember, but the drums blew up at the end and I was like 'Holy Shit, this is amazing.' This album veered me away from the pop music that my mother would purchase or I'd hear on top 40 radio. There was a record store in town, a stoner shop, you could go in there and buy pipes and stuff, but they also carried all The Who's albums in there. I would always pop in, hang out and look at the jackets, which is sadly missing from these days. This album is so ambitious, the performances are spot on and the songwriting is incredible. It was somewhat experimental the way Pete Townsend used the harp, the sequencing and the keyboards - it was a big texture of the music which was different than what he had done before. The album is full of rock anthems; 'Baba O'Riley', 'Bargain', 'My Wife', and 'I Won't Get Fooled Again' which is one of the greatest rock songs ever. That scream at the end, it's just one of those moments where the hair on the back of my neck goes up every time I hear it."

"When I was about 15, Danny and Mick [Quinn, Supergrass bassist] lived in this row of cottages that was literally 10 metres from my family house. That was our base; we’d get together in Mick’s living room. I feel very lucky to have been in a band at that time because we were still approaching music – playing live, writing and recording – the way they had since the beginning; it was the last little window where there was only two-inch tape recording, just a few A&R men around who would come to gigs and stuff, no internet, mobile phones. It seems weird now! We were in the house getting stoned and playing loads of records, everything from Pink Floyd to Gong, Muppets albums, Zappa and Patti Smith. A big one for us was Brian Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets – it was one we were really hooked on. For somebody so experimental he had killer melodies and the way he double-tracked his voice is just really cool. The production and instrumentation are kind of understated and hint at lo-fi, but in an honest way. We had a meeting with him in New York in the early 00s about producing us. I don’t think it was anything creative that was the issue, it was a boring calendar thing from what I remember, but it was great to meet him and have a chat."

"This is pretty amazing. I think this is Geoff Emerick’s first go as engineer. He’d been working there [at Abbey Road studios] but he hadn’t become an engineer yet. When I was working with Paul McCartney on his album, Flaming Pie, Geoff was the engineer as well. He told me what a marvellous thing it was for him because he used this close mic ambience on this album and did some really amazing effects, like on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Backwards stuff and all that and this was pretty advanced stuff in them days. It was more experimental than anything they’d done before. Some of the tunes on there are just great and it was them nearly getting into Sgt Pepper, you know? Probably doing more experimenting and copying tapes and bouncing them across. They hadn’t got the tracks to do it, really, so they had to use two machines and sometime three machines and then mix everything down from four tracks onto one and then start on another and mix that down to another machine. So it was very difficult to make those records, I would imagine. How did it sound back in ’66? Way better than everything else, I would say. It stood out like a sore thumb really. It was so tight and beautiful and punchy. It was the punchiest thing around. It was, like, powerful and, it seemed to me, majestic."