"This is my favourite Smiths track, with ‘How Soon Is Now?’ a close second. Andy and I had a real shared history with The Smiths when we were growing up. We saw them at Maxwell Hall in Salford in 1986, which is remembered as being this legendary gig now, or so I’m told. The thing is, it really was that good - it’s in my top five gigs of all time. I saw them a lot of times, but there was something about that one, the energy was incredible. I think the place was oversold, so there was already a sort of danger in the air, and there was a sense that you were seeing a very special band at the peak of their powers, because it was just after The Queen Is Dead had come out. I can’t think of anything else that sounds like ‘The Headmaster Ritual’. The guitar tuning that Johnny Marr’s using is weird, so there’s this otherworldly feel to the way it sounds, but in terms of what Morrissey is singing about, that was very much rooted in reality; brutality in schools was still a thing during my upbringing and corporal punishment was still around, so this track in particular really resonated with me. I think any time you get one of the greatest lyricists of all time together with one of the greatest guitarists something special’s going to happen, but for me, ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ is probably the top example of what that band could do."

"That was a really good band for me growing up. Lots of my friends were into really heavy bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit. And I always used to find a lack of melody and musicality to those bands; they seemed all about aggression and there were no tunes to sing, and the lyrics were usually shit as well. And Deftones were really melodic, and that's rare. They would play in such an aggressive way and yet they had this mode that they always wrote in, so their songs always have a certain sadness to them no matter what they were doing. This record has this incredible sadness and extra power you could never get, no matter how loud you play it. The harmony has such a nostalgic wistfulness. The older you get, the more you get into the feeling and the emotion of it, whereas when you're young it's all about the excitement. The album hit the perfect sweet spot for me, where it gave me all the aggression I wanted from Nirvana, but these guys are extra heavy and they have this amazing sadness. I used to play the drums and would play exactly the sort of things Deftones were doing. I also think Chino Moreno's singing style, high and forceful, along with Thom Yorke, is where my voice comes from. I always try to emulate them. Moreno could sing hard but he could sing a melody that was high and above the dirge below, sailing out above the chaos below it"

"I read Wiseguy, the book that Goodfellas is based on, before I knew that Goodfellas existed. I was, like, 15 and found it in the school library. Then at the end it was a footnote that was like, “Oh by the way, Scorsese made this into a film.” At 15 or 16, I saw Goodfellas for the first time. Was mesmerized. And then also, it was the first time I probably watched a movie or a film with the beginning of an adult perspective on things. Where it wasn’t just participating in the story, but seeing what a masterpiece it is that someone created that. That those performances individually were so fantastic that the story, the shots, the music… The first time I understood the elements of film coming together, being a conscious choice for those things to be in the film, and then the effect that it had on me. As opposed to being a kid and a viewer, and being like, “I like that thing.” I’m not unique in this, I think, but I can go back every six months and watch that movie and still be so excited to see it. I’m always ready to watch it. I wanted to be Henry Hill as a kid. Growing up in the country with no excitement around us, I wanted to be half Irish, half Italian, and adopted by this family I could never be a part of. That whole scene. I just wanted that life. Or as a kid, I thought I wanted that life."

"This film takes place in Dijon, France, in the mid-’50s. It is a coming-of-age film about a boy in his early teens named Laurent Chevalier, who is from a bourgeois family. He has two older brothers who are always teasing him and who introduce him to a prostitute for his first sexual experience. Laurent has a beautiful mother and a successful father who is a gynecologist. After getting scarlet fever and discovering he has a heart murmur, Laurent must stay in bed for several months to recover. When he is better, he travels with his mother to a very fancy resort (sanatorium) in France. The second and third acts of the film are about his coming-of-age experiences at the sanatorium with the other young people who are staying there. It is also about him developing a strong personal relationship with his mother. This film is so daring and touches on many taboo issues—it’s astonishing that it could be made then (1971) and even now it would be considered to be pushing too many boundaries. In the end, it’s a beautiful, deep love story between adolescent children growing up in a privileged life, and about the closest relationship between a mother and son. I wish more films today could push boundaries like Louis Malle did in Murmur of the Heart. This film reassured me how important it is to push boundaries and to pursue issues that are considered by some to be untouchable. It is a truly inspirational film."