"With blues records, it's hard to know which song is on which album, but the era of Fleetwood Mac when they did 'Fighting For Madge' and 'The Green Manalishi With The Two-Pronged Crown' is the ultimate band. They were so tight: Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer, Peter Green - wow. This was unbelievable. The way they played together was something else - the original Fleetwood Mac, before the females got involved, that was the stuff. I'm glad for you that you like Rumours. [He turns deeply sarcastic]. I'm thrilled for you. It makes me happy. I've never been more happy. The very first tour with Nicks and Buckingham, we played a show with them in Wisconsin. After our show, we said: "Thanks for letting us play. Here are some shirts for you guys." And John McVie threw us out of the dressing room: "Are you calling my wife a cheap trick?" My manager and I wanted him to apologise to us. It had nothing to do with calling his wife a cheap trick. Give me a break. How drunk was he? Years later he apologised."

"This song that I'm going to play you is really interesting. To me it's the birth of funk guitar. This is a song called 'Go Where I Send Thee' and was recorded in 1937. The Golden Gate Quartet are an a capella group, so this is a capella, but listen to what happens with the rhythm. It's an amazing thing that four guys, no overdubs or anything like that, could make this amount of rhythm. For me they were one of the most important musical forces of the 20th century. The style of singing, which is called jubilee singing, was all originated in this one town in Virginia and there were lots and lots of groups in that town that could do this way of singing. Partly a way of harmonising but it's also a way of creating rhythm by making voices slightly hit off each other so they don't all land together. It's incredibly hard to do. You're pushing the beat by a 16th or 32nd to get that flam."

"My favourite video of all time is actually for James Blake’s A Case Of You, the one that has Rebecca Hall in it – I can’t watch it without my entire body shaking. But, for what a video really, really should be, for pure Thriller-like entertainment value, you can’t get much better than the video by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis for Downtown. The dancing! The marching! The mopeds! The chariots! You have to give in to that video – how ridiculous it is. It played a lot with hip-hop culture – and I love hip-hop culture, I love the bigness, the grandness, the showing-off-ness of it, I appreciate it and I revel in it. But there’s something about these guys mocking the extravagance of it that I really responded to. It really made me laugh – I was in tears watching it. And actually I think you can see Macklemore pissing himself laughing at the end… Ryan Lewis, who produces the records, produced and directed the video. Epic."

"My late friend and mentor, a guy called Roger Eagle, who used to run Eric's [club] in Liverpool, he turned me on to Bobby Bland. And straight away I was just blown away by the voice. This incredible voice. What I like about Bobby Bland is he has tinges of jazz in the R&B, it's not just straight ahead R&B, the jazz comes through. I was very fortunate to spend time with Bobby, and B.B. King as well, they were very close friends [of one another]. B.B. contributes to the film we made when we went over to Memphis and I spent a little time with Bobby [this documentary features on the DVD edition of M.H.'s 2008 solo album, Tribute to Bobby]. He's a profound influence on me, he's a truly great singer. His music lives with me, and I just love him and it. I love the R&B of that period. A wonderful experience, just knowing these guys, and spending time with them and listening to their stories."

"I was always interested in classical music but not conventional classical. When I was in seventh grade I had a music theory teacher who was teaching me how to write music while playing me Mozart, Beethoven and Bach – the classic, romantic –styled composers and I got it. Actually, I didn’t get it. It was too simple, too predictable and I didn’t resonate with predictable music. What really pushed my buttons were things that were completely unpredictable, so when I went through college and finally heard Stravinsky, I thought he had dropped acid or something. This was a guy who for many years of life had composed relatively traditional music and then he wrote the ballets and they were monumental pieces of music for the Twentieth Century. They were pivotal pieces within a genre. Of course it’s impossible to mention Stravinsky without also mentioning some other composers like Varese, Ligeti and Berio who all really excited me. These guys all functioned on a different level, but Stravinsky…he had the biggest dick."