"I was playing guitar when this came out and I tried to learn all the riffs. I loved that idea of transforming the blues into heavy rock – taking blues classics and giving them a twist. A lot of the music was traditional blues songs, but the Stones had done the same thing in taking them and twisting them. So many British bands took blues songs and made them famous –there are people who think ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ was written by the Beatles, and a lot of people didn’t know who BB King was until Zeppelin made him famous. When I was young my friend’s brother played guitar. He was really into blues, playing Chuck Berry, and he would play all these old recordings, so I knew all of them. All those licks I heard, I would then hear Clapton and all those guys play. I saw Zeppelin at Bath Festival [in 1970] from a long way off – the violin bow solo with the echo chamber went on for hours, but they were great. I’d never been to anything like a festival before, and that was the first real one, I was on awe."

"I rekindled a fondness for hip-hop having spent so much time in Houston, Texas, which lately has been revealed as the unexpected destination to make rap and hip-hop records. That's due largely to the presence of the Geto Boys and Bushwick Bill, Scarface and even Destiny's Child. When ZZ Top were recording the album Rhythmeen our studio was undergoing a facelift so we went into an alternate studio, John Moran's Digital Services, where many rap records have been made. There was the left room and the right room, adjoined with the shared group lounge area. I was trying to figure out how the hip-hop guys and rappers got such great-sounding backbeats. And of course what they didn't have was this kinda bluesy guitar. To this day ZZ Top aspires to keep some crunch and grit as part of the fabric. What started the ball rolling back in that direction was the movie Straight Outta Compton. All of a sudden I'm watching the genesis of NWA and what really started such a robust scene. I'd watch that movie ten times. And I probably will [again]!"

"I first heard this one in 2000, or maybe 2001. My girlfriend at the time, Eleanor, had a Bo Diddley compilation that I think she got from her brother. I was grown by then so it wasn’t like I was listening to Bo in the crib, you know? But I came around to it. ""For a long time, I wasn’t a fan of the blues, because my limited understanding of it was cover bands on Sixth Street here in Austin - that version of the genre was just white guys trying to imitate Stevie Ray Vaughan. I think Bo transcended blues though. There’s so much more going on; there’s pop elements, there’s pure rock and roll elements. ""What I love about him the most is that he’s all about the maracas. That’s something that I’ve snagged, for sure, they’re the coolest percussion instrument. He went on The Ed Sullivan Show with a four-piece band, and one of them was just there to play maracas - that’s how essential it was to the sound. On this song, Jerome himself is the maraca player and he’s singing the response vocal - singing his own name. I love that."

"This would be the opposite to a lot of the records we've been talking about - it's complicated, there's a lot of instrumentation going on. That's one of the things I really like about Tortoise, they can play all that stuff live and pull it off. I think they have nine members sometimes, maybe even more, but it's one of those records where it's a really cool electronic record but it's actually really organic because these guys are really playing. Those two things are so different and so hard to blend well, I've tried it myself and failed often, it's hard to do. The musicianship needs to be there, and the programming needs to be right - I may be wrong but I think a lot of those type of songs are created electronically and then people try to interpret them, but with Tortoise I don't know how it starts - do they start organically and then interpret them electronically? Especially with Standards, it's a perfect blend of the two. I definitely feel an affinity with post rock groups like Tortoise, maybe people like Shellac as well."

"That was the first record that Jaye ever played to me when we met. It was surprise. This is a girl who ran away from home at age 14 to Alphabet City in the eighties, lived in a squat there, was into the hardcore scene so went out with one of the biggest hardcore guys in a band so no-one would beat her up or touch her, and yet she loved sixties psychedelic music. The Electric Prunes, The Zombies… Eventually The Zombies reformed to do one gig in New York, in this little club, so I got tickets, and they were spot-on. They did Odessey And Oracle, and afterwards I introduced her to The Zombies and they signed her album. It’s an excellent album. The harmonies and Colin Blunstone’s voice are stunning. That voice with the hissing in it. We had this friend, who did a lot of co-production on early Psychic TV, and he said my voice took to tape really well because it had this hiss in it. Apparently, it gave more resonance, so I accidentally have the same sort of resonances as Blunstone. Sadly, not the same voice or skill!"

"The Blues Brothers was a big movie for me, because I was about 13 to 14 years old, and it was my first introduction to James Brown, my first introduction to Aretha Franklin. I knew about Murph and the Magic Tones, which was made up of Booker T and the MGs, essentially. Steve Cropper and “Duck” Dunn, the two guys in there, they were two members of Booker T and the MGs, and then the drummer, you know, he’s got one of my favorite lines in movie history; his name’s Willie Hall. There’s this great line where Willie Hall goes, “Jake, Elwood, you’re out of prison, things are lookin’ good for you. You got the money you owe us, mother f***er?” That’s Willie Hall. He actually plays at my kids’ birthday parties here in Memphis, Tennessee. But, it was a movie that just had the… I mean, my dad and I watched that, and the whole scene where the nun is just beating them up; I’ve never seen my dad laugh so hard. It’s an electrifying, fun movie, and Steven Spielberg makes a cameo at the end of it."