"Seventeen Seconds is my favorite Cure album. It wasn’t the first one I heard; I bought Japanese Whispers and then The Head on the Door, both on cassette tape, and used to listen to them while I did my newspaper delivery round at the age of about 15 in Oxford. But then I went back and started getting into the earlier Cure records. With the people I knew, Pornography and Faith were both really big, but I gravitated toward Seventeen Seconds because it was less heavy, more minimal. Like most of their albums, it has its own unique sound. My favorite track off the album is ‘Play for Today,’ and I was absolutely buzzing when we played with them in Greece last week and they played this and ‘A Forest’ together in the setlist."

"I get all the Queen records mixed up because there are so many neat songs but there never was, in my opinion, a consistent groove to one of the records where you could clearly identify a distinct period during those first few. But the operatic approach to Queen totally changed how I viewed heavy rock and I still think that Brian May was ahead of his time with his weird picking, guitar tones and harmonies. Of the later Queen material, I was listening to 'Who Wants To Live Forever' the other day and Freddie's voice – every time I hear it, my eyes fill up. It's so incredibly emotional and that's what we, as musicians, want to elicit from the listener. Freddie and Queen were such a huge part of my life."

"This was the mid-’80s, around the time PiL made Album. On that record, I was referring to the heavy metal scene, which had crawled up its own backside. It was endless bands imitating each other, the same nonsense that punk turned into. But great achievements were made in music around then too. Everything from madder folk outfits and pop music itself was becoming very interesting then. I was always pleasantly surprised that oddball stuff would creep in the charts from nowhere. Someone like Gary Numan gave pop music a very distinctive and clear tone that was all his own. “At this stage, I would have been buying everything that was being made, but Alice Cooper’s Killer never left me. That easy way of growling he had was always impressive."

"The album with Faith Healer. No one else around the midwest, apart from us guys, was following this kind of music. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were incredible. They were another band I knew about from reading people like Chris Welch. I could picture what they sounded like just from reading, because back then the writers were real writers. I never got to see The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, but I could visualise what they were like. Alex Harvey got up and played with us at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1980, a couple of years before he died. We did 'Shakin' All Over' and he ate a cassette - what the fuck? They were a mash of cool stuff: the music was haunting and heavy and fun, all at the same time."

"This is more of a collection, rather than an album, I guess, but it's a collection of songs I've listened to hundreds of times. I like jazz, but I don't like all jazz. I like very specific jazz and Chet Baker falls into that category. I prefer Chat Baker's versions of those old standards than any other version. It's very straightforward, there's no frills, it's very direct. The way that he sings is the way that he plays. His voice kind of sounds the way that he plays the trumpet. It's really clean and clear sounding. Not too heavy. It's very straightforward, but with feeling. All the words that I'm using to describe it might sound derogatory but I don't mean it that way at all. His voice is very unadulterated"