"Probably KC and the Sunshine Band, I wanna say it was ‘Shake Your Booty’. I actually remember being a toddler, like three years old riding in my dad’s truck and holding onto the top and standing up in the back and rocking out to that song. Because KC & the Sunshine Band are so metal."

"For any musician – not so much vocalists, but anyone who played guitar – when this came out it changed everything. I went to see them at the Rainbow in London, because I missed them supporting Black Sabbath. We were making our first album in London at the time and they were unbelievable: it was a West Coast rock & roll party and a new era in guitar playing. I had never seen anything like it before. Then all the glam metal bands copied Van Halen, because they were the first of the hair metal bands, selling sex. That’s really how they looked. ‘Running WIth The Devil’ is a fucking fantastic rock song – not quite as good as ‘Smoke On The Water’, but not far off."

"The ones that define metal to me? It all goes back to Motorhead and No Sleep Till Hammersmith. That was the epitome of balls-out, letting-it-go rifforama. But when it comes to classic heavy metal, Judas Priest’s Sad Wings Of Destiny is definitely one of the all-time great opuses. Hearing Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing’s unison guitar playing and hearing Rob Halford let rip… who sings like that? Nobody. I was so entranced by that band and everything about them, that I went to a hat store and bought a Fedora because Glenn Tipton was wearing one on the back of Sad Wings… I have curly hair so hats don’t stay on so well. It didn’t last very long (laughs)"

"We were in Paris and MTV was on. I remember I was really sick at the time, and Roddy Frame was singing Deep And Wide And Tall, and he’s just a really great pop songwriter. You can tell the metal guys that have successful, long-lasting careers are usually people that listen to music outside the obvious realm and have influences from outside metal. If we’re just repeating what our peers are doing, we’re not really pushing the envelope. I also own a Scritti Politti single called Wood Beez. It came with a turntable that somebody had left at a house that me and David Ellefson moved into, and I just kind of adopted it. It’s a little bit poppy for me"