"Of all the records I've chosen here, they all changed my life in some way but the one that had the most profound impact on me was Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. This just blew me away because it was one of those moments in my life where I was like 'How do you do this?' Some of the other records I'd listened to at the time, I'd managed to figure out how they'd done stuff, how they made a certain sound. As a musician, when somebody comes along and does something that you never thought of, that you didn't know was humanly possible and it just twists fucking everything you thought was possible up in your brain, that's a big fucking impact. That was the impact of Public Enemy to me. My first thought was: 'I need to figure this shit out. What the fuck is this?' I was just a kid listening to this but I just didn't know what they were doing and I was hungry to know. I was a Public Enemy fan from the very first album. When this album came out in 1988, it revolutionised sound and music: it was like a fucking tsunami of sound coming at you. Everything about them was brand new and different and I just listened to them as a nineteen-year-old kid with my mouth open thinking: 'What the fuck?' Public Enemy were probably the pinnacle of music production and the best band in the world at that time. They were easily one of the best production teams in the world in any genre of music back then. Like so many of the records I'm picking, this was like a genre changing historical landmark piece; it wasn't just a record that was put out – this was a record changing the culture and the way that people explored music. They were always a voice for the dispossessed, but they never ever felt preachy with it, which I liked so much."

"Beefheart was a bit of a dangerous guy. I did know Don Van Vliet quite well during 1972/73 and he was not a very nice man. He was pretty cruel to his musicians, which was pretty hard for them to take because they didn’t have a great opinion of him as a human being, nor as a musician. Don had no musical talent whatsoever, he simply employed other people to translate his maniacal ravings, musically speaking, into something that had a bit of order and discipline. Lyrically, however, Don did have a great talent and was a vivid painter – literally of course as a pictorial artist in that kind of abstract expressionist style. But he also employed that abstract expressionism in his lyric writing, and that makes him special and very worthwhile in spite of the fact he didn’t leave behind him a group of happy or respectful musicians. It’s rather sad that he was a bully. So he and Frank Zappa are my two big American, not influences, but revered examples of musical greatness. In Beefheart’s case it was a musically naïve greatness. Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot were the two albums around 1972, when Captain Beefheart and his band supported Jethro Tull when we were doing Thick As A Brick in America. Don called me himself, as Warner Brothers had told him what hotel I was staying in, and he kind of invited himself on tour. I tried to talk him out of it saying, “Don, this is not the passport to success you might think it is,” as audiences can be very cruel to support bands. But he was very insistent and Warner Brothers were desperate for some kind of outlet for Beefheart’s work and pushed for him to come on tour with us, so somewhat reluctantly I agreed. The audience did hate him and he got a rough ride every night. It was not successful for him in any way whatsoever. It was a misguided but interesting liaison."

"I'd gotten into The Gentle Good after hearing his previous record, which was called Tethered For The Storm, which was lent to me by one of my neighbours back in Cardiff. That's how I switched onto him. I still love the accidental way you sometimes just get into music. He made this record when he took a trip to China because he'd become obsessed with the story of a Chinese poet called Li Bai. So Y Bardd Anfarwol is the immortal poet, basically; he has that west Walian edge to his music. He is a folk musician, even if I don't know if he'd like to be described as such, and this album has lots of Chinese musicians on it and it really is dealing with the myth and reality of this poet, and when he becomes a hermit. There's songs on there which are absolutely lovely. I like it when someone buys into a record; they jump into it, and they travel to another country, and they think: "I have to do this. I have to follow the path of this record." I'm not a great lover of world music - I'm not a great authority on it - but this was sometimes I could buy into; it was a smash-up which was enchanting. I love the fact he went from The Gathering Storm to this; it was a lovely seamless step that he made, and it's that kind of thing where I'm so entranced with this album, and it is a record that relaxes me, which is rare for me. I'm intrigued to see where he goes next, and that's lovely - it's the feeling you had when you're 15, and you go out and buy a third album from an artist and as soon as you finish digesting it you think, "God, I wonder what they're gonna do next." I kind of have that feeling with this guy."