"The first song that I think put me in a musical direction was probably Just Like a Woman by Bob Dylan, which I realise is not a very PC song now. I actually just had a think about how unacceptable that song would be in today’s day and age. But I think if you say something like that without any malice or highbrow nature then you could reverse it and say ‘just like a man’ as well. I definitely had a moment with it recently though where I was like, ‘I would not write that song today.’ But it was a revelation at the time: it was just a guy with a guitar and some lyrics and not even a good voice. That kind of hit me and I said, ‘I could do that.’ “This was probably during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and I was listening to stuff like Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana, but I wasn’t ever able to play like that, and growing up in suburban New Jersey I had no idea what Mr. Brownstone was. I was just pissed because I was in the suburbs and there was nothing to do. I was dealing with this whole lower middle-class frustration thing. Right after that, I heard the first Clash record and I made the connection between the harmonica that Joe Strummer was using with the harmonica that Bob Dylan was using."

"I'd been a fan of Queens of the Stone Age for a long, long time, from early on. I could have picked any of their records but …Like Clockwork is my favourite. It's just a true record, it's a representation of a man that's been in music for a fucking long time, close to as long as I've been alive for, and it's amazing for a man like him to be releasing records like this so late into his career, songs with such power like 'My God Is The Sun' which is a formidable rock song, and 'If I Had A Tail' which has the swagger the Rolling Stones wish they had. I just love that Josh Homme does whatever he wants and it's undeniably Queens. He's invented a sound from his own style. I'd always been a fan and I was waiting for this record for a long, long time, but it took things to a whole other level. I don't get excited over many records, but with this and [Nick Cave's] Skeleton Tree I had the same sort of feeling. Sometimes you worry about your favourite band releasing a new record because you just want it to be good, but this rewrote everything I thought about them, and everything I knew about life. That's what I love about them, and pretty much all of these bands. When a band is able to surprise you late in their career it's a wonderful thing."