"The mythology is that Jimmy Page played on that, but it's clearly Jeff Beck all the way - that personality. The interesting way they recorded the tracks is that the entire band were in the studio at the same time. And Ronnie Wood on bass. I think Ronnie Wood is actually a better bass player than he is a guitar player. The bass playing on that record is just great! You can hear mistakes, but listen to what the bass does in 'Rock My Plimsoul', it goes completely against the drums, but it gives it like a slinky snake-like feel. From beginning to end you have this kind of jamming, drunken-keyboard-player-in-a-New-Orleans-whorehouse-upright-piano feel. It's the best vocal that Rod Stewart has ever done on that first record, I don't think he's ever equalled it. He ran out of songs to do, so he covered 'Greensleeves' instrumental, he just didn't have any more songs! 'Shapes Of Things' was a cover that he originally did with The Yardbirds and then did a version here, and tore. It. Up. Such a heavy, heavy band. I remember seeing them live in New York City. The rest of the kids didn't understand, but I was just blown away. I remember it well, the opening band was the Crazy [World of] Arthur Brown. He came out in a mask with his head lit on fire. That was actually connected later to by fire-spitting in the band. I just thought, 'Well that's a good idea'. The thing you noticed that while everyone was drinking, flirting, talking or whatever, when Arthur Brown walked onstage with his head on fire, everyone stopped!"

"The running themes of my top ten list are so perfectly combined in News from Home, which features the most exquisite first-person voice-over and a series of static landscapes of New York City. I had the incredible experience of watching News from Home on the night of October 6, 2015, the day after Chantal Akerman took her own life. I had awoken to this news from Paris on the morning of the sixth. Having spent the day trying to comprehend this incomprehensible fact, I found myself drawn to Hulu that night, choosing to process my grief by watching one of her films. After the first few minutes of News from Home, I realized to my amazement that I had actually never seen it despite thinking that I had (shameful confession: I realize now that it was Hotel Monterey I had seen long ago, and all this time I had somehow mixed up these two titles). Of course, I have seen many of Akerman’s other works and have always considered her a huge influence on my own—especially her formal approach to lengthy shot duration and the static camera and her affection for the mundane. But seeing News from Home, particularly at that moment in time, was such a revelation. It seemed so uncanny that my own cinematic style of mixing static, durational 16 mm urban cityscapes with voice-over would so resemble Akerman’s style in News from Home—and I make this comparison in the humblest way possible. As the final twelve-minute shot of a Manhattan skyline with seagulls unspooled before my bewildered and bleary eyes, I discovered that the conclusion of my new film, The Royal Road, which features a single seagull flying across the San Francisco skyline, pays uncanny homage to Akerman’s film."