"When Nick Cave is at his most theatrical the level of interest most people have in him is just elevated. You can feel what they were drinking, you can taste it in the air, you understand what drugs they're on and it's just from sound. It takes a lot to put the other senses into music, and he does it better than anyone else I've ever heard. He's great at every aspect of being Nick Cave, but I think when he's fully involved in story telling he's quite probably the best frontman there is. He really becomes those characters, he's able to live and breathe those people in the way only an author can; he understands them on a different level. This record has some of my favourite lyrics of all time. It's got 'Where The Wild Roses Grow' with Kylie Minogue which is a beautiful ballad, this amazing moment between one of the greatest pop stars of all time and one of the greatest songwriters of all time. It's this mashup that should never have happened, but the world's definitely a better place that it did. I got into Nick Cave late, later than I'd like to admit, when I was in my late 20s. I knew about him before, I'd heard things, but I heard this record when I was living in New York. I wasn't in Gallows any more, I was just painting, and I went record shopping one day. I was buying some Daniel Johnston records but the guy in the shop had a copy of Murder Ballads and I, like a fucking idiot, casually asked 'is this good?' He just said, 'Are you joking? Of course it's good!' So I went back home, listened to my Daniel Johnston records, made some food, then later that night put it on and was like 'holy shit!' and bought every other Nick Cave record they had."

"Dare was amazing. It came out around the same time as Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. You can't not mention Soft Cell, and you can't not mention Gary Numan either, in popularising electronic music. I'd seen The Human League perform at Eric's in front of three people - me, Jane Casey and some drunk lying on the floor - and it was in the Martyn Ware era, with Phil Oakey looking amazing with his asymmetric haircut, and the fabulous slides and the little constructed archways which had the synthesizers, which looked - I suppose - rather Kraftwerk. And you know, ""Listen to the voice of Buddha"" [on 'Being Boiled'], the Travelogue album, was amazing and groundbreaking in many ways. It was not commercially successful at all, and I remember in particular their version of 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling' being incredible. But when Dare came, it was an attempt at global pop superstardom and ABBA-ness, as well as being groundbreaking and electronic. It was time I became aware of the Linn drum machine, and the programming on that album is fantastic. The engineer Dave Allen at night time would be editing instrumentals together and that became The League Unlimited Orchestra album [1982's Love And Dancing], which was also incredible to dance to in seedy gay nightclubs, which I also did [laughs]. I was then more aware of technology by this point and had been working in a recording studio with the TR-808 drum machine which, although a plastic instrument, seemed slightly paltry to the meaty sounds of the sampled bass and snare of Dare, which was the Linn LM-1. It sounded like a real drummer but obviously wasn't and was intrinsic to the sound of that album. My favourite was 'Love Action', not 'Don't You Want Me', which is always cited and is the most successful. 'Love Action' was always the one for me."

"When I did ‘Setting Sun’ with The Chemical Brothers it was based loosely on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Do you remember when it went to number one, what song we knocked off the top? ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ by Deep Blue Something. We were like Sir Galahad. 'And she said, 'What about Breakfast At Tiffany's' and I said, ‘I remember the movie.'' And we came in, 'Off with your head you piece of shit.' Revolver was when the sitars really started to come in with The Beatles, and all the backwards stuff on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. It’s their first drug album. The drums sound great on it and it’s a masterclass of how to make guitar pop. That’s just it. They took what the Beatles had been, they did Revolver and then the next week they’re making ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. They’re a completely different band. It’s a cliché to talk about it now because it’s so well-known but this is a mindblowing album. I went to see the premiere of the George Harrison film the other night [Martin Scorsese documentary Living In The Material World] and on the red carpet outside this journalist asked me this question: 'Would you say that The Beatles have been an influence on your music?' I was that amazed I had to take my shades off. I said, 'Is that a serious question?' And he was only young and in all innocence he said, 'Yes. Why?' I was like, 'Are you having me on?' And he was like, 'No.' Now ignoring the fact that it’s me, if you’re in a band and you’re playing guitar, you have been influenced by The Beatles. That really is all you need to know. The psychedelic stuff they did after this was mindblowing and the Fab Four mop top stuff before this was equally as good but on this record it all came together."