"Downtown Train was the first song that I remember hearing by Tom Waits. It’s a great song. It also said everything that I wanted to say. I was 17 years old and I realised that I was never going to be a great singer because I had this weird voice, so I started looking at all the guys who had weird voices: Bob Dylan, Joe Strummer and Tom Waits. I aligned myself with those guys and said, ‘OK, let me see what they’re doing. What can I do to add to it?’ Tom Waits really put the icing on the cake for me because he was all about the lyrics and the delivery – nothing else mattered. He showed me that if you mean it enough then you could do anything you want. I loved his hobo dress sense as well. He looked like all the things that I was doing at the time because I was working on cars and I would wear the jeans and the boots and the blue shirt. We’d wipe our hands on the shirts because they were thick and you could wash them and the grease would come out; we’d wear the jeans so when you were leaning on the floor your knees wouldn’t rip; and we’d wear the boots so if you dropped the carburettor it wouldn’t break your toes. So there was a purpose for everything, and that’s why I sought of had a connection with these guys. I felt like Tom Waits was my friend, and I went down the rabbit hole after discovering him."