"What year was Blue Velvet? It was ’86, wasn’t it? So I was 15 when it came out and my parents were away for the summer, and they’d left me in the house alone. I got hold of a VHS copy of Blue Velvet, and I started watching it, and I couldn’t stop, and I got to the end of it, and rewound it, and played it again and again, 16 times over. And I watched it at least twice a day, every day, for that entire summer. You can see perhaps why obsessive behavior scares me. And it just blew my mind. I knew that cinema could be poetic, but I never had before understood that it could be poetic in that way, in such a raw and visceral way. And again, scared the living crap out of me. So there seems to be a theme running through here."

"Nobody can underestimate the world changing impact that The Beatles had on my generation. It was so powerful and revolutionary. It enabled us all to see the possibility of picking up a guitar and expressing ourselves in any way you wanted. And they were the pioneers of change and innovation. They were symbolic in the sense that we were all looking for something new and they provided it. When I heard Please Please Me, it was like it was from another world. This album represents the beginning, when they had been playing clubs and were first capturing that creative energy and raw vocals. This was the bare naked, early origin of many of these artists in this piece of music and I loved it. Of course, they went on to do many things after that, but this was the kernel, the seed of what they were to do later."

"OK look, I have only seen this film once and I will never watch it again. But the effect it had on me was so profound that it kind of shifted things creatively inside me. I went to the cinema one night in London with two very good friends when I was 24. It blew me away. It’s so raw and so poetic at the same time. Emily Watson was sublime. I came out of the theater in a daze and the three of us wandered around the streets of Soho for hours not quite knowing what to do with ourselves. I literally didn’t sleep all night. I just lay there in my hotel room reliving the story. Even now I can see the bleak color palette, the camera moves, and Emily’s naive face. Lars Von Trier is a genius. Every film he makes is so honest and powerful."

"Daft Punk’s Homework was really big for me growing up. I know Daft Punk is this big huge thing…It’s like Daft Punk and Coachella are almost on the same level. Daft Punk to me started just so pure, and there still is a purity. You can see that they are like, “What’s going to get everyone excited?” versus what’s just going ot make them excited. That Homework record is just so raw, they were 16 when they made it and I heard a rumor that their dad mixed it in their basement. It’s just a super cool record and there was nothing like that when that came out, that was huge for me. I bought that at Walmart when I was just a little kid. I remember that I just couldn’t believe it, that “Around the World” bass line was just blowing my mind."

"It's another strange thing; you had to keep some records as secrets on the punk scene, but John Lydon was into [founding member of Van der Graaf Generator] Peter Hammill. There's an idea that people would hide their Genesis records and get out The Damned ones if people came round. I didn't hide mine, although I didn't play them to Ian when he came round. They're a funny band, Van der Graaf Generator. At the time, with Pawn Hearts, all of your mates would say: "Ooh, there's a track that's three days long… it's pixie stuff". But 'A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers' is completely overblown, like a nightmare with saxophones. I suppose it's the ultimate prog-rock album: it's really overblown, but still of the terrifying. I really like Peter Hammill. He's another guy who's really unique - he has a really individual way of singing, and it's very raw."

"Since Grizzly Man and on through Encounters at the End of the World, festival dispatchers often report that audiences walk out of the theater trying out their Werner Herzog imitations. You do the accent, sure, but that’s only the half of it. The other half is what you say; you have to decry the viciousness of nature, the doomed and dooming insanity of it all. I wonder how many of these amateur impressionists realize that the sensibility they’re mimicking with an odd mix of humor and admiration has been somewhat tempered over the years. Burden of Dreams is an almost frightening portrait of that sensibility when it was manic and raw, no matter how calm Herzog’s exterior may at times appear. And, of course, next to Kinski, he was the sane one! Les Blank’s documentary is also, along with Hearts of Darkness, one of the greatest making-ofs of all time."