"Forget rock and roll, this is one of the greatest biographies I’ve ever read on any subject. Guralnick makes us feel Elvis Presley’s dizzying rise to superstardom as the unprecedented cultural phenomenon it was—Elvis didn’t know what he was trying to be, because nothing like Elvis had ever existed before."

"The New York Times asked me to review Keith Richards’ rock and roll memoir, Life. Due to a printing delay, I was reading and writing my impression of his chronicle while I was out on tour myself. It was a delight to immerse myself in such a jaw-dropping account of the peripatetic lifestyle I was experiencing, albeit at a much shallower altitude. The Rolling Stones are iconic by any measure. Getting an all access pass backstage through Richards’s eyes to the world beyond the bright lights and throbbing amplifiers is as thrilling as you might imagine. You will laugh out in parts, nod in recognition at the famous cultural touch-points and feel proud to be a music fan. Rock and roll has a very specific ethos, and Life hits upon all of the sacred precepts. Plug it in and turn it up to 11."

"Now that we're talking about it, I realise that a lot of these albums are trying to merge those two worlds: the classical or jazz aesthetic with the trashy, rock & roll, electric kind of thing. Obviously PJ Harvey would normally fall on that rock & roll/indie rock side of things but this album is different from all her other albums. It's a real step between those two worlds. It feels really ghostly. It's funny because I was obsessed with this album for a long time, and I didn't listen to it again for ages. Then I started listening to it again earlier this year and I've become obsessed with it again with the same intensity as before. It's just so incredibly evocative of colours and textures and sounds. It's just so delicate but heavy as well. She hasn't been explicit on the meanings of the song from this album but I know that the subject matter is extremely dark."

"This one is kind of a rare bird - it’s one that I think rock lovers from the ‘70s and ‘80s will know. It was my Dad’s favourite song and it was his karaoke song. I think I have a video somewhere of him wailing it in a car when I was growing up. He could hit all the notes and I was always in awe of him. My Dad had such a beautiful voice and a big range, and he still does to this day. We’d sing along to it and all do air guitar to the crazy guitar solos. “It brings back childhood memories, but it’s also just a badass rock ‘n’ roll song, and it was my introduction to rock music. I love southern rock and it definitely has an influence on the music I make with DNCE now."

"It all started with us on the bus with a few guitars just singing the melody to what became 'The Jean Genie', but it was just naïve and silly. Then, a week later, Bowie came and said: 'Alright, I've finished that one!' And it was of course nowhere near what we had been singing lyrically, but the feel was there. It was one of those nods to good time rock & roll from the early days, spanning from the blues days right into the future. Although it was a very simple song, the lyrics were almost like a rap before rap came out, just with a blues rock backing. He was rapping about the weird scenes we were hanging out in in New York at the time. It just seemed to sum up a whole few years of the 1970s for us. There was weirdness in there, things you couldn't understand, sex, drugs and rock & roll are all in that song. It was, again, David going ahead and churning out a hit. And that one was a first take – that's what's on the record."

"They’re a vocal group and started back in the heyday of very early reggae records. It’s the Jamaican parallel universe of rock & roll. It echoes rock & roll, R&B, Motown, soul. It has all the vocabulary of great 50s rock & roll. It’s pop music. It has this work ethic and immediacy: “We’re just making records, and making records, and making records.” It’s like surf music. It’s guys around the world in cheapo studios just digging deep. I love the vocalising of The Heptones. Even later records. I always loved them. I’m a sucker for the 60s records. All of their early records are singles. The first time they got compiled was probably the 70s. There’s one song called 'School Girls' that I almost covered a few years ago [Black essentially covers it for the Quietus there and then]. It’s so heartfelt and heartbroken. It’s like, it’s like, it’s like when I listen to 'The Great Pretender' [sings] “Oh yes! I’m the great pretender…” The Platters were a lot smoother than The Heptones. But The Heptones have that beautiful harmonising and soulfulness. Whenever I hear The Heptones I think, I wish I could sing that good. They do an amazing version of 'Knock On Wood'. They fuckin’ own it, man! It’s already a big hit for whoever the fuck recorded it. They sell it, they own it, they wear the hat."

"So it’s only appropriate that by 1969, when Mick Jagger steps out of a helicopter at Altamont Speedway, in the brilliant rock doc Gimme Shelter, he is promptly punched in the face by a rabid fan. It’s all downhill from there. Here is Mick at his best and worst—decadent druggie, preening queen, rock ‘n’ roll showman, heart-of-gold hustler, unsuccessful snake charmer. David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin are there to beautifully capture the idealism of Woodstock melt and turn into this bad acid trip."

"Like I said, I think you're only as good as your last creative output, and I think Adore Life is even better than Savages' first album. I got to see them when they were touring this record live last summer as we shared a few festival bills, and they're just phenomenal. Their show absolute punk rock & roll, but dirgey in the way you feel you've drunk too much iowaska, yet you're just at a gig. Their music is hypnotic, it's trance inducing, and Jehnny Beth is just the embodiment of rock & roll, one of the few hopes we have in British music at the moment. What I love is that so many people got behind it, yet it's still such an uncompromising album. It's work to listen to this record, you're not going to put it on and immediately have a good time, and that's important. We need challenging records."

"There's a famous story about Lennon & McCartney meeting Gene Vincent in Hamburg and being terrified because he was waving around a gun. He was armed and extremely dangerous – and drunk. And they got the hell out of there sharpish. This is a classic, definitive rock & roll album. Again, it's complete. It just works from start to finish. And again, the sound, the simplicity as well, the use of the brushes – I don't think they used the kick drum, I don't hear a kick drum in it, it just sounds like a snare and cymbals, double bass, and the magnificent guitar sound of Cliff Gallup, and then Gene Vincent's voice on top. I always think of Ian Dury's 'Sweet Gene Vincent'. In fact, I think Ian Dury's 'Sweet Gene Vincent' might be the record that made me go and check this out. I took this out of the Manchester Polytechnic music library, and played it to death, and then went out and bought it. It's perfection. It's just rock & roll perfection."