"Any Velvets album can be the best Velvets album. Any Velvets album can be the best album by anyone. You can't make a wrong choice. Max’s Kansas City is today's winner because it has the best story. It has multiple stories. It's a play. It's not an album. Layered narratives are fighting for your attention. First, there’s the stories in Lou’s songs: wastrels, vagabonds and dealers. Second, there’s the story of this being the Velvet’s last gig with Lou. He’s tired and listless between the songs; he knows it’s over. “This is a song about, ooh when you've done something so sad, and you wake up the next day, and you remember it. Not to sound grim or anything. Just once in a while, you have one of those days. I seem to have them nearly every day.” There’s the story of the band itself at this point – no Cale, no Nico, no Tucker. They don’t sound like the Velvets anymore. New drummer Billy Yule sounds like he’s never heard Mo Tucker and never intends to. Then there’s this strange story in the foreground. The show is an official bootleg recorded by Brigid Polk who is sitting next to Jim Carroll. They sound like they’re having a terrible night and he is an arse. He makes her get him Pernod from the downstairs bar and talks over the band about songs he doesn’t know. It’s all perfect because nothing is remotely perfect. I go out on this lousy date with Brigid and Jim over and over again."

"For obvious reasons, since her passing, I’ve been playing it a bit, and it’s a fucking great album. I think it was Tony Bennett who said she had the voice in which he could recognise the echoes of the truly great singers. Again, she had that spontaneity: she could do five different versions of the same song and they’d all be equally good. And that’s the sign of a real soul singer. I did meet her a few times, I used to see her around Camden, and my daughters used to know her a bit, being Camden girls, and it was sad seeing her demise. She was this healthy, vibrant girl and bit by bit you saw that change. Really tragic, and especially when you hear how great that album was. It’s funny, even in our heyday, people in Camden would leave us alone a bit. There wasn’t that tabloid hunger in those days, and there wasn’t a lot of music in the papers. Also, we weren’t in the girly market. Girls didn’t like Madness, so there was no point in writing about us! So we avoided all that. But now of course there’s the internet, and all these fucking virals or whatever they are, and everyone’s got a camera on their phone, and if Amy wanted to go and hang out at the pub, she just couldn’t. And at the very end, all she wanted to do was come back to Camden. Hopefully in time people will remember her as a brilliant singer, and forget all the other nonsense."

"It’s All Coming Back To Me Now’ was on the first CD that I remember buying. I had a little purple plastic CD rack and it was one of the most played on that. I loved the piano and I started playing the piano around that age, so it felt relatable for me. Again, I just loved the drama; it’s like a seven or eight minute long song, it’s so amazing, who does that? No one does that! It took me on such a story, the visuals are so clear, even now I can still feel that intense drama. Celine Dion’s amazing, it’s like watching a movie, honestly, listening to those kinds of songs. “So that was ’96, so I was nine. I was quite a melancholy child. My mum would put me to bed and I’d always get up and walk around upstairs, where there wasn’t really anywhere to walk around. I would just walk around the bathroom, sit at the top of the stairs, hold the staircase and stare out. I really was quite melancholy and I now understand mental health issues as an adult - like I had, you know, anxiety, OCD, depression; I had so much emotion. I mean that was just me as a really morose, melancholy nine year old, I really felt that intensity. “Those emotional songs can be the cloak that you wrap yourself in. I was drawn to the drama of those kinds of songs, definitely. I mean, those are pretty intense sad songs for a little kid."

"Arthur Verocai is interesting. I think that this record came to it came to America at a certain time; a lot of the vinyl doesn't make it around the world from Brazil, and it makes them even more precious because it can be some grand work that may never have seen the light of day. I think this was one of those moments where somebody was like 'this album has to be heard', they pressed it up and made it a point to bring it over to America. The record sounds very much like I can understand what is happening and what is being said, even musically, something about it is bigger than the part where it's in Portuguese. I listened to it relentlessly, I would listen to it back to back to back for years. I still do listen to it that much, and every time I do it feels brand new. I think that this is something that inspired me throughout the years to make music the way that I make music. Arthur Verocai's pretty old now, but every once in a while he comes over to the States and does something special. I think he was brought over to the states for the first time a few years ago, and I was out of town and I'm so sad I missed it. I would have loved nothing more than to get a chance to see Arthur Verocai play live, but sometimes that's how life works."