"I was about fifteen-years-old and I had just started playing drums and somebody played this album in its entirety on the radio. My Dad had a garden centre at the time and I used to sit in the pickup truck listening to the radio – you know, in its own bizarre way [at that age], you just want to be on your own. So I remember being in that van and the radio DJ saying something about AC/DC and they put it on – I was nailed to my seat. And I'm a drummer, I've always liked rock bands and I've got a mid-life crisis band with some friends – we're called The Luddites. We just play three-piece punk or rock. We murder some of the classics for charity – that's how we get away with it. We go from Sex Pistols to Clash to Foo Fighters to Kings of Leon and so on. Really anthemic songs! Those last two bands have got an odd place in a lot of people's music world – certainly that very guitar heavy rock sound of the Foo Fighters – you would be shocked at some of the people who are into this heavy rock sound. Certain people – a mom with three kids for example – are really into this music! But it's all melodically very strong. Where were we? Oh yes, AC/DC. I made a cassette of this album. I used to drum to this album. Phil Rudd was a monster on the drums. He doesn't do anything – he's the rock Ringo. Whatever he's done needs to be done. People take the piss out of Ringo but everything he did was where it should be. How did I change from being a drummer to a singer? I borrowed a guitar from a guy in the band and fumbled through a few chords and tried to write songs and I became the singer because of that."

"Yeah, my mum bought it for Christmas. I must've been 18 at the time or something. I find it quite cool that my mum actually went into a record shop and asked for Metal Box by Public Image! There were only a few thousand made, so it was limited edition. But I was a huge PiL fan, I loved the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten/Lydon and when the Pistols split, everybody was waiting to see what he's going to come back with. Nobody could believe that he would return with this. They sounded like nothing you'd heard before. The first track, 'Albatross', is basically listening to Lydon screaming that he wishes he would die for ten minutes, or a junkyard having a nervous breakdown! The album has these metallic smashes and clangs, which I'd never heard in music before. This is considered one of the first post-punk albums, alongside the Siouxsie and the Banshees record, but before Metal Box, it would probably have been Pere Ubu's first album. From a UK fan's perspective, Banshees and PiL would have made the first post-punk records. We'd bought 'Death Disco' on 12"" records, but to buy an album in a canister, cut and mastered really loudly, bursting out of my speakers was something strange. These were not rock & roll songs, they didn't have a lot of dynamic to them at times either. They were danceable though, with a disco drumbeat, a dub reggae bass, playing Swan Lake on guitar, with Lydon screaming about his mother having cancer over the top of it and ending up on Top Of The Pops. That's avant-garde being taken into the fuckin' mainstream. To me that's very revolutionary and subversive. It was a real howl from the soul. Every time I listen to Metal Box, I remember what it was like to live in Britain in the late '70s when I was a teenager. It was a grey, damp, repressive country and that record reflects the state and times perfectly. It was a snapshot of the times."

"It’s the first Fellini film I ever saw, so I think it’s my favorite. My Italian relatives always told me we were distantly related to Fellini—not sure if there is any truth in that, but that’s one of the reasons we went to see it. “Oh yeah, he’s our cousin,” they would say. Growing up with Italians, you see that life is absurd: it’s a circus, with some sex in it, and Amarcord simply confirmed that for me. I can watch this movie again and again; it’s that enjoyable. And although some scenes are over the top—and yes, Fellini is obsessed with big-bottomed women and very large breasts—it’s a movie about his childhood. And by learning about his childhood, I learned to appreciate my own. When I was young, I spent every summer with my Italian relatives in Astoria, Queens. Here’s what I learned: every day is a drama, and it all ends with everyone laughing and drinking wine and eating spaghetti. There was an unbelievable tale to be heard about every third cousin. Somebody would whisper, “That’s Rose—the day her mother died, her face froze into a scowl. And that’s why she looks like that.” We never questioned these things. Listening to stories was part of the immigrant experience. Amarcord feels that way. Fellini is telling stories about people in his village, but I related to all the stories. This was a movie my Italian relatives took me to, that they wanted to see so they could see themselves and laugh. I think that by watching how much they enjoyed the movie, I began to understand and appreciate my own culture for the first time. Watching Amarcord was also the first time I experienced the music of the great Nino Rota. When you think of Fellini, you always think of the music, which acts as the perfect bridge between the stories. I challenge anyone to see this film and not want to make love. Amarcord means “I remember.” You will remember."

"I just knew that this was a classic as soon as I heard it. If I'm going to be really hyper-critical of it, then it's about three songs off from bring a true classic but there are so many great songs on there. It just felt like the first record I'd heard for a long time - maybe since Figure 8 by Elliot Smith - which is a really complete classic album. You know, I was thinking that this was a record that should've been there when I raided my uncle's record collection when I was 13, alongside Neil Young and Patti Smith and JJ Cale and Sex Pistols and The Trials Of Van Occupanther is one of those. That's the highest praise that I can give it; that it should sit amongst those greats. What an amazing record with a really amazing sound. Tim Smith's voice is brilliant to listen to and lyrically it's such an emotive record. You really hear the visual setting that the music is set against and that just pours off the record and out of the grooves. I loved it from the first minute I heard it. And there's something about the aesthetics of it that I really connected with. Technically, I love the bass sound and the sound of the snare and we in Supergrass really gravitated towards that. It's like the first time you hear that snare sound on Air's Moon Safari and we were like: 'That's the snare sound that we really love too!' You know, when you're in a band you look around at other bands. We listened a lot to Elliott Smith when we made Road To Rouen and when you have that connection, then it takes the album to a whole different level. That's what we all felt with the Midlake record, and me and my brother Charlie definitely rate it in the top five records of the last ten or fifteen years."

"This album is fucking awesome. Right from the moment I heard it. I discovered Iggy and the MC5 through the NME in 1976, after I saw the Sex Pistols in June of '76, and was reading about it. That was the place to go to find out about gigs and whatever. A family friend of mine who was a bit older than me, he was fantastic at finding this stuff, he was the guy that actually took us to the show, Ian – his brother Neil was about my oldest friend, and he took us down there. That is an experience in itself. And then you find out without doubt Iggy really is the godfather of punk. That's one of the best titles. You hear about J.B. being the godfather of soul; Iggy without doubt is the godfather of punk. Again, what's brilliant about Fun House is the engineering, the sound is so heavy, it's just magnificent. His voice, the grooves, everything about it, it's as great as it was when it was released. It – will – never – die. This is an eternal record. I think I might have freaked Iggy out a little. He did a small show in Cannes, during the film festival. It was a tiny gig, but he was awesome. And I'm standing in the front of the audience, literally singing along to every word. He played most of the stuff from that thing, and I don't think he knew who I was or anything, but I'm like bobbing my head, going nuts, it was the first time I'd ever seen him perform live; he's such a great live performer. Obviously the music I make isn't influenced by it, but that doesn't mean to say you can't love it. I have a profound respect for him. I even love Raw Power – the sound is very odd on Raw Power, but that's what's kind of great about it, it sounds so weird. But Fun House is the one that just encapsulates them for me."