"Grasshopper gave me Lady in Satin for my 30th birthday. People were startled by the quality of Billie’s voice on this, her final album before she died, you can hear the years of her life in her voice. As a singer you’re always doing everything you can to imagine your voice being clear, non-crackly and not having any cobwebs, you’re doing everything you can to sing perfectly. “Yet here was someone singing imperfectly, but with all the vulnerability of a life well and certainly intensely lived. That changed everything for me, hearing the crackle in her voice, the years making their way out of her windpipe, almost by clawing their way out. “I’d read that Ray Ellis, who conducted and produced the album, cried when she first sang these songs, because he knew her as someone whose voice had a very full, rich-sounding tonal quality. Yet on this album you can hear the cobwebs, the lisping gasps of air between words. He cried because he thought this shouldn’t be Billie Holiday on record. It was only later that he thought it was her masterpiece. “It was the first time I began to see the connection between the singer, their voice and the listener, that it had nothing to do with the pureness of tone, being perfectly in tune or singing as loud as could be. It was all about the emotions that came out via the breath and the notes together that made the connection. “It changed everything, not only about my singing, but the way I began to understand what people appreciated in a singers’ voice. I could really understand and take some of the pressure off trying to be what I thought was a perfect singer, I know I’m not, but you always have it in mind that you’ve to belt it out and sing perfectly. “I finally began to accept that what comes out of me is my voice and no one else’s, this song and the album as a whole finally released that anxiety in me. The next record we made was Deserter’s Songs.”"

"What don't I say about Aja? We all have our different experiences with Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, but everything that they've created throughout the years is really awesome. I have a few albums of theirs I love; Can't Buy A Thrill, Katy Lied, Pretzel Logic, but there's a number of reasons why I am totally in love with Aja. It stems from the personnel, the feel, and how much it was a stab in another direction of pop culture. It was anti-pop, it was a bit on the outskirts of everything, I think. It's always funny listening to Donald Fagen singing about stuff because it's like, 'what's the guy rambling on about?' sometimes. A couple of my favourite musicians are on it; like Steve Gadd and, again, Michael McDonald. When I realised this was Michael McDonald singing background I lost my fucking mind, like, straight up. I always loved the Doobie Brothers and I knew his hits because of hip hop and stuff, but I remember being like 'Who's this magical person singing these dissonant chords behind the changes with ease with this weird timbre of voice?' – and you look at the credits and of course it's Michael McDonald. Aja, if I can't listen to it in its entirety then I get mad; I get pissed because I want to go through the whole album every time. One of my favourite moments on the album is Steve Gadd playing out on actual song 'Aja'; the way that just like the drum feels and everything – I don't know how to play drums but I love to try to act like I play drums to that one moment when he takes a slight solo at the end. Steve Gadd was always one of my favourite drummers ever because of the choices of records and stuff that he would do. Aja is he was he was one of those moments that it spanned out to everybody at that point. It was like at the height of their popularity. That was what happened and it was perfect."

"I was at my son's house in Henley, we were having dinner. Mark likes to play me things that he knows I'll like. So he didn't say anything, he just put it on. We were having dinner, and I hear ‘Am I Wrong' and I said, 'Who the hell is that?' He said, 'Who?' I said, 'What you're playing there!' 'Oh, a guy called Keb' Mo'.' So I said, 'Turn it up!' It's tremendous. [sings ‘Am I Wrong'] You just think, Jesus! Something that I haven't heard before, that first initial thing, is always the most exciting to me. I've heard him do other things since, but that, ‘Am I Wrong'... great. When I've listened to him singing, there's a similarity in our vocal tone and syncopation. When I was playing it in my house, funnily enough, back in LA - I play guitar, nowhere near as good as he does, but a few chords - so I'm playing it downstairs and my wife was up in the bedroom, and I said 'did you hear that thing I was playing?' She said 'you got your guitar out, right? It was you?' I said 'it's not me'. She said 'I heard you get your guitar out and start singing', I said 'no, it's not, it's a guy called Keb' Mo''. And she thought that it was me, and I thought, 'wow, that's great, that she thinks I can play as well as him'."