"Déclassé doubles being kinda a Ripley thing, The American Friend has a trashy yet seductive sister called Ripley’s Game, which, if you haven’t seen it, has John Malkovich and a very GoldenEye vibe. I watch both on regular rotation. But it’s really so wild that The American Friend is the older film, because where Ripley’s Game is like a classic Hollywood cash-in, The American Friend is a radical reinterpretation of the material. It says all the loud parts quiet in a way that deepens the pathos and significance of the Ripley cycle. Rather than being a social-climbing dandy, Dennis Hopper’s Ripley is a mumbling cowboy hipster—it’s maybe his most likable role. And Bruno Ganz’s Jonathan, who can so easily just be a pathetic sucker, is instead an existential hero. But for all its understatement and the arty languid pacing, when the film needs to be—as in the train scene—it’s as taut and calculated as Hitchcock. Oh man, and that stuff about the Beatles and Hamburg is so damn smart. It’s crazy that a director whose work is all over the place could produce a film so totally organic and emotionally satisfying. Honestly it’s not fair."

"""It’s a cliché, perhaps, but I can’t say this about any other song: I can literally remember the first time I heard ‘Lithium’. I remember being in the room when my sister put it on, almost in the dark and I remember thinking ‘What the hell is this?’ Much like any other kid really. But it properly blew me away in one sitting and that’s never happened since. And with the people in that room, I started a band within a few months. We played together till I was about 17 or 18. “How do you even talk about Nirvana? Everything about them is so perfectly packaged, but in an accidental way - the way they look, the way Kurt sings, the way Dave plays. It’s a ‘lightning strike’ sort of band, and you can’t really copy it, you can’t really take anything from it except attitude. “The lyrics are kind of awful if you actually sit down and go through them, but when you’re 14 they’re absolutely amazing. All of it works really well for a really specific time in your life. It’s absolute dynamite, and still is, I see more Nirvana t-shirts now than I did when I was a kid."""

"My sister and her friends were obsessed with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I remember she would be singing these crazy, filthy lyrics, and I’d think ‘what is this band?!’ Again, I was playing the drums, and I enjoyed the drums. There’s covers on this album of ‘Higher Ground’ and Sly And The Family Stone’s ‘If You Want Me To Stay’, which were songs that I had heard but didn’t really know. I think they’ve become an establishment band in a weird way, but me and my friend James went through this period of watching old Red Hot Chili Peppers stuff on YouTube and it’s amazing! When they were young they were crazily charismatic. I think it’s because they’re still going that they’ve become this band that’s a bit more disappointing. But there will come a time when people realise they were pretty unusual; this is quite a good record! I heard ‘Give It Away’ or something like that in a record shop, then going to the counter to try and buy what you assume is the album that that’s from and ending up with the Greatest Hits. I could have included Incesticide as well, I bought it because I thought it was the cheapest thing I could find!"