"When I heard this I was just completely floored. I was like 'What the fuck is this?' [Laughs]. Radio was amazing, it was so good. Similarly to Public Enemy, I heard this album and I wanted to know how he did it – I just had no idea how. He was talking my language and speaking to me but in styles I had never heard or experienced before. I wanted to know how he did this. The whole album is fire; the beats were hard and the rhymes were hard. It banged and undoubtedly became the sound of a generation. It was almost like punk rock in sentiment, urban punk rock which is effectively what hip hop is. It didn't matter which part of the world you were from either when you listened to this. The people that got this record were all going through the same shit. The worlds might have been somewhat different, but it was the same oppressive shit and it united people."

"This was from college and Charles had it, and obviously I knew those songs. Jimmy Page and [John] Bonham and John Paul Jones did the arrangements to this song, 'Hurdy Gurdy Man'. Fucking hell man! That's epic! Also, I like the sensibility of basically saying "fuck you", well, not fuck you, but it was the freedom of the 70s - I know 'I Love My Shirt' isn't on that album but I just love that, it was like, "Wow, what kind of freedom can you get talking about your favourite goddamn shirt!" And washing it in the stream! And he'll say, "Know what I mean?" [laughs] There's a song there, 'Sunshine Superman', and I played it for Charles and he went, "Shit!" It's so strange. It took me a while, it's got - [imitates guitar] - it's got all these weird sonic spots, it's more sonic really than the melody, because the melody there, what is that?"

"This one had beat out a couple contenders who were dueling for a long time on my list. It is as ecstatically cinematic as any western ever got. We’re talking about a movie where the hero is so badass, he plays his own theme song. And not only that, he plays his own theme song for a reason that is devastating, that’s revealed in flashback before the final gunfight. I mean, come on. The camera moves, the music, the utter ballsiness of it, the pace. The western exploded with this one. This came out the same year as The Wild Bunch, and they kind of put a stake in it — that was it, we have gone as far as we can go in two very different directions. One is a lyrical opera, the other is an insane shoot em’ up kind of nihilistic orgy. For me, the operatic is gonna win out, as you will see in the other films I am going to mention."

"I feel like talking about Mary Poppins all day. Okay. Andrei Rublev, spelled ‘Rublev’ but pronounced ‘Rublov’. It’s because we don’t use the Cyrillic alphabet. I really do love Tarkovsky’s Mirror as well. But the last act, or the last movement of Andrei Rublev is probably just the best thing in cinema history. That bell casting sequence is just so powerful. In some ways, it’s kind of the same thing that Fanny and Alexander does where you’re not even sure who Andrei Rublev is for quite a while the first time you watch the movie, and this is the episode that makes sense together and works together [in a film that doesn’t have] this super linear, aggressive plot. And then the last movement is very linear, that is incredibly cathartic once you’ve been marinated in this world. It really knocks you out. But in general, the movie is so well-staged and beautiful and stunning and inspiring. It’s completely mind-blowing."

"It is the greatest film in the english language ever made between the two Godfathers. Almost drove him bankrupt, but there you go. It is the greatest thriller of all time. If ever you’re talking about a character to which — how to get you biting your nails without any slaps or gunshots going off, that movie’s it. It’s just so terrifyingly correct. I’m not really a [Michaelangelo] Antonioni fan or any of those; Blow Up and all that never did it for me. But The Conversation, somehow, whoa. And I kind of find Mamet the same way. I know everybody holds correctly Hitchcock, you know, as high as you can, but I find Mamet delivers more shock and awe to me, and twists in a correct way than I ever found with Hitchcock. But of course we’re watching Hitchcock movies when 20 things have copied his films and they’ve become cliché at a particular point. The Conversation holds up like that for me."

"I remember first listening to this during the OK Computer tour, too, with Colin [Greenwood]. The only thing I'd really known by him before – Bill, I mean, not Colin,– was 'Lovely Day'. When I'd got into him, he'd retired from the music industry, but years later, a documentary, Still Bill, came out about why he'd done that, and I'd really encourage any fan of his to get hold of it. He's just this lovely family man, doing joinery, talking about how he doesn't want to make music for the sake of it in this really lovely, gentle way. 

There's a wisdom in his personality, too, a wisdom really comes out in his singing voice, and his music. He doesn't come across as an artist driven by the need to express himself creatively either, which is interesting. He comes across as a human being, a husband and a father before he's a musician. He talks about why that's important, and that really resonated with that way of thinking.
"