"‘Wichita Lineman’ was my Mum’s favourite song, she played it all the time. Anytime I hear it now it takes me back to being a kid and reminds me of growing up in Viroqua, Wisconsin. I grew up in a small town and with the sound and production of this song I can visualise the bleak Midwestern cornfields and driving through them. Jimmy Webb wrote it and it’s an iconic, beautiful and incredible song, the lyrics have this bittersweet longing and desire that I think a lot of people can relate to. There’s regret in there, because the protagonist isn’t doing what he wants to do and it’s a perfect pop song in some ways. I was ten years old when my parents first took me to a concert and it was a Glen Campbell show. He was a big TV star with a network television show, it was a big tour and he was incredible. I didn’t know anything about concerts but I remember there were ten thousand people at The Dane County Coliseum, it was a massive show and it was eye-opening. I was probably seven or eight years old when I first heard ‘Wichita Lineman’. My Mum played music in the house all the time and music was part of the background of growing up in our household. She bought Beatles records, The Tijuana Brass, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, musicals like Oklahoma and West Side Story, Polka and Country records. She played everything and I was exposed to all of it, it was good for me growing up to be exposed to a diverse catalogue of music, I’ve never felt elitist about music."

"Jonathan Richman sounded a bit like Lou Reed. The songs were fantastic. The only place you could buy that album was the Rock On store in Camden Town. I think everybody, including John Rotten and all of the Pistols, had been down there at some point to buy it. Anybody that later got into the punk rock scene had bought this record. It still sounds really good. John Cale produced it. It's under-produced if anything, which is what's so good about it. His voice is great. American punk rock was completely different from the London scene – you had Richard Hell & the Voidoids and Television and that, and it all seemed a bit arty. But this was four college kids from California who had got together and made a dark record. It sounds like a guy who's had his heart broken. It's a romantic punk record, really. 'Roadrunner' is the one everybody learnt when they were rehearsing or trying to get into a band. The way he sang, he just sort of threw it away. I can't really think of anybody who'd done it like that before. The solos were great, just one or two notes. Very simple stuff, which was what appealed to the punks. The whole punk thing was about stripping things down because people couldn't play very well. Get the band first and worry about the music later. I saw Jonathan Richman last year doing a festival somewhere, just him and a drummer. He's the only person I know who tells the sound guy to turn it down. But back then he was streets ahead of everyone."