"One of the bands that I watched in a backyard party that made me decide I wanted to be a musician had played the song '2112'. I heard that weird pedal effect at the beginning and thought, ""Are you kidding me?!"" That was the opening of a whole new world. I lost track of them after Permanent Waves when I started doing my own thing, but you can't ignore their legacy. Alex Lifeson is another with a really bizarre approach to guitar playing. It sometimes seems that his solos don't have a direction because they are like spurts of energy, almost like solar bursts. It's all so progressive to the point that when they do a comparatively straightforward song, it almost seems like they are dumbing things down – something like 'Working Man' for example, which is a simple rock track. But generally they are progressive rock at its very best and bands like Dream Theater owe a lot to them. Although Megadeth has progressive elements, I'm not a huge fan of pure prog as such. I respect the players because they are so talented, but to me it might feel like you're in a straitjacket. Incidentally, people have referred to Rust In Peace as being a progressive record, but in truth it was just where we were at the time. In fact I always saw it as a thrashy little metal record, as opposed to sounding like early Genesis or King Crimson where you dropped acid and went, ""Whoa dude…"" Not that I've ever done that, I should add…"

"I’ve got a weird story about when I first heard “Good Vibrations”. I was really scared of going to the dentist and my Mum had made me this appointment. I was literally terrified, we were sitting in the waiting room, there was a radio and “Good Vibrations” came on. Then they called my name to go into the dentist and I was still really scared, but at the same time this beautiful thing was coming out of the speakers “When I went in, they had the radio on in there as well. It was absolutely mad and my emotions were on edge, but I just couldn’t get over hearing that song. I don’t know if it was because I was in that situation and really hyped up emotionally, but every time I hear that song I remember that feeling. “It really stuck with me and obviously when I hear it now, it’s such a brilliant record, but it’s great that you can hear something that brilliant when you’re sitting in a waiting room, in a place where you’d hardly expect to have a musical revelation. “It’s funny how you used to listen to the radio more back in those days. I wouldn’t have had the ready cash to go out and buy “Good Vibrations”, so I’d just listen to the radio until it came on. People did that more, you’d have little transistor radios everywhere and you’d be waiting for your favourite music to come on, and when something came on you loved you’d turn it up"

"This is another one that really stuck out when I got into psychedelic music. It’s got all the elements. It’s got the distorted, orchestral thing, you’ve got flangers, tape phase and various other production techniques. Again, the vocal is just slightly twee and whimsical, but the rhythm section is like hip-hop. It’s got all of these weird elements, even though, being the late ‘60s, it was way before all of that. There’s stuff in the ‘50s that has phasing and flanging unintentionally, with tape speeds and certainly when they started multi-tracking there was definitely some cases of accidental phasing. But there’s a lot of talk about ‘Rainbow Chaser’ being one of the first examples of a phaser being intentionally used throughout a song. I don’t think there’s a definitive answer to that though. As much as I like this song, I didn’t delve too far down the rabbit hole with Nirvana. It’s very hard with stuff that’s on compilations, because you will go down avenues, but you can’t go down all of them, especially if you’ve got a boxset like the Rubble one, where you’ve got something like six CDs with twenty-odd tracks. I don’t have enough time in the day to do it, and some of it you just can’t get hold of. There probably are pressings of that single with a B-side, or maybe they didn’t do an album that was released. Because, believe it or not, not everything is on Spotify or Apple Music!"

"This is my favourite Smiths track, with ‘How Soon Is Now?’ a close second. Andy and I had a real shared history with The Smiths when we were growing up. We saw them at Maxwell Hall in Salford in 1986, which is remembered as being this legendary gig now, or so I’m told. The thing is, it really was that good - it’s in my top five gigs of all time. I saw them a lot of times, but there was something about that one, the energy was incredible. I think the place was oversold, so there was already a sort of danger in the air, and there was a sense that you were seeing a very special band at the peak of their powers, because it was just after The Queen Is Dead had come out. I can’t think of anything else that sounds like ‘The Headmaster Ritual’. The guitar tuning that Johnny Marr’s using is weird, so there’s this otherworldly feel to the way it sounds, but in terms of what Morrissey is singing about, that was very much rooted in reality; brutality in schools was still a thing during my upbringing and corporal punishment was still around, so this track in particular really resonated with me. I think any time you get one of the greatest lyricists of all time together with one of the greatest guitarists something special’s going to happen, but for me, ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ is probably the top example of what that band could do."