"I think Combat Rock has suffered a lot of bitching and whining because it’s when The Clash broke America. I was 17-years old when I heard 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go'. I wasn’t some hipster, punk dude. I didn’t know who The Clash were. I heard it on the radio. I heard 'Rock The Casbah' on the radio. Compared to a lot of other stuff being played it was like: “This is good!” For all the people who say it’s not London Calling, it’s not 'White Riot', well, I get that they were in the trenches and whatever. I’m not trying to disparage the early Clash but they matured into a proper rock band and they did something with it. Listen to 'Straight To Hell'. Fucking A! Listen to 'Know Your Rights'! I’ll be happy as a pig in shit if I can write a song as good as that. If they were ‘selling out’, you write 'Know Your Rights'! It’s why I picked Combat Rock. I don’t get where people are coming from who don’t like that record [sings the riff from 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go']. It doesn’t get any better than that. It’s a wonderful statement. I wish there was something out there right now as good as 'Straight To Hell'."

"I'd been into music for as long as I can remember, from being four years old. My dad bought me a record player when I was 11, and I went out and bought three albums: I had those Beatles double albums, the red and the blue, '62-'66 and '66-'70, I bought those, and I also bought Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones. That was the first Stones album that I bought. I actually wore it out, and parts of it became unplayable, even with halfpenny pieces on top of the stylus. For me, the Stones, when they pulled away from the Beatles' influence and became their own thing, it started with Beggars Banquet. It's those four albums - Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Exile and Sticky Fingers, I think are the greatest years of the Rolling Stones as an individual, this is what we do, we're not following the Beatles any more. And they did it with such glory that I could easily have chosen [another] one of those four albums for the same reason. Once again we seem to be talking about unsung heroes, one of the great things about those Stones albums is the brilliant engineering by Glyn Johns; I think Andy Johns was involved as well, but the engineering on those records is just awesome, awesome, awesome."

"Like many people I was stunned and saddened when the world lost Tony Horwitz. I had met Tony and his wife, Geraldine Brooks, at several book functions over the years, and I marveled at his comingling of journalism and storytelling, as he traveled the world in search of knowledge. I was introduced to Horwitz, as many were, with Confederates in the Attic. In this, unfortunately his last book, Horwitz travels the south again as he traces the footsteps of Frederick Law Olmsted, who would find fame and fortune as a landscape architect, with perhaps his crowning glory being Central Park in New York. Horwitz travels throughout the south and talks to people from all walks of life in an effort to figure out what has changed in America, or if it’s always been so divided. And if there is a pathway forward to forge a national consensus on anything. Like Bill Bryson has done in his travels, and Mark Twain did well over a century before, Horwitz has not simply written a book chronicling his journey, he has opened the heart of America, its majesty and its darkness for all to see. We all will miss Tony Horwitz and what he has brought to our collective conscience. If you’ve never read him, this would be an ideal place to start."

"I can guarantee you this film isn’t on anyone else’s list. It stars Gene Hackman and it’s made by my favorite British film director, even more than Nick Park. He’s a guy named Nick Roeg, and he’s most famous, probably, for Don’t Look Now. Eureka is the film that probably ended his American career. I think it was a disaster when it was released. The first half of this movie is as good as you’ll ever get in a movie. It’s about a guy who discovers, literally, liquid gold. He becomes the richest man in the world and the man who has everything and the man who has nothing. The second half of the film is a trial and takes place in a courtroom and that part doesn’t work as well, which is what probably led to it being a flop, but the first half is as good as it gets. And I love Nick Roeg. He’s idiosyncratic, highly individual and yet for a ten year period he was working in the studio system with big stars like Gene Hackman. Hackman’s never been better. People say “Hackman” and think of The Conversation but he’s never better than he is in Eureka. If you can imagine a man who has everything and he (Hackman) just plays it as a guy who has nothing."