I know when I started I would have been happy to sound like the Beatles or Joe Tex or whoever. You want to sound like most bands, you want to sound like their records and that's how you learn your chops. ↗
It is tough to say what has influenced me the most because I know that Mozart makes me think better, but you cannot beat Dave Matthews for feeling good! ↗
I think I was more or less, convinced of that by just the press, the US press. By people who were pressuring you, saying that you gotta beat the Russian's, if you don't win anything else, win the Russian meet and so forth. ↗
He made it quite clear that if I didn't play the role, I would be dead within a week. As you can imagine, the guy who turned down Hagrid would be like the guy who called the Beatles a guitar band. So I couldn't possibly refuse, really. ↗