The Albums That Changed My Life
PETER CAPALDI
THE SCOTTISH ACTOR AND OCCASIONAL TIME LORD OPENS UP A TARDIS-LIKE TREASURE TROVE OF RECORDS THAT MADE HIM WHO HE IS.
DAVID BOWIE
DAVID LIVE (RCA, 1974)
"I didn't come to Bowie through the Top Of The Pops, Starman route, I came in a little later through David Live. At that time there were no Best Ofs and this album had songs plucked from all over his career but reinvented in this very strange, strung-out manner. He's just on the brink of going into all that LA meltdown. He feels very disconnected from the audience yet utterly connected to the music. With Bowie there was a whole world opening up, but it was never entirely safe. It was an alleyway that you were being invited down, slightly shady but desperately exciting."
LOU REED
BERLIN (RCA, 1973)
"I love Transformer, but Berlin was the album that sucked me in. At the time I was struggling with my work at college and had to pull a lot of all-nighters and Berlin was one of my companions through the night. He evokes these stories and characters so powerfully but he is so particularly himself. There's a line in Sad Song 'She looked just like Mary Queen of Scots', which he then follows up with, 'Somebody else would have broken both of her arms'. The drama in it. Singing, 'They're taking her children away' with the sound of the children being taken away dubbed on."
TALKING HEADS
REMAIN IN LIGHT (SIRE, 1980)
"Remain In Light was another one of my companions through the dark hours. Once I'd listened to Berlin six times I'd send myself to sleep by listening to The Overload, which is one of the most terrifying songs ever. [Reads lyrics in a doom-laden voice]'A terrible signal too weak to even recognise, a gentle collapsing, the removal of the insides... the overload.' Once In A Lifetime is the art-geek anthem. That was what we were all waiting for as little post-punk art school people looking for an identity. 'What's he talking about? I don't care! Give me more and get me a suit like that!"'
ENNIO MORRICONE
THE MISSION (VIRGIN, 1986)
"I loved The Mission the film and I loved the combination of the sounds of South America with the choral work. There's one track in particular, On Earth As It Is In Heaven, which is a work of genius. Another thing I love about Morricone is he does these fabulous soundtracks but he also does crap ones. He recognises that composing's his business. I love that you can be a hack and a great artist, you just have to get up every day and do it. With filming, I have to do it every day. You can't be Robert De Niro every day. Robert De Niro can, but I can't, so you do your best!"
JOHNNY CASH
AMERICAN IV: THE MAN COMES AROUND (UNIVERSAL, 2002)
"It's fabulous, his choices of songs and his delivery of them. To take Personal Jesus, the Depeche Mode song, and make it completely your own, completely truthfully, is fantastic. It's like it had been written for him. I mean, Desperado - I was never a fan of the mellow Eagles, West Coast sound and Desperado was a strange, bogus anthem of rebellion. It never sounded rebellious. But when he does it he creates a whole different picture. He brings it to life. He makes it sound like an old song that really was about a desperado. It's a great tribute to him as an artist."
CRAIG ARMSTRONG
IT'S NEARLY TOMORROW (BMG, 2014)
"This was given to me when I was working on Doctor Who by a director. There are sweeping orchestral pieces in it but there are also strange songs that take a skewed look at something. It takes a traditional subject like love, but comes at it from a different perspective. On Doctor Who you're always trying to find a way to do strangeness, so it would get me into a zone where things weren't quite understood. In The Thick Of It when I was playing [foul-mouthed spin doctor]Malcolm Tucker I used to play Scary Monsters really loud because there was a jagged madness to it."
RANDY NEWMAN
TROUBLE IN PARADISE (WARNERS, 1983)
"Randy Newman is able to create whole scenarios and narrate them from the point of view of the central character. He has this great ability to do arrogance and smugness which reaches its height in My Life Is Good. He's so smug, this character, he doesn't want to hear no shit about anyone else's life, he just wants to talk about how great his life is. I Love L.A. is totally one of those blinkered, cocaine-fuelled... he sounds like a Hollywood agent. He's a great composer. He's great at what he does technically and then he lets loose with all of these fabulous ideas."
STEVE MARTIN
LET'S GET SMALL (WARNERS, 1977)
"In those days Steve Martin was not a film star and was not well known in this country at all, but I had a friend who was a comedian who used to go to New York and go round comedy clubs and steal jokes and he would bring comedy albums back with him that you couldn't buy here. He gave me Richard Pryor and stuff like that and he gave me this. I thought he was the greatest comic since Spike Milligan, but he was a mystery. He captivated me without me even knowing what he looked like."
The new series of Doctor Who starts 15 April on BBC One.
Caption: "Exterminate transitional mid-period Bowie! Exterminate!": Peter Capaldi unleashes the vinyl.
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