Music, literature, poetry, politics, bass guitar, guitar, luthiery, films, art, anything "different".
The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for. ~ Oscar Wilde.
Thom Yorke, Johnny Greenwood, Saul Williams, Maynard James Keenan, John Squire, Johnny Marr, Zack de la Rocha, Michael Stipe, Mike Einziger, Trent Reznor, Justin Chancellor & Adam Jones, Christopher Walken, Gilbert & George, Noam Chomsky
Everything from trip-hop to heavy metal. If I named everything I like, you'd fall asleep before you reached the end of my list. Current favourites include Matthew Good, Aphex Twin, The Smiths, Saul Williams, Tool, Nine Inch Nails Radiohead, everything Paul Weller, The Beatles, Manic Street Preachers, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, The Cure, Neil Young, Primal Scream and the Stone Roses.
Beetlejuice, A Clockwork Orange, Nightmare before Christmas, 1984, Pirates of the Caribbean, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Apocalypse Now, Trainspotting, Natural Born Killers, The Killing Fields, Eraserhead, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Deer Hunter
I only really watch TV when there's live music coverage on.
Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Catcher in the Rye, Foundation trilogy, Lord of the Rings, anything by Noam Chomsky, Asimov and George Orwell. I also feverishly read musician biographies, anything by T.S. Eliot... or any poetry really, and Shakespeare.
No heroes as such... but public figures whom I respect or relate to: ThÃch Quáng Ãúc, Zack de la Rocha, Bill Hicks, John Peel, Maynard James Keenan, Thom Yorke, Richey James Edwards, Patti Smith, John Keats, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, anyone who has ever given everything for what they believe in.
"The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self." Whitney Young (1921-1971)
"Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body – as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?" Bill Hicks (1961-1994)
"Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth. And set down as gain each day that Fortune grants." Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65BC-8BC)