Nigel Inpiration

Art/Design
not listed.

Music/Bands
American Music Club ("California"), Aphex Twin (those hits), The Associates ("Sulk"), David Axelrod (the soundtrack to the 70's), Chet Baker (sings to break your heart), The Band (nearly everything), Beach Boys ("Surfs Up"), Beatles ("Sgt Pepper"), Big Star (everything), Big Black ("Kerosene"), The Birthday Party ("Jennifer's Veil"), Bjork ("Human Behaviour"), Blind Faith ("Can't Find My Way Home"), David Bowie ("Low"), Buffalo Springfield (everything), Butthole Surfers ("Hairway to Steven"), John Cale (the Island albums), Can (most things), Captain Beefheart ("Clear Spot"), Nick Cave ("From Her to Eternity"), Chic (being), Alex Chilton (being beyond cool), The Clash (the passion), Ornette Coleman (free jazz), John Coltrane ("My Favourite Things"), Elvis Costello (most things), Cramps ("Gravest Hits"), Cream (most things), Cure ("Faith"), Miles Davis (too much to mention), Defunkt ("Razor's Edge"), Derek & The Dominos ("Layla"), Dinosaur Junior ("Freak Scene"), Bob Dylan (the 60's & 70's), Earth, Wind & Fire ("Spirit/All in all & I am"), Duke Ellington (his genius), The Fall ("Totally Wired"), Foetus ("Nail"), Folk Devils ("Hank Turns Blue"), Gangstar ("Soliloquy of chaos"), Marvin Gaye ("I want you"), The Gun Club ("The Fire of Love"), Emmylou Harris ("Elite Hotel"), PJ Harvey ("Rid of Me"), Jimi Hendrix ("Axis"), Jesus Lizard ("The ladies"), Killdozer ('For Ladies Only'), B.B.King ("Live at the Regal"), Kraftwerk ("Trans Europe Express"), Little Feat (Dixie Chicken), Magazine ("The Correct Use of Soap"), Manassas ("Manassas"), Bob Marley (everything), Massive Attack ("Blue Lines"), Charles Mingus (everything), Joni Mitchell ("Hejira"), Theolonius Monk ("The Riverside Recordings"), New Order ("Blue Monday"), Charlie Parker ("Ornithology"), Gram Parsons ("She"), Iggy Pop ("Sweet Sixteen"), Primal Scream (a lot), Queens of the Stone Age ("Lunch"), Augustus Pablo (sweet sounds), Pavement (the 1st three albums), Pixies ("Surfer Rosa"), Prince ("Parade"), Public Image Ltd ("Metal Box"), Ramones (most things), Lou Reed ("Street Hassle"), Rolling Stones ("Exile" etc), Roxy Music ("Siren"), Sex Pistols (ever), Shellac ("Terraform"), Frank Sinatra (The capitol albums), Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood (all), Slint ("Spiderland"), Sly & The Family Stone (most things), Patti Smith ("Dancing Barefoot"), The Smiths ("There is a Light"), Sonic Youth ("Death Valley 69"/"Sugar Kane"), Stax (Lots), Steely Dan (the 70's), Stooges (life), Talking Heads ("Fear of Music"), Television ("Marquee Moon"), Temptations (papa), Traffic ("John Barleycorn"), Tricky ("Brissol"), The Undertones ("Teenage Kicks"), The Velvet Underground (life), Tom Waits (nearly everything), Joe Walsh (moments), Stevie Wonder ("Innervisions"), and Neil Young (1965-81/89-?).

Books/Writers
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow, Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland. I like Tom for his breadth of vision -- his attention to detail -- his rambling beautiful prose and all the headaches he caused me before I finally finished -- at the third attempt -- Gravity's Rainbow.

Martin Amis: Experience, Time's Arrow, Money, London Fields and others. I think the most intelligent writer in the UK- makes me wish I was a better writer. His book about his father helped me deal with my own feelings about my father's death.

Philip K Dick: most novels - for general weirdness, paranoia and flights of fancy. A Scanner Darkly is a favourite.

Jean Paul Sartre: All his novels and short stories as well as his plays which are worth. I read all his stuff when I was 18 - it made the years ahead feel very exotic and hinted at the malaise that infects the post school years. Also his trilogy 'The Roads to freedom' is a fantastic social history of Europe before and during the second world war.

J.G.Ballard: for a slant of western civilization - a commentary on our times that looked underneath the fascia in the way that David Lynch did years later.

William Burroughs: Naked Lunch and Junky - great books about a hidden culture - a mythical figure living an outlaw life that seemed very exotic when I first read them.

Hunter Thompson: Fear and Loathing, The Great Shark Hunt, Better than Sex, Hell's Angels - incredibly entertaining and larger than life - made me want to do lots of illegal things over and over again.

Harry Crews: I love hard boiled fiction - his book 'The Feast of Snakes' is unbelievable - check out the dialogue.

Jim Thompson: for great entertainment - a grown up Raymond Chandler and Dashell Hammett. When you think people can't get any meaner - they do. Check out his biography to see what provoked all his amazing books.

Jonathan Coe: The Rotter's Club etc. Books that remind of the time I spent growing up - I'm still growing.

Charles Bukowski: because he is so loveable - his prose is very readable but his poetry takes you somewhere else - you get the impression that Tom Waits has read a lot of 'Hank'.

Paul Auster: lots of journeys into the self - lots of soul searching - great writer.

Robert Stone: Damascus Gate and Dog Soldiers - just great expansive page turning novels.

Richard Brautigan: for the apparently straightforward narrative and naive style which conceals all manner of things.

Henry Miller: the feminist's favourite - just about everything he wrote is worth reading especially when you consider that a bunch was written for a dollar a page!

Kurt Vonnegut, Edward Bunker, Irvine Welsh, George Saunders, Joseph Heller, Chester Himes, James M Cain, Richard Price, Luke Rhinehard, Ken Kesey, Kathy Acker, Walter Tevis, Graham Greene, Flan O'Brien and lots of others.

Actors/Films
Favourite actors? Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino.

De Niro, Pacino, Dennis Hopper, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Harvey Keitel, Joseph Cotton, Donald Sutherland, Jessica Lange, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederick Forrest, Woody Allen, Jeff Bridges, Bogart, Bacall, Nick Nolte, Lee Marvin, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellars, David Niven, Dirk Bogarde, Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Tom Courtney, Nicol Williamson, Albert Finney, Malcom Macdowell, Jack Nicholson, Kris Kristofferson, James Woods, Barbara Hershey, Tom Hanks, Lawrence Harvey, Patricia Arquette, Christian Slater, Sean Connery, Kevin Spacey, Robert Mitchum, James Belushi, Willem Dafoe, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, Karen Black, Gene Wilder, Johnny Depp, Tom Waits, Jonathan Pryce, Kim Basinger, Russell Crowe, Michael Caine etc.

"Apocalypse Now", "Citizen Kane", "The Magnificent Ambersons", "The Diary Of A Chambermaid", "The Philadelphia Story", "Manhatten", "Husbands And Wives", "Harvey", "Repulsion", "The Last Waltz", "Out Of The Blue", "The Last Movie", "Taxi Driver", "Rumblefish", "Tucker", "Winter Kills", " The Big Sleep", "To Have And Have Not", "The Roaring Twenties", "Delicatessen", "Betty Blue", "The German Sisters", "Mean Streets", "The Thin Blue Line", "Bedazzled (Original)", "Being There", "Get Carter", "Educating Rita", "The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre", "Touch Of Evil", "The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeois", "That Obscure Object Of Desire", "Trading Places", "A Kind Of Loving", "Otley", "Saturday Night And Sunday Morning", "Billy Liar", "Joe Egg", "Alien", "Blade Runner (Original Version)", "The Night Porter", "Fahrenheit 451", "Up In Smoke", "Repo Man", "Barry Lyndon", "Clockwork Orange", "Dr Strangelove", "The Killers", "Bonnie And Clyde", "The Parallax View", "The Man With The Golden Arm", "Jacob's Ladder", "Straight No Chaser", "Oh Lucky Man", "If", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", "The Searchers", "Psycho", "Annie Hall", "Crimes And Misdemeanours", "Solaris", "Eraserhead", "The Ipcress File", "Women In Love", "Frances", "Serpico", "His Girl Friday", "Arsenic And Old Lace", "MASH", "Don't Look Now", "The Man Who Fell To Earth", "Bad Timing", "Eureka", "La Rein Margot", " Big Time", "Five Easy Pieces", "The Shining", "The Last Detail", "Easy Rider", "Woodstock", "Performance", "Pat Garret & Billy The Kid", "White Christmas", " Cop", "Videodrome", "Schindler's List", "Hannah And Her Sisters", "Saving Private Ryan", " Room At The Top", "Darling", "The Life And Times Of Colonel Blimp", "Heavens Above", "The Lavender Hill Mob", "Dog Soldiers", "Ran", "Superfly", "Pulp Fiction", "True Romance", "The Name Of The Rose", "Raising Arizona", "The Godfather 1 & 2", "1900", "Ace In The Hole", "Lust For Life", "The Birdman Of Alcatraz", "The Pawnbroker", "Fight Club", "Swimming With Sharks", "The Usual Suspects", "American Beauty", "Drug Store Cowboy", "Running On Empty", "Suburbia", "Two Lane Blacktop", "El Topo", "Tracks", "12 Angry Men", "The Night Of The Hunter", "Salvador", "Platoon", "The Loveless", "Casino", "Good Fellas", "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", "The Last Picture Show", "Young Frankenstein", "Blazing Saddles", "The Producers", "Night On Earth", " Dead Man", "Ghost Dog", "Down By Law", "Fargo", "Millers Crossing", "Time Bandits", "Brazil", "The Life Of Brian", "Monty Python And The Holy Grail", "LA Confidential", "The Insider", "The Jerk", "Alfie", "Blow Up" Etc.

I could go on all night.