The first song I remember hearing
Brotherhood Of Man – ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’
“I remember it with the smell of roast chicken because I heard it in our flat and my mum was cooking a Sunday roast. I bet I was, like, four years old. I remember bright sunshine on a wall and my mum singing along to the radio. My mum was very musical – she was a singer. My grandmother sang operetta and my grandfather was [Broadway songwriter] Frank Loesser’s pianist.”
The first album I owned
The Cure – ‘Three Imaginary Boys’
“I’m so glad this question came up because it’s gonna make me sound so cool. I was thinking, ‘Does this make me sound too cool and should I pick something else?’ I thought Brotherhood Of Man might help me out here! I was a huge Cure fan and then segued into being a massive Smiths fan. And then a disappointed lover of Morrissey – it’s awful. It’s like a divorce. I still listen to him with a tinge of: ‘There were good things about the relationship…’ ‘The Queen Is Dead’ and ‘Hatful of Hollow’ are flawless.”
The first gig I went to
The Boomtown Rats, London (date and venue unknown)
“It must have been just before they broke up, which was ’86. My family knew the CEO of their record label [Mercury Records] and snuck me and my sister into the back of the gig. I would have been 13 or something like that. It was amazing. I’d never been to a gig. Probably more than anything, it led to me picking up a guitar and wanting to be a guitar player. Wanting to be an actor came much later. I wanted to be a rock star.”
The song that reminds me of home
The Jam – ‘The Eton Rifles’
“I grew up in the ‘70s in London. There’s so much anger in how every instrument is being played and there is a brutality to the song. The ‘70s felt like a powder keg. It feels like a fight about to start, ‘Eton Rifles’. The ‘70s felt like that to me, growing in Willesden and Harlesden [north-west London] before Willesden became the gentrified, lovely place that it is now.”
The song I wish I’d written
Mariah Carey – ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’
“This is easy because I could give up acting. I could hang up my acting tights, lie in a hammock and drink daiquiris. I love Christmas and it’s a must at that time, but by the end of Christmas, I’ve kind of had enough. But it fucking slaps!”
The song I can’t get out of my head
Mariah Carey – ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’
“I’m not joking. My 14-year-old daughter is in an a capella group – of course she is! – at school. They’re called the B Naturals – geddit? She has a solo moment on Mariah’s ‘All I Want For Fucking Christmas Is You’. I listen to that song driving my daughter to school every day and can’t get the fucking thing out of my head.”
The song I can no longer listen to
John Lennon – ‘Imagine’
“The song I can no longer listen to is Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’. No, I’m joking. It is, if I’m honest, ‘Imagine’ – and I love that fucking song. I’ve just heard it too many times. I’m a big Lennon fan. But you know what? The last Beatles movie, Get Back, really turned me around on Paul McCartney. It blew me away. I thought, actually, Lennon came across as a bit of an asshole.
“I had always been dyed-in-the-wool ‘I’m Team Lennon’. I found it hard to listen to Lennon in that film. He sounded like a pontificating twat to me. Now, being a grown-up is all about embracing contradictions, so I have to hold that in one hand and hold in the other that “Mother, you had me/But I never had you” [from 1970’s ‘Mother’] is perhaps the most powerful line ever written in a pop song.”
The song that makes me want to dance
Stevie Wonder – ‘As’
“It’s just got a great groove to it. I once saw a documentary, which I can’t find, where they’re recording ‘As’ and it just goes on forever. I mean, it goes on for 10 or 15 minutes. They are all so in it. For me, ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’ is probably the greatest album of all time. It’s a masterpiece. With ‘As’, you really believe in love when that choir kicks in. It feels like church, but not like the sort of church that I grew up in. It feels like joy and love and happiness. I love that song so much.”
The song that makes me cry
Tom Waits – ‘Martha’
“The thing that really speaks to me about that song is understanding that Tom Waits wrote it as a young fan and he is imagining himself as an old man, calling up somebody he just broke up with. She’s lived her life and had kids and he’s lived his life and had kids, and he has always loved her. It’s fucking heartbreaking.”
The song I do at karaoke
U2 – ‘Bad’
“I don’t do karaoke, but I have a band room in my place in Vermont and we do a gig every New Year’s Eve. Last year, I did this song. My kids are great musicians, my wife’s cousin is a great drummer and the other cousin is a really good guitarist. Everybody plans a song and gets up and the band plays it. Last year, we had 40 people staying with us for a week. It was like running a hotel. It was bonkers! Everywhere you walked, there were people on air mattresses.”
The song I want played at my funeral
Wham! – ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’
“In my head, my children are the pallbearers and bringing the coffin in and have no idea what’s going to play. I think that ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ will take the sting out of what I’m sure will be a miserable day for them – because I’m so marvellous and they’ll miss me so much!”
‘Amadeus’ premieres on Sky and streaming service NOW on December 21