Hero Worship: Albert Hammond Jr. on Christopher Hitchens

I used to read a lot of music biographies, people like Johnny Cash. I like reading about how they look at life –  that can be exciting. But it's not like there's a single person I look up to in music – there are so many little influences, it's almost like you have a family of people to look up to, rather than just one. Some of those people changed my life, over the years, and without them, I wouldn't be who I am today. But the people who have influenced me the most, certainly in the last few years, have had nothing to do with music. Both Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins would be people who have definitely influenced my thinking.

From a young age, I didn't know how to express my thoughts on religion. When you heard Christopher Hitchens speak, he was just so smart – listening to him was like watching an amazing athlete. You were just in awe. He was always so calm – nothing got him emotional, he was too smart. When I saw him talk, he was speaking about either Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin. How he related everything really spoke to me. At the time I was figuring out my own views about the universe and stuff like that, having thoughts about life, and just wishing people would spend more time thinking about that kind of stuff, rather than believing in religion – just imagining what we could accomplish. It's just a more modern approach – religions now are so dated.

What I was most impressed with, in the talks given by both Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, was their lack of hatred towards things. The way they explain something when debating with religious people was entirely without anger – they would just explain things very calmly, using factual evidence. It always seemed like, in those debates, the smartest people in the room would say, 'Well, we know a little bit.' And the people who weren't as smart were like: 'We know everything.'

That kind of thinking just excites me – it inspires me. It helps me to think about what I want to talk about, what I want to say. It leaves me very curious; and I have no answers for that curiosity. That's the excitement of being alive. It's the start of a new journey. I've never really considered myself spiritual or religious. I've always looked up to the stars in more amazement than I could feel about spiritual ideas. That's been the case since I was five, and attending Sunday school – they couldn't answer any of my questions. They kept on telling me to be quiet. All this amazing, beautiful stuff in the universe, and there's just one explanation? It all seemed so weird.