teetering on the
edge of madness
st.donwood e-mail interview
by emma morgan
// «BANG» july'2003
scanned
by qwerrie ~ 2003
sp.thanx 2 Amnesiac 4 the staff!
Shall we start off by you telling me how you first got into
graphic design?
i never got into graphic design it was a mistake i was trying to be a tree
surgeon but i didnt get the job.
OK, so what is your work environment
like? Do you carry a little book around with you to doodle in on the bus
or do you set time aside and hide yourself away like Roald Dahl in his centrally-heated
shed until the job's done?
mmm yes, a little book. many little books and big A4
ones too. that's the idea anyway. often its bits of paper, serviettes and
rizlas. a shed too, but theres not any central heating. theres a little woodburner.
in the morning: chop wood, light the stove, stare at a half-finished painting
for a while, after a bit it gets warmer, lots of room for painting in there
though, and i can make a lot of mess. i was in there for three months last
autumn, kind of forgot how to conduct myself in company after that. when
i went in it was sunny early September and the next thing i knew it was Christmas,
but the paintings were started in los angeles, which is about as different
to a shed in the middle of nowhere as you can get.
By the paintings, are you referring to the artwork for HTTT?
yep there were 8 paintings for hail to the thief, all
one and a half metres square... artex and acrylic and blackboard paint. also
there were paintings for kid a and amnesiac...even bigger too big for my
little house
When and how did you first hook up with Radiohead, then?
me and radiohead?
oooooh well... back in the fogs of time...
iwas a humble buskmg firebreather hitching around england. in oxford a band
named 'on a friday' were after a support act down the pub. i was prevented
from breathing fire that evening, health and safety regulations or something.
fortunately so, as i was very drunk, the next thing i knew i was staying
in a suite at the chateau marmont, sipping cosmopolitans and waiting for
yet another limousine. oh, the dreariness.
What is the creative process behind the design work for a
new album and its associated singles -- do you sit down with the band, or
just listen to the music, or what?
i listen to the music a lot. a very very very lot. until
its squirting out of my eyes. i havent listened to hail to the thief
since xmas so itll be a bit of a surprise to hear the mastered version that
thom and nigel did back in sunny californ eye ay.
What kind of timeline do you work
to - you mentioned working in LA, so do you tend to go where the band are
recording?
ha my timeline is something that seems accommodating
at the beginning and then ridiculously claustrophobic at the end. let me
out. i will pop.
yes often i go to the recording sessions cos its good to get a sense of what
the records going to be about, kid a took two years though, that was fucking
mad.
What were the original design ideas/briefs & finished
pieces for 'The Bends'?
er filming stuff on a dodgy old video camera then refilmmg
it off the telly, then plugging the extremely fucked up results into the
staggeringly primitive computer we had at the time. and going into the hospital
in oxford to make the cover. the afternoon of the deadline. i like that
cover because he sort of looks like hes coming, or having his legs sawn off.
there was no brief. luckily.
'0k Computer'?
uuuummmmmm i dont remember very clearly but that was
the summer of horrible rural murders, hammers and such. horrible, we were
in the countryside in somerset in a haunted house full of photos of jane
seymour. white is the colour of bleached bones, thom screaming in an outhouse
into a mike. all these things conspired to make the ok computer artwork.
there was no brief. luckily.
'Kid A'?
erm yes as i said before that was two years of teetering
on the edge of madness, that was when we started painting these huge square
canvases, i was very scared of the world then. still am i guess but ive got
more relaxed, anyway that was bosnia/serbia war times, horrid great landscapes
full of snow and blood and scrawled scratches and laments, rwanda. leave
you have 24 hrs we will come for you and your family. the one image that
inspired all that was a photo in the paper of snow, bloodstamed and bootprinted.
oh and circuses, roll up roll up. greatest show on earth, there was no brief.
luckily.
'Amnesiac' and 'I Might Be Wrong'?
tokyo city. an old book written by a recluse hidden in
a chest of drawers in a dusty never visited attic in a ghost town. the minotaur,
roaming lost and unloved in a labyrinth beneath london, crying. i spent weeks
wandering around london on foot with a 1911 guidebook. there was no brief.
luckily.
'Hail To The Thief'?
well i nearly went badly wrong with that one. i had an
idea about topiary and porn, and combing them. but then i went to LA and
the colours of LA are red, green, blue, orange, and yellow, plus black and
white, thats pretty much all the most advanced capitalist city uses to advertise
and sell stuff, its very loud. so i bought tubs of the most vivid
colours and painted sort of real estate painting. as if each inch of
the canvas was worth money, all the pictures for hail to the thief are of
cities. i got the maps off the net. london, grozny, baghdad. 8 cities. santa
monica, manhattan, kabul. i must have left a suspicious trail for the net
police. there was no brief. luckily.
Do you ever have to compromise on ideas for commercial purposes
or are the band now powerful enough to get all submitted work approved?
little strategic compromises are unavoidable. but not
really. i have to say that parlophone are most accommodating of my whims.
Whose design work do you admire and aspire towards?
i like jamie reid. i admire his ethic. and g who
did crass's artwork. shes really really good.
Can you tell me more about your projects unassociated with
Radiohead, eg your books, websites, other design work?
um yes. i did a pulp trash novel called 'catacombs of
terror!' and a book called slowly downward thats basically the stuff off
my website of the same name. published by a bloke i met down the pub. im
doing artwork for John matthias and mugison who are on matthew herberts accidental
label, there is no brief. luckily. oh and the tshirt and program cover for
glastonbury. there was no brief. luckily.
Finally, what are your future plans, now HTTT is out
of the way?
im going to have a fucking rest.
