stanley donwood interview to GQ
// «GQ» August'2005
:: transcript by pennyroyalty {at.Ease}
:: mailto qwerrie
© 2005
...for those who still haven't got a clue: Stanley Donwood
is the semi-official sixth member of Radiohead. Having designed all
artwork from The Bends onwards, he has created one of music's most distinctive
band images. Now he's screen-printing old favourites and new classics,
and selling them through his website. Here he tells GQ exclusively why.
How did you first get involved with the band?
I have lied about this so many time that the
truth, if there ever was one, has become impossibly sedimented in the
strata of my deceit. (Donwood met lead singer Thom Yorke at the University
of Exeter).
Who or what inspires you?
The first pictures that I ever saw were by John
Constable, on biscuit tins and as jigsaw box lids. When in the Eighties
I saw Peter Kennard's versions of these paintings, with 'The Haywain'
as an image of a missile launcher, I knew that I could be an artist.
Or something.
What's your favourite Radiohead artwork?
Kid A. The artwork for this record was almost
impossible to do. I wanted to make artwork that looked, from a distance,
like jewellery thrown onto mud, but close up revealed itself as the
most ghastly shit that people can ever do to each other. I was
fascinated by the horror in the Balkans at the time. At the same time,
this was a continuation of the work on OK Computer, and it continues
on Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief. So they're all inextricably linked.
Are you, for sound bite purposes, "the
Terry Gilliam of Radiohead"?
While it's really complimentary to be compared
to someone such as Terry Gilliam, I don't honestly think it's appropriate.
God, I'd love to make something as good as Brazil. Here's the riposte:
a sound bite is a statement designed to preclude the possibility of
intelligent thought.
Do the band have input with your work?
Oh, man, I'm terrible at working on my own.
There's no frame of reference, no one to tell you if what you're doing
is good or fucking terrible. I once spent two months working on this
idea that combined topiary with porn. I joined the National Trust and
everything, just so I could cycle to all these gardens that had famous
topiary in them and photograph it. I wanted to make pictures that
had phallic topiary fucking vulva-shaped clouds. Quite tastefully, I
might add. Anyway, there I was, taking photos and really getting into
it... until Thom told me that it might not be.... quite the thing...
for the new record. Honestly, topiary and photography... what was I
thinking?
So why the new venture?
I hadn't screen-printed for about 15 years and
I thought I'd better start with something I knew. And I imagined
that a few people might like proper versions of pictures only ever seen
as the 12x12cm images in jewel cases.
Prints, in limited editions of 288, 288 pounds each, and of 144, 144
pounds each, www.slowlydownward.com