Radiohead interview
Phil, Colin & Jonny
// HUMO, December 2007
:: translated from dutch by kid.android @ atEase
London, November 17th. It’s just stopped
raining. I leave the beautifully restored station of St. Pancras,
and the first thing I see is a rainbow. That can’t be a
coincidence. ‘In Rainbows’, the new Radiohead album, will
be released on cd on December 31st after all. What’s more:
in June 2008, Oxford’s finest are touring again. Werchter has
already been booked!
I’m meeting Jonny, Colin and Phil in
London. Thom is ill and at home. Ed is 'somewhere'. Since the
last time we met, Thom, Phil and Jonny became fathers. The atmosphere
within the band seems really relaxed. There’s not much that
can go wrong: they’re all millionaires by now, and the new record
has been widely hailed as their best since ‘OK Computer’.
‘In Rainbows’ reveals that Radiohead is still “fuckin’
special”, even though in the last fifteen years they’ve
also been (as Thom said) “fuckin’ precious”: self-absorbed,
overly sensitive and needlessly complicated. I’ve prepared a
practical joke. I brought the twenty year old demo’s of
two songs by On A Friday, Jonny and Thom’s first band. I ask
Jonny if he wants to listen to “my band’s demo”.
Phil and him immediately exchange a glance: journalists bothering
stars with their own music is not done. My plan: chastising Jonny
once he’s exclamated “Worthless!”. “Gotcha:
it’s YOU!”. However, the plan fails.
____________________
Jonny Greenwood (playfully strict): “Sorry,
but this band has no future. Past expiration date, mate! It’s
a good attempt, but I happened to come across this old demo tape myself
last week. I’m still using this trick with the spinning coin
(as heard on ‘Philippa Chicken’ – editor) –
we haven’t evolved a bit in the last twenty years (grins). It
was strange to hear those songs again: it’s us, and yet it seems
like a totally different band.”
— What strikes me the most is that Thom was a
rather average Bono-imitator in those days – he sang pretty
forced. His singing is much more natural now...
Jonny: “Yes, he’s definitely more himself
since “The Bends”. It was pure insecurity – Thom
won’t deny that. When we started, we didn’t think that
anybody would be interested in who we really were. We shaped our style
with clichés and sounds and singing lines that we thought were
hip. We only became successful when we grew the courage to be ourselves.
I think that’s quite beautiful, actually: with most bands it
works the other way around. By the way: where did you get those On
A Friday demos? That’s highly illegal, you know.”
— Ehm...I got it from someone who works at EMI,
your former record company.
Jonny: “There you go: a multinational spreading
bootlegs themselves!”
— No, the guy is just a fan. Which brings me
to this year’s main point: who are those horrible record industry
people musicians keep complaining about? I’ve met EMI-people
on three continents and they were all sincerely passionate about music.
Jonny: “I don’t doubt that. The real wolves are a few
stories higher, of course.”
— People who went to inrainbows.com to download
your album saw “It’s up to you”. And then after
another puzzled click: “No really, it’s up to you!”.
The fans could decide for themselves how much to pay for In Rainbows.
That’s just about the same as saying “You decide who you
really are, dear fan: a reasonable person, an opportunist or a cheapskate.”
Nice and original, but also a real mindfuck.
Colin Greenwood: “If you say so. We thought
it was amusing to make people stop and think about how much music
was worth to them. More than a good bottle of wine? Less than a restaurant
dinner?”
Philip Selway: “Compare it to the honesty
box in the bar of a quaint family hotel: you grab a drink and the
owners trust you to put a reasonable amount in their savings jar.”
Jonny: “The genuine mindfuck only came about
when our server crashed in early October and the fans had to wait
for an eternity before they could order the new album. Awful. Frustrating
people is the last thing we want.”
— Offering your new music as a download first,
at a price of the customer’s choice, and then releasing a traditional
cd after all: what on earth is the idea behind that? Especially in
an age where everyone has an iPod and an internet connection.
Jonny: “That’s too complicated to
answer shortly. It was a test.”
— I’m curious at how revolutionary or futile
that test will seem in ten years’ time.
Jonny: “Same here. We’re not the scared
type, and something had to happen. Actually not having a record company
only has two disadvantages: not working with the employees of EMI,
whom we’ve shared everything with over the last twelve years,
anymore, and not having a deadline, which causes us to just keep working
aimlessly. That’s why we can’t do it without a producer.”
— There’s also the physical aspect: I think
cd’s and vinyl and cover art is delicious, it’s an
almost fetishistic pleasure.
Jonny: “Yeah, I also feel that way: you
want something you can hold, not just sounds in a small box, thousands
of songs piled onto each other invisibly. It trivialises the music,
as if it doesn’t really exist.”
Colin: “Ah, the joys of a 12 inch single!
The smell of a record sleeve! The...”
Phil (interrupts): “I believe I overheard
a musac-version of ‘Creep’ in the hallway just now, is
that possible?”
— I recently heard “Pull/Pulk Revolving
Doors” in a documentary about...clitorises!
Jonny: “Really? That makes me happy. More
even: grateful! Usually, documentary makers only use our music to
accompany depressing footage about heavy-handed subjects: fraud, feuds,
suicide, war, conflicts,... That has been irritating us for a long
time.”
Colin: “We’re already satisfied if
a Radiohead snippet shows up in the report on a soccer game. Many
people forget that our music also has a beautiful, spiritual, even
sensual side.”
— Now that you mention it: it can’t be
coincidental that there’s a dj who calls himself Radioclit.
Jonny (laughs): “The guys in Slowdive
recently said that their songs weren’t penis substitutes, but
clitoris substitutes, I liked that one. Oh man, I’m really happy
with any association with sex...can you make it stand out even a little
more? Even our fans think that they’re depreciating or raping
or music if they use it for so-called light-hearted means. We’re
no gloomy doommongers at all: we’re consciously living young
people who aren’t disgusted by having a social and political
conscience.”
— Let me dredge up an old story: Radiohead didn’t
perform at Live 8. Isn’t doing something always better
than doing nothing? When a politically engaged band like Radiohead
boycots such an event, it’s easy for young people to think:
“Then we don’t have to do anything either”.
Jonny: “I suppose so. At the time, the band
was asleep after a long tour, and we were a little sick of everything.
Not just each other but also the monster called Radiohead. We doubted
whether or not we still had a future. Thom was also not fully supportive
of Live 8. A gigantic festival like that simplifies things. It leads
the attention away from the real problems, which are always complex,
and enables politicians to work on their public relations without
really making an effort to change anything. But maybe we missed an
opportunity there, yeah.”
Colin: “We were enjoying parenthood for five
minutes after ten years of hard work. We were totally not in that
mindspace at the time.”
— Radiohead rehearsals. Tell us all about them.
Phil: “Exhausting. Time-consuming. But after
all those years still exciting, thank God. On a good day, that is.”
Colin: “Jonny does a lot of preparation work.
He loves tinkering.”
Jonny: “Among other things, I made a machine
which takes sounds on radio stations — music, but also conversations
and even the silences between two words — and turns it into
rhtythmic patterns. A sort of improvising drum machine.”
Phil: “A conspiracy to rob me of my job,
that’s what it is!”
Colin: “We do a lot of jamming, but our
jam sessions aren’t the same as your avarage rock band’s.
We often jam by talking. And by being silent. (laughs)”
— Which song on ‘In Rainbows’ was
most fun to work on?
Colin: “15 Step. With perverse pleasure.”
Jonny: “Bodysnatchers, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi...
although that was a tricky one.”
Phil: “Nude, anyone?”
— Yeah, that jewel of a song has been around
for ten years.
Colin: “That song demonstrates how terrified
we are of finishing our ideas. What’s the matter with us that
we’re so hesitant to make definitive versions? Maybe we should
give that some thought.”
Jonny: “Or maybe not at all.”
— During recording sessions for ‘The Joshua
Tree’, Brian Eno tried to erase the master tape of ‘Where
the Streets Have No Name’. He wanted to force U2 to start from
scratch. A sound technician was just in time to stop him. Would you
hire Eno?
Jonny: “I doubt it. It would probably be
a bit much. We’re all a bit Brian Eno ourselves.”
— Bono once said that U2 was so desperately trying
to avoid surrounding themselves by yes men that after a while, they
got stuck with counterproductive naysayers.
Jonny: “We ourselves are those naysayers.
I sometimes wonder whether we’ve made good records because we’re
such insecure, self-critical worriers. Maybe our music would be even
better if we were a happy-go-lucky bunch.”
Phil: “Sometimes all the worrying is really
just too much for us.”
— When Thom is once again prey to doubt and misantrophy?
Colin: “Unfortunately, that happens to us
all. Most of the time doubt is a motor for creativity, but sometimes
it’s incredibly bollocks. In any event we don’t have the
extreme amount of self-confidence people associate with rockstars.
— Maybe you can borrow some arrogance from Oasis
and lend them some of your sense of adventure.
Colin: “That’s the best idea I’ve
heard in years! The best unrealistic idea (laughs)”.
— Many songs on ‘In Rainbows’ differ
drastically from the versions you’ve been playing live. ‘Nude’
exists in four guises: a rock version, an orchestral version, a piano
version and the version on the record. Picking the definitive arrangement
out of a thousand options: it would drive me insane.
Jonny: “That can work paralysingly, yes.
Especially when you’re in a band. Just when, after months of
doubting, you’re completely certain about what you want, someone
else says “Hmm, I’m not sure, maybe it’s better
if we...”.”
Colin: “Often we’d be discussing certain
songs during a concert. “How long can this break last? Shall
we stretch the outro a bit more?”. It keeps being a delicate
issue: one version works better on the record, another is better fit
for on stage. ‘Videotape’, for instance, is really sparse
on the album: Thom on the piano, that’s about it. In its live
form the song had a majestic arrangement because it’s much easier
to work towards a climax that way.”
Phil: “We’ve become less nitpicky. Before, we didn’t
want to stray from the original live: if there weren’t any guitar
or drums in it, we’d play it without guitar or drums. Now we
keep working on our songs, and if after two years the live version
has become better than the studio version, that’s just how it
is. We have only one rule anymore: anything goes as long as it benefits
the song.”
— Four years ago I was at a David Sylvian concert
– in the nineties he used to perform with a band of six up to
ten brilliant musicians. That night, I saw three intellectuals typing
away on a laptop. I thought to myself “God no, is this
the way of the future?”
Jonny (nodding fiercely): “Yes, I know exactly
what you mean. At the time of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’,
we spent way too much time surfing the internet. We did too much messing
around with downloads, technical gizmo’s and obscure, ehm, computer
input. On ‘Hail to the Thief’ we were painstakingly looking
for some counterbalance to all this experimentation, but only on ‘In
Rainbows’ have we really succeeded in doing that.”
— During a rehearsal you once played ‘Crazy
Little Thing Called Love’ by QUEEN. Done any other silly
covers lately?
Jonny: “Yeah, in a corny mood Colin and me
played a ‘Creep’ cover as The Greenwood Brothers.”
— I once saw a showcase where Moby covered that
song.
Jonny, Colin and Phil: (total silence)
— Are you too tactful to comment on that?
Phil: “Err...yeah.”
— One of the beautiful things about Radiohead
is that you create mind-expanding music without any drugs ever coming
into play. Or am I wrong?
Colin (after a long silence): “I won’t
say that we never took anything, but definitely a lot less than other
rock bands.”
Jonny: “What fascinates me about drugs is
that you can never be sure how they will influence your creativity.
Take Fleetwood Mac, for instance: they were high as a kite while recording
‘Rumours’. They snorted tons of cocaine, a drug that turns
even an insecure footwipe into a megalomaniac dictator. And yet the
album is full of wonderful, subtle, sensitive ballads with very open-hearted
lyrics. Remarkable.”
— When I last spoke to Thom in Oxford, I jokingly
gave him a list of my favorite Radiohead-songs, to use as a setlist
for the next tour. “Why is ‘Everything In Its Right Place’
not on here?”, he commented. It wasn’t until I heard
your brilliant live version of that song at Shepherd’s Bush
Empire in London that I understood why.
Colin: “I remember that show: we never came
closer to a classic jam session. At the end of the song I totally
cut loose while Phil was sustaining a glorified disco beat. Strange,
a few years before that we wouldn’t have dared, because of it
being...”
Phil: “Too predictable.”
Colin: “Too festive.”
Phil: “Too danceable.”
— I can imagine ‘EIIRP’ being the
most intense moment in the set for you, a kind of natural climax.
Is it tricky to keep being focused on the music then?
Jonny: “For me all songs are equally risky,
because I’m constantly fidgeting about with effect pedals, samples,
livestreaming, guitars and keyboards...a lot can go wrong. Actually
it’s a miracle that we don’t mess up more often.”
— Is there room for humour during concerts?
Jonny: “As in Thom riding up the stage on
a tricycle with a clown mask on and a party whistle stuck in his mouth?
After which the wheels fall off one by one? We have lots of laughs
behind the scenes, but on stage? No.”
— And yet I saw Phil playing a lemon during ‘EIIRP’.
Funny if you consider the opening line of the song: “Yesterday
I woke up sucking on a lemon”...
Phil: “That wasn’t a joke, I couldn’t
have been more serious! During another concert, I used a pear-shaped
shaker – THAT was a joke.”
— Finally, could you listen to this cd? The Flemish
girl choir Scala covers ‘EIIRP’...
Phil: “Lovely. Sounds good.”
Colin: “Yeah, really nice.”
— ‘Nice’? Are you being polite? Because
Steven Kolacny is a real Radiohead-freak.
Jonny: “Oh no, I already have a cd by Scala
at home. But I wasn’t familiar with this cover yet. It’s
tastefully done, original and atmospheric. Moving, even. Congratulate
the singers.”
You just did.