Amor Y Luz: Ed interview
conducted by Por Rulo
// Frente (mexican mag), april 2012
:: translation from spanish by 1986
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The interview starts at the hotel Chateau Marmont restaurant then Ed takes the interviewer to this hotel room for more privacy, he proudly shows the new Johnny Marr guitar that Fender sent him. On the couch theres a hat and marijuana stash the size of a baseball.
— You return to Mehico. How was last time you were here?
It was a pleasant surprise.We first came in 1994. we met during that tour, didn't we? And to come back to play on the Foro was amazing. The curious thing is that it was part of a Southamerican tour that took us to Brazil, Argentina and Chile. What we discover is that Mexico is better when we make a tour on the U.S. Mexico City can be a stop on one of our Northamerican tours. We were in awe of the people's spirit, we had a big party after the second concert.
— The first night in Mehico the tour started and I understand you weren't so comfortable on stage yet. Does that ever happen every time you start a tour?
The size of it... you have to get used to it, it's very powerful to go on stage and have 50,000 fans giving you their support, love and shouting at the top of their lungs... it takes awhile. At the start of every tour there's a transition: from being a father, husband... to being in front of 50,000 people it's two completely different worlds. The beginning of the tour could be very difficult, imagine any person in that situation, it can be shocking, even if you've done it before.
— How you feel before starting a tour? happy? excited? nervous?
Well, the beginning of this tour was in Miami — three weeks ago — and I was very concentrated. There's lots of work. We can play 55 songs, there's a lot to remember. At this point I don't get nervous or excited, I just try to be concentrated and I try to be in the best state possible (mental and spiritual) because touring is something incredible, but it takes a lot, you have to stop being a husband and father to become musician. The day before a tour starts I try to be as relaxed as possible.
— After all these years is every tour the same or is every single one of them different?
They're all different. We were just discussing that with our manager (Chris Martin): this specific tour doesn't compare to the previous ones. On albums like The Bends, Ok Computer and Kid A there's a lot of darkness, you hear a deep melancholy and therefore the tours were like that as well, but Radiohead is not like that anymore, now we are light and love, and that's why these shows have been different to the others. These shows are alive, filled with love... is like The Beatles 'all you need is love'. It's true. We have found that and now we're bringing it on stage. Before, we were alienated from the audience but not anymore, now there's an energy that goes back and fourth, and every single person in the audience is as important as Thom or me, we only facilitate the love.it's very powerful. This week we have offered the most different shows of our entire career and for me, the best we have played, because our spirit has changed a lot.
— What made the band to move to that direction? what happened?
Not long ago I was discussing that with somebody and I realize that... we're constantly moving. On OKC we were in a very dark place, it was like being in a tunnel, in which we stayed all through OKC, Kid A, Amnesiac and on HTTT we thought we were out but we weren't. While on In Rainbows the struggle was to get out of that tunnel. When we released that record we felt as though we had escape that obscure place and didn't want to go back because we've been there long enough.
You can be very creative while you're there, but it kills you as a human being, it's very hard, it wears you out, it's not a good place to be at, besides musically it gets very boring because it only lets you make some specific kind of music. Now we're in a much more illuminated mindset, creatively different, it's flowing, but to get here and appreciate all of this we had to go through the darkness. The last two years has been a new era for Radiohead.— But isn't the world a darker place now?
Yeah, you're right but in time of darkness people always feel that the light is approaching. I don't read newspapers because the news gets you depressed.... for example Mehico had it more than 50,000 people dead in the last years, it's terrible!! But I don't want that to change me as a person. It doesn't mean I don't care, I do care, but if you're constantly reading it affects your behavior and the way you interact with others as well. I don't wanna walk with fear of being kidnapped by Mexican druglords on Mexico city. When we visited Brasil people told us all these stories about how frightening Rio was, how we were gonna get mugged there: fuck that, I wanna interact with people, I want to be part of their happiness. Yes, there are fucked up situations, but I don't wanna be scared every time a brasilero approaches me, thinking he's gonna do something bad to me. And yes the world is in a very dark place at the moment but I know a lot of people who were in the same situation we were at and have finally found the light at the end of the tunnel.
— At the moment you say you were in a dark place, it seems as though the world was the opposite, specially in the U.K. : Tony Blair was in power, there was Britpop (whatever that was). Now the world gets darker and you get enlighten. Is your mood a reaction to the things that happen around you?
Yes! We weren't part of Britpop at all! What Thom saw (and said in his lyrics) even though people were celebrating, there was a lot of bullshit behind all that, and people just could not see it. We've been playing an obscure B-side called 'the amazing sounds of orgy', written more than 10 years ago, that says (singing )
I want to see you smile again
Like diamonds in the dust
The amazing sound of the killing hordes
The day the banks collapse on us*And it was predicting what was gonna happen with banking system, that it wasn't gonna last. The banks indeed collapsed on us two or three years ago. What Thom was doing was seeing past what people were celebrating, he pointed out all the shit that was going on, and now that we've seen it what we need to do is go above that. You need to keep moving. Yes, you realize all the wrong things that are happening, but you just don't sit around thinking about it, you need to know how you can make the situation better from your humble perspective. Everybody can do it. It seems as though it doesn't change a thing but it really does, being positive can make another person happy as well.
Then where we are at the moment is, that there's no point in being miserable all the time, you can't live like that, you must have hope in the future, hope that the world will be a better place.And from there you see that things will change. Yes, the world is in a very bad place at the moment, but humanity and its potential are unbelievable, we can do a lot of things and this seems like the place moment to do it. We are in a crisis, but with every trouble comes solutions, if we want to everything can get better, it depends on us.— I'd like to think that there's something good coming.
I don't know, we're only musicians. Whatever we feel comes through our music.
— Getting back to the tour. How you guys decide what songs to play, how will the band sound, how will the stage look?
The lighting system in this tour is mind blowing. Andy, our lighting engineer woks with us since 94. In November he approached us to show the plan he had, he wanted it to be immense, and he wanted to use the same led tubes we used in the last tour. But he also built this amazing wall of light behind the stage, made entirely of recycled plastic bottles. Then we have the rotating screens.
Regarding the songs: we play what make us feel good. We play TKOL because it seems right. Most of In Rainbows feels right also.And about the old songs it's been very interesting to see which ones work and which ones don't. For example, from OKC the one that really work it's 'lucky', it comes out very incredible every night. Also 'paranoid android', we have another drummer on stage besides Phil, Clive Deamer who gives makes the songs groovier. We played 'no surprises' during sound check and sounded horrible. It's very interesting to see which sounds really work and which ones don't. We've been playing 'the national anthem' from Kid A and it still doesn't feel right. We have played it twice in this tour and still doesn't work out it, 'kid A' and 'pyramid song' on the other hand sound amazing. Last night we played 'packt like sardines in a crushd tin box' and sounded good a little bit rough but it's getting there. Our emotional and spiritual state determines what songs work.
For example, 'no surprises' doesn't work as this very moment because it's a very beautiful and sweet song, and by being immersed in the melancholy and darkness that I was just telling you about, comes this very interesting tension. Now that we're filled with this love and happiness, when we play that song it's very tempting, there's no contrast at all, it's too sweet.— Does all the band share this feeling?
Yes, me in particular. I'm very expressive, I'm the one who says "Stop, there's too much fucking love here". I'm like that. It's not a very English thing to do but I'm not so English myself. Like I said before the interview, my grandmother was born in Mehico. But in general we agree, we all acknowledge that we are in a good place, it's a different kind of tour.
— Why have you guys included so many B-sides on this tour? To surprise the fans?
Yes, it's to surprise all the fans. But it's also nice to rediscover songs and seeing which ones feel good. We are a very lucky band, we a big arsenal of songs, we don't have to play 'fake plastic trees', 'creep', 'paranoid android' or 'no surprises'. I believe that people who like Radiohead understand - at this point they already got the message - that we play what we feel like playing, that we're not gonna delude people, we're not gonna say that it's RADIOHEAD'S GREATEST HITS TOUR. When we go to Mexico City, that's what we're gonna offer, It's good. honest and real.
— I imagine that when you do a show for 50,000 most people know that is Radiohead, but there's always some who go home sad because they didn't get to hear 'creep'.
We played it in Mehico. What we can't do is to go on stage thinking that we need to play this one or that one because that wouldn't be honest. When 'creep' works is when you suddenly feel like playing it. We can't force it.
— You are at the wrong gig if you're expecting to hear the greatest hits.
Yes, but that's interesting about playing in a place as big as Foro Sol. You know that there's 50,000 people who want to see a show that cover all stages of our career, but they need to be songs that make us feel good while playing them, it's not gonna be a concert like U2 or Hotstop. The concert is about where the band is at the moment musically. And I think people understand that, and we're lucky in that matter. I hope nobody goes home sad because we didn't play 'creep'.
— There's got to be people who don't really know you that do that, people who don't understand that they're watching at another kind of band, a band who on stage it's like a living transforming organism.
My impression of people in Mehico - I might be wrong - is that they notice. They have a big heart, a great feeling. That's why we're coming back, there's a lot of emotions, I like that about Mexicans. I feel a lot of honesty, it's very powerful.
— Let's go back to the songs for each concert. How you decide?
It's very simple, we get to our place at about 2pm. We see it. We eat. After we eat, Thom, Phil and I decide the setlist. There's certain songs that we already know that work together well. 'Bloom' is a great opener, it gets us in the right mood, we ask ourselves what we want to play, as long as it has a flow to it, that it has balance and takes the audience in a voyage to another place.If the five of us did it, it would be way too many opinions. And it works well that way because after the concert Colin and Jonny can make observations and suggestions.
— Then you decide between those 55 songs...
Si. We rehearsed the ones we didn't know the most. And there was four days of preproduction in London.
— One question some fans told me to ask you. Is The King Of Limbs a transition album?
It's an album about feelings compared to In Rainbows, in the sense that In Rainbows was a very direct album, of songs. Nigel was DJing a lot so he bought a little bit of that disco vibe to the album...
— I'm sorry to interrupt , but it's that why the album it's so "beat oriented"?
Yes, I believe so.
— Upon hearing it the first thing that I noticed was that the rhythm almost overwhelmed the other components of the songs.
Yes. you are right, the rhythm dictates the record. It's very important.
— Does that reflect on the show?
Yes, we joke about it, calling it The Big Rave.The rhythm is the king.Our manager Chris says: "It's like a Rave with guitars" and yes it is. It's fun. We have Clive and Phil playing drums, we're going someplace else. We're very lucky, we always find ways to move to other places, it's exciting and I know that I've said it before, but it feels better than ever. Last night Thom said on stage: " Why do we keep doing this? To do new things". Our past is fantastic but it's not what keeps us going, we are playing songs nobody has heard on this tour!
— Three as far as I'm concerned.
There's one more!
— After releasing TKOL you have released a couple more songs and now you're debuting these that hasn't even been recorded yet, why didn't you included them on TKOL?
We didn't recorded them. The Daily Mail came out because we were gonna do this program called 'From The Basement' that it's 55mins long and TKOL last only 38mins, so we needed more material. 'Staircase' which is from TKOL session when it wasn't fully formed at the moment. 'The Daily Mail' which we have since 2005 never worked for whatever reasons. But we finished it in literally 10mins for the program. I like it when we record a song to release immediately. We did it with 'lucky', you know?
— I remember, for the War Child..
And appeared a year later on Ok Computer. We are boys born in the 60's we're influence by The Beatles and The Stones. They'd go to the studio, record "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" as B-side then release it. Two of the greatest songs never were on an album!. The Beatles make that legitimate so that everybody else could do it. And they're still Gods!
— Have you guys disregard the album idea?
No, I love THE ALBUM.
— But does Radiohead work thinking about albums, EPs, singles, songs?
The thing is that albums require to be in a certain state of mind.You're gonna record a set of songs that require a level of commitment and concentration that is good, but it's not the easiest thing to do. That's what happened when we made TKOL. The music we make between album is very different, it has a little bit of this and a little bit of that. 'Supercollider' is very different to 'the Daily Mail'. We love the mentality of the B-side... we've done some which are very good, very important because you recorded without all the pressures of an album, which is quite heavy.
— I'd suppose that to make good and worthwhile album, you need to have enough things to say...
You're right. From the lyricist point of view, you need to have something to say, something coherent. And the B-sides doesn't require that, it can be a song from 10 years ago that it never worked out. Then, when we're making an album, we have that, to be more strict. When we're not, we only think about doing song we like.
— I'm gonna go back to the transition question. I think that the people who asked me about it feel like there's gonna be a big change in Radiohead starting with The King Of Limbs..
Totally. It's Radiohead MK III.
— What was Mark II? Kid A?
Yes. MKI was from Pablo Honey to Ok Computer, MKII from Kid A to the recording of In Rainbows, and MKIII are the last two years. This stage is light, love and happiness.
— You talk a lot about that. Is it easier to be Radiohead now than it was 10 years ago?
Totally. It's a beautiful place where we are now. It has always been very natural never forced. Ten years ago it was very difficult. It wasn't the band necessarily, it was more like us as person and human beings. We changed, we evolved, it got dark, it was hard, we didn't have fun, but you hold on and don't let go. Everything worth it comes at a cost. What I have learned of life it's that bad things don't last forever. Then and there you show up your character and everything bad eventually goes away, also things gets easier. That's what life is about I think, it's about cycles I guess. That's what happened with Radiohead. Now I enjoy that we're in a good place, that the shows are flowing, that everything is different, another feeling.
— The people around you like your producer, or for example Andy, your lighting engineer whom has been with you for almost 20 years now. Do they sense this new mood and use it on their work?
Andy talks about that with Thom. Above all he's very creative. A master, with lots of intuition. He knows us. We don't spend that much time together but he knows how we feel, what we want and he adds texture, color, beauty and drama. And it's evolving as the tour progresses, makes it better. All the show evolves, we try to make it better.
— At the end of the tour, what's left? a very tired band or the best show of the tour?
It doesn't depend on us. Depends on the audience.They play a bigger role that we do. End.
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