 |
| |
|
| |
Interview
by SaschaS
13-6-2003
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Radiohead: a band on top of the world |
|
Marque time
Radiohead in pretty noir jubilation
Radiohead’s new album, ‘Hail To The Thief’ has simply reconfirmed the band’s status of the most intriguing band currently making music on this green and troubled rock. They could also be the band that is the most sensitive to the moods of the time, or so they claim. ‘HTTT’ is a reflection and reaction to the manifestations of the dark forces that are seriously threatening the future, again, and worries thus caused.
The new album sounds like they were escaping from it while shouting at the rise of evil, intolerance, mass-murder, blind panic. Words, phrases, titles add to the music that is bright and energetic, is the way the band members view the album. It certainly is an expansion vs. compression, reaching for the Pink Floyd-like sonic spectacle with Led Zeppelin’s sense of grandiose presentation and lyrics that enigmatically ‘paint’ humanity’s deficiencies!
Ed O’Brien: “Every record we make could only be made then and there, not the year before or the year after. It comes from our honesty, emotional, mental and spiritual state and I think you can easily tell that from our music. We learnt the lesson from John Leckie, the producer of ‘Bends’, who told us, ‘An album should be a narrow snapshot of a band at a given time.’ So, an album is the representation of a band at the time and we can’t revisit it again, ever.”
May force…
Ed: “Other things also influence the album and there are infinite permutations. This record wouldn’t have sounded like this if we decided to record it in Berlin, instead of sunny Los Angeles in September. And, that only happened because of our producer, Nigel (Godrich), he booked the studio. It wouldn’t have been as warm as this, I think all these details determine the character of each record.”
Thom Yorke: “You come to the point when you don’t care for consequences and just do it for yourself. And, then you go and have a lunch.”
Songs making albums: ‘Lift’ was toured last year but failed to secure a place on ‘HTTT’
Ed: “Yeah, we played the song live, there is also a song ‘Nude’, or… ‘I Will’; people were asking after it for years and we finally recorded it and it’s fine. The reason for it is that we are not in that place and
when we get there, we’ll do it.”
Jonny Greenway: “The truth is that it is left behind, as were two other songs. We recorded a version of ‘Lift but it was a bad one, well – not really good one. When we played it live, it was like ‘Design For Life’, it was that epic but that is not where we are now. These are different times.”
Radiohead members having fun
Jonnny: “Oh, yeah. When we were recording in Los Angeles we had these Minis, like in ‘The Italian Job’; they were all coloured in this strange livery… Mine had a Union Jack on top and we’d leave the studio in a convoy, it was like a bad scene from an Austin Powers’s film! Or, a commercial for a German car company… But, it was fun.”
Thom’s happiness
TY: “I’m the happiest when the weather is… My absolute fave type of weather is Gale Force 10, a wind that can just take you up and take you – somewhere! I need to surprise myself, to challenge, I need the risk to keep it exciting. I don’t want to criticise but I can’t understand when people repeat themselves, get stuck in one form of music.”
Thom’s woe
TY: “Hearing ‘There There’ for the first time as a finished song… It made me cry, I blubbed my eyes out. When Nigel played me the mix I was in tears, it made me cry for ages… I just thought it was the best thing we’ve ever done, I loved everything Nigel’s done with the song, the sound of guitars, the way he mixed it, the way it is jubilant to me, in a funny way. And also, because I thought we’d lose it; the melody was with me for four months and that’s unusual for me because it doesn’t take me long to get bored.”
Lessons in aspic
TY: “But, one thing I discovered making this record is that you let things happen and what I mean by it is that you let thing form themselves, you don’t beat them out. There is a dream you had about how it should sound and one day you walk in the studio and it is there. That’s why I cried, because it was there although I thought we had lost it, the vision I had in my mind. I’ve learnt with this record to let things happen naturally.”
Anger management
TY: “I didn’t realise it was that angry [on ‘A Wolf In The Door’] until I was typing out the lyrics… I suppose it is very angry because I couldn’t help it: putting anger in music is good because it is the best place to be expressed, much better than many other places. I didn’t think I was bitter and angry, I thought I was just going through a mad period, and I know I go through them although this one was a particularly bad one.”
SaschaS
8-7-2005
Radiohead’s album ‘Hail To The Thief’ is available now on Parlophone
|
|
|
