The New Cue #447 December 2: Radiohead's Colin Greenwood
"This story of five English middle class boys getting a bit overstretched emotionally"
Back in October, Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood released How To Disappear: A Photographic Portrait Of Radiohead, a beautifully crafted book bringing together a collection of the bassist’s snaps of his bandmates (and sometimes himself) over the years alongside some thoughtful words about what it’s like being a member of Radiohead. In a very unRadiohead-like move, Colin has done a fair amount of interviews about the book over the past couple of months but he’s saved the best til last, and on Friday he spoke to me, Niall, over Zoom. He was very happy to speak to a proper journalist with whom he could finally wax lyrical about the book’s binding. When I logged into the Zoom to speak to Colin, I noticed on the screen that behind me there was a Radiohead T-shirt drying on the radiator but luckily my ninja-like skills got to it before Colin had come on screen and we avoided an Alan Partridge/Jed Maxwell scenario. Phew!
Then we got onto chatting about the book, which is brilliant. One lucky TNC subscriber can find out for themselves as publishers John Murray Press have kindly donated one copy for us give away. The catch, because there is always a catch, is that you have to be a paying subscriber to enter. We will check, but we won’t tell if you win it and give it away as a Christmas present. Very decent pressie, fair enough. To enter, simply email thenewcue1@gmail.com with the answer to this question:
What is the best Radiohead song?
There is only one answer. But don’t start mulling it over yet, you have this interview with Colin to read first! This is a free edition but if you’d like to support The New Cue and become a paying subscriber with full access to every edition plus our bountiful archive, then you can do that for £5 a month here:
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See you on Wednesday,
Ted and Niall
Start The Week With… Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood
Hello Colin. How are you?
I’m good. I just got back from two months, 33 shows with Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds and I’ve been catching up with home life after being away for two months.
What does the decompression period involve when you’ve done an intense bout of touring like that?
Calling the plumber, broken heating and stuff like that, and sorting out day-to-day stuff.
What’s your routine like when you’re at home?
Seeing the kids, although they’ve got older now, seeing friends, going for walks, prepping the bunker for impending Armageddon, making sure I’m stocked up on all tins, stewed peaches, prunes.
Haha. How does doing a tour with Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds compare with doing a tour with Radiohead? I guess you were playing a lot of the same venues Radiohead would play.
Yeah, that’s right, it was really great because I don’t feel stressed playing those rooms because I’m used to it with Radiohead, and also because the atmosphere on tour was so supportive and collegiate and kind and funny and just the best time with the loveliest people. I’m lucky where I am in my life with music where I can feel when I’m on stage that it’s like a sort of home from home. I am really grateful for that experience. I got to stand, as I said, I got to stand between two incredible drummers, um, Jim Sclavunos and Larry Mullins, who are both fabulous and very, very loud but great and they gave me lots of advice and support and wisdom about how to conduct myself when I was working with Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.
What was the best bit of advice?
Like tempos, not to go too fast on some of the old songs. It’s good advice. Steady as she goes. Playing the rooms, I was very focused on Larry, I was focused on Nick when he plays the piano but if I have a regret, I was so focused on the drummer, on Larry, I wasn’t really aware of Nick when he was out in front of the audience, working his magic with the crowd. Obviously, I’ve seen that when I watched them play and it blew me away. Sometimes Nick would run over to where Larry’s playing the drums and go ‘Arghhhh!’, so I’d have to give him some space so he can jump up onto the riser and commune with the drums. That was fun. It’s a different experience because Nick has this sort of spiritual fervour with his audience, really special, like a furious euphoria or something, the way he takes the audience with him through the songs. I’ve just had an incredible experience, I had a wonderful time.
Congratulations on the book, it’s fantastic. You’ve done a lot of interviews for it - is there anything you haven’t yet discussed you’d like to talk through with me?
Well, you know what, what I’d really like to talk about, and that has been slightly irritating but I’ve managed to not let it affect my performance with the Bad Seeds over the last couple of months, about the book that I have tried to raise with various journalists but they haven’t written about it, is the specific kind of binding of the book.
OK, there you go, get it all out.
I’m being slightly facetious now about that, but equally, what I love about the book is it was designed and created by a guy called Duncan Whyte, who’s made lots of beautiful books, and he worked for the book designer called Gerhard Steidl, who’s really famous in the art book world, and who has his own workshop of book design and manufacture in Hanover. I wanted the book to be really beautiful and something that, if you didn’t know anything about Radiohead, you might like to pick it up. It was printed in Verona, printed and manufactured on the same printing presses that make the best photography art or art books in the world. The images are all scanned from the negatives by this brilliant guy called Alex Schneiderman in London, so it’s a book that’s very carefully, very beautifully produced to the same values as if you were to buy a book by William Eggleston or Henri Cartier-Bresson, fine art photographers, and I’m very proud of that.
The essays in it about Radiohead over the years are great too. How did you find writing them?
Well, I’m a frustrated journalist/writer. When we’re on tour with Radiohead, I’d always get very excited if a writer came out on the road with us, because I always thought that’s what I wanted to do. My editor proposed that I write a little bit and send it to him and he compared it to making a cake, he would just fold it into the mix as it went along. Then my partner is amazing. She’s very creative. She’s a filmmaker, and she set up a Google Calendar for me to try and write around 300 words a day. If I wrote 200 that’s great, if I didn’t write anything, that’s great, if I wrote 500 that’s great, so break it down like that. And I’ve done some reviewing in the past and written bits and pieces. The writing feels like a little commentary as you look at the pictures that gives it context and ground and direction. What I love about the first photograph in the book, it’s Thom playing a guitar at our studio in the garden and if you look, right at the back of the photograph, you can see there’s a flight case, so there’s a nice idea that from writing a song to recording it, there’s a hint of the touring it is in the background. I like those elements that exist in the photographs, that you can find little easter eggs. That’s the nice little synchronous idea in the first photograph in the book, Thom at home, basically, right at the start of a process that leads all the way to a stage in North America in the last photograph, that flight case that’s just right behind him waiting to be filled with guitars and amplifiers and then shipped across the world.
Was there anything that surprised you over the course of doing the book?
The big thing I realised is that the photographs only started happening when we had finished building our own recording studio, which was 2001-2002, so the photographs really start from there, or 2003 with that first photograph of Thom. I think that’s the connection between me starting the project, when we had our own creative base, because that was somewhere that we would go to every day that’s close to our homes to work as opposed to before when we’d go to studios in London or all around the world, when life was more peripatetic and more itinerant.
That is one thing that struck me, whether you’re on tour or rehearsing or recording, it all seems like homely as opposed to clinical environments.
Yeah, that’s true, although I like some of the pictures of the dressing rooms. There’s one from Woodlands Pavilion in Houston, which is an outdoor dressing room with my brother and Thom leaning against the sofa and there’s this massive plant pot with a palm tree in it or something that’s weirdly out of proportion, and makes the people standing next to it look like they’re The Borrowers. I like that kind of photography.
Is there a Radiohead moment you wished you’d photographed that you didn’t?
Oh, probably loads. There’s one photograph that’s not in the book that I wished I’d included but I couldn’t find it and then, of course, I found it, and it was on my phone. I thought it was a film photograph but in fact, it was just my on phone from 2012. It was a picture of me taking a picture of Thom taking a picture of the band, and everyone’s laughing and stuff.
Was anything vetoed by your bandmates?
No, not at all. Everyone’s very cool with all of it. I’ve got lots of photographs of portraits of the band as well, people sitting on chairs, formal photographs, formal portraits, but it didn’t feel like it was something that was going to work. And people looked less comfortable sitting on a chair having their photograph taken, like from a passport. There’s only one photograph that’s like that and that’s Dan who does the artwork, Stanley Donward, he’s used it for his press for years.
What’s your favourite photograph of Radiohead?
As I get older, the ones that I respect more are the ones taken by professional magazine, music photographers, people like Harry Borden, Kevin Westenberg, James Dimmock, basically anyone who photographs professionally for music publications, I have very great respect for. Obviously, Tom Sheehan is the master [Tom, who we love, released this also-excellent book of his Radiohead pictures earlier this year]. He’s such an amazing, lovely man and a brilliant photographer.
We also had a bunch of photographs taken of us by some fine art photographers for the Kid A campaign in 2000-2001 and, again, I’m sure that’s linked to when I started taking pictures. My friend Charlotte Cotton, who used to be in the band, is a really famous curator and critic of photography. She’s written some beautiful books about photography for Thames And Hudson and she recommended a bunch of photographers who photographed us. That was kind of conceptual stuff. I don’t know how successful it was in terms of making photographs for publications’ editorial, but in terms of exercises, of what a photograph could do and how to photograph bands and things, I think it was really fun and free and experimental.
Is there any correlation in your photos to what was going on with Radiohead at the time?
I suppose, in terms of group photographs, I don’t really have photographs of people together, apart from in the studio, maybe Thom and Jonny when they’re working together. The ones that I really love as well are the stage ones that were photographed in the middle of a show with all the noise and sound, of Thom or Ed or Phil doing their thing. I think that’s probably the ones that I’d do again as well if I could, if we ever played again, if I got on stage. I can’t do with Nick Cave because it’s not my tour, it’s not my band.
This photograph of Jonny’s suitcase is a disgrace.
I know. All I can say is it’s very sad that our mother is sadly no longer with us, but I’m relieved that she never got to see that photograph, it would have tipped her over the edge.
Who’s the tidiest packer in Radiohead?
That’s a very good question. Off the top of my head, I would like to be the tidiest but I think Phil’s very tidy and he’s very responsible and organized. I’m sure that Phil would be someone that we would all look up to for that. Anyone but me, no - anyone but my brother. Oh, my goodness me.
Is 2025 going to be the year that Radiohead come back?
As I’m sure you know, we did one or two days rehearsal in the summer, but that was really just to check in. It was a bit like taking the old car out for a run before putting it back into the garage.
Did it pass its MOT?
I didn’t get as far as the MOT, but it meant that the next time you took it out the garage, the wheels wouldn’t fall off. So I don’t know but it was really nice to see everyone, and it was all very amiable and cordial. I mean, I would love to, but I’m not driving, it’s something that we’d all have to decide and agree upon, but I would like nothing more than the opportunity to play to fans, especially because I’ve just been doing these book signings around the UK and Europe and so many people come up and say, ‘When are you gonna play again?’, and so many kids as well, so many younger people. These young girls in Paris, I signed the book for them, and then they said, ‘Oh, can you do a drawing and then we’ll scan it and we’ll get tattoos’. I was a bit taken aback and I said, ‘I can’t do that, because I can’t draw’, I’m terrible at drawing, so I managed to beat a tactful retreat. But such devotion is humbling. I really would love to play some shows at some point but I have to wait for everybody to be free to do them. Is that a good answer?
Good answer. How about this one: why is it so hard to officially listen to Pop Is Dead on streaming platforms? It’s been scrubbed from existence.
Is it really? I don’t know. Is it not on YouTube?
Only unofficially, dodgy bootlegs.
I don’t have any issues with it being heard or not heard. I think that if you’re a musician or any kind of artist, I think you have the right to present, represent, edit your work, whether it’s now or in the past. Have you seen the video for Pop Is Dead? We had a stylist from EMI, and we were all wearing random clothes, we’d each been given 300 quid. I was wearing a suit and it’s just all completely random. But I think it’s all fine, it’s all good. It’s amazing to think, though, historically, I think we put Pop Is Dead out as an EP and Creep had come out before then and was starting to become very successful. If we hadn’t had that success with Creep, we wouldn’t have made The Bends and we would have been dropped by EMI, isn’t that crazy?
It is. The Bends turns 30 next year.
I love that record, I love that.
Me too. Will you guys do anything to mark the occasion, will there be WhatsApps flying round about it or is that not very Radiohead?
I don’t know. I think I saw an email where someone from the management was asking about that but because I’ve been away, and Thom’s been in Japan and the Antipodes, and I don’t know what everyone else has been doing, so I don’t know. Maybe there will be a cake of the picture of the resus dummy from the cover, or maybe we could launch some kind of campaign for people to practice some resuscitation or something, coordinated with the National Health Service. So the anniversary of the record, I don’t know, but I love that record.
As I do The New Cue with Ted, we should talk about the awkward interview between you two in Meeting People Is Easy. What are your memories of that?
Oh yeah. It was in Berlin and it was fucking freezing. I think everyone was very drained, really grim. I had this wooly hat that I bought from APC and it was good for pulling over your head if you needed to put down the blinds on any kind of external intrusion. Ted, as you know, is such a lovely, charming person, amazing writer. The funny thing about that scene is I haven’t seen the film for 20 years but my friends saw it in America for Christmas, they thought it’d be a good film to watch at Christmas with the grandparents and the parents. They’ve all had their Christmas dinner and said, ‘I know, let’s watch Colin’s band!’ and they put it on, all the parents and grandparents with their little drinks, their grins get more fixed, this story of five English middle class boys getting a bit overstretched emotionally across this trip. I think they should have stuck to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Maybe I’ll stick it on with the family on Christmas Day.
Yeah, if you want your house guests to leave, then do that.
ND