Colin Greenwood: Oh hi, is this Martin? 

Yes. 

Colin Greenwood: Hi, this is Colin from Radiohead. 

Hi. How are you? 

Colin Greenwood: I'm good, thanks. How are you? 

I'm doing good. Here, just give me a second to set up my tape recorder. Alright, off we go. Great, thanks for the call. I guess one of the things I wanted to talk about first was, um, uh, Thomas Pynchon, and whose idea in the band it was to use the letters W-A-S-T-E for the merchandise - 

Colin Greenwood: Oh, I don't know. It was some act of collective paranoia, probably. 

Okay. Are you a Pynchon fan? 

Colin Greenwood: I've read some of his work and I've enjoyed it, I've enjoyed it, yeah. 

Okay. Is that something - 'Cause I'm quite, sort of literary-minded I guess, myself, so that's one of the things that interests me about speaking to you, specifically, is that you've mentioned that someone like John Cheever's "Bullet Park" is an important book - 

Colin Greenwood: Oh yeah, it's a great book. Yeah. 

And Delmore Scharwz, too. When I read that, I was, like, holy cow. 

Colin Greenwood: Have you read - forgive my ignorance but where is the Georgia Straight? 

It's in Vancouver, Canada. 

Colin Greenwood: I know it's in Canada, but I didn't know where, I'm sorry. 

That's okay. 

Colin Greenwood: I've just been reading short stories by Alistair Macleod. If you're down with Schwarz, he really reminded me of that combination of, sort of, placing you in the middle of the present now together with, like, with sort of the history of the family and its relationships way back through the past. And it really reminded me of my favorite Delmore Schwarz story. But that's great. I mean I love that Alistair Macleod. I'm reading that at the moment, after reading "No Great Mischief" last year and now "The Last Salt Gift of Blood." I think you'd like him. He's one of the most amazing writers. 

Yeah, we're pretty proud of him here, I guess. Anyone else that you've been reading lately that's caught your interest? 

Colin Greenwood: It's mostly history stuff. Like, historical books, 20th century Europe, really. Like, um, there's a really good one on Berlin by Alexandra Ritchie, who's actually Canadian as well, I think. 

There you go! 

Colin Greenwood: Her grandfather, I think, or great-grandfather or one of her relatives was one of the German generals in the second world war and she like an émigré family to Canada, I guess, in the '20s or '30s. She's just written this amazing book about the history of Berlin from the 1780s, I think, through towards present day, or whatever, just after the Cold War ended. Just an amazing book. And then there's "Dark Valley" by Piers Brendon which is a really good book about the '30s and a theory about America's retreat into isolationism and the economic meltdown that kicked off the general global crisis in the '30s. It's definitely something that's got a lot of relevance today with, like, Bush's hair-brained lack of foreign policy now and a general economic decline and spelunking off into abstracted isolationism. 

(laughter) Uh, I know that the band might not be overtly political - 

Colin Greenwood: Sorry? 

The band might not be overtly political? 

Colin Greenwood: No. 

But at the same time, you do have a certain amount of consciousness about these issues. And, um, let's say, even your involvement with another Canadian writer, um, Naomi Klein with that whole "No Logo" thing - 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. 

And with Thom's involvement in a lot of different issues. 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. 

Uh, would that be something that you think would maybe start to come out lyrically in the band, and is that a direction that you'd be interested in taking it? 

Colin Greenwood: Um, I don't know. I think one of the good things, one of the cool things about being in a band is it gives opportunity to, sort of, talk about what you're into on a wider scale than just down the pub with your friends. But you have to be careful that it doesn't become an egotistical rant. That'll really turn people off. 

Fair enough. 

Colin Greenwood: It's exciting to explore new things but you don't want to, you know, you don't want to forget the songs and stuff. Even the last two records, people felt that Thom's concerns were inarticulate for various reasons, whether they felt they didn't have a voice or they, uh, just whether it was just himself or other people he was writing about in the songs. There's feelings of powerlessness and that kind of stuff and those ideas are of interest, things like Naomi Klein's "No Logo" and concepts of intrusion by corporations into personal space and things like that. 

OK. Another thing that really interested me about you was that, um, uh, when you guys were on Lamacq last year at some point, that one of the tracks that you decided to spin was a Roots Manuva track - 

Colin Greenwood: Oh, that's wicked, isn't it? They've got a new single out, as well. I haven't heard it yet. 

Are you down with, like, the U.K. hip-hop scene? 

Colin Greenwood: Uh, not really. I want to go and check out this thing called the [unintelligible] Crew, which is a like a 22-piece jazz-London-garage collective that's supposed to be pretty exciting. But I don't know, I'm not really up on that but that Roots Manuva thing was wicked-sounding, good grooves and good sounds as well. 

Definitely, because I thought, on the new album, on "Amnesiac", track 3, to me, has almost an industrial - 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah, "Push/Pulk Revolving Doors." 

Hip-hop feel to it. Do you feel that in that track, a little bit of a hip-hop influence, almost, or. 

Colin Greenwood: You know, it's stuff that we all listen to and that we're into. It was a wide range of tastes. What's cool about that track is it's a sequence that Thom did on the drum machine, basically, together with sounds that we were working on when we were doing "OK Computer", like piano and Rhodes put together with a really cool treated vocal. It's a good combination of things there from several years of work. That song is my favorite track, I think. 

Cool. I know that Gainsbourg and the "Melody Nelson" album was a big influence - 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. 

Have you heard the new re-mix album that they've done - 

Colin Greenwood: No. 

They've got people like Howie B. and The Orb doing re-mixes of the "Melody Nelson" album. It's quite nice. But that's another thing that really interests me is the fact that the reference points for these two albums are people like, you know, Alice Coltraine, and Mingus, and Miles Davis and Gainsbourg, which is not something we're used to talking about with, you know, a 'proper rock 'n' roll band.' 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. 

To my mind, you guys are offering a bit of an education, that if people like these two albums, they'll go back to those originals, do you know what I mean? 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah, Art Blakey's just insane. If you can get an Art Blakey album and put it on, and you can hear, every four seconds there'll be a break that will have informed a whole vein of contemporary hip-hop. He's just insane with his drum breaks and old-school hip-hop drum beats within the concept of a drum kit and percussion. All of those people we talk about, we cite them as producing an inspirational collection of sound and arrangement ideas, rather than any kind of, lying to ourselves in terms of our technical virtuosity, 'cause there's obviously no way that we could ever be like any of those people, but the way that those people select, edit and present their music is what inspires us. 

That's something that a friend of mine mentioned when we were talking about the albums, it's like while other bands are maybe - they're happy to sort of ape let's say the Beatles or the Pistols or something, that you guys, at least, are aping more masterful musicians, do you know what I mean? 

Colin Greenwood: Well, I read this cool thing. It was a strange interview and a contentious comment by Pete Townshend in the paper last week saying that as far as he was concerned, all, sort of, um, guitar pop-rock, whatever you want to call it, is a dry well, because all of the references and language and resources from the art school backgrounds had been all used up by the mid- to late-'60s by people like the Animals, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who. And the well has run dry over the past 30 years. So to be looking for resources from those sources when they had already been mined and plumbed and drawn up by the early '70s is kind of a fruitless quest. It's quite an interesting comment. 

Fair enough. Could you talk a little bit about - I know that Thom sort of brought in basically the Warp back catalogue in to the environment - 

Colin Greenwood: He didn't really bring the Warp back catalogue in. It would be a mistake to sort of get fixed on a specific label when you could talk about another three or four with equal validity but I mean I guess that, on Warp, he was really into like Autechre and Aphex and Squarepusher and that. 

Okay. Can you talk about - Could you draw a link between those sorts of artists and people like Davis and Mingus? Is there any sort of commonality? 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah, I guess the connection is the presentation of sounds in a way that you've never heard them before and I think that's the sort of common link between all of those people. It's what I was talking about earlier, which is what you seek for your inspiration is that you want to hear something you haven't heard before. The reason why Thom is so into Autechre is that Autechre presents him with things he's never heard before which is obviously very important if you're working in music and want to do different things. And you could say the same thing for Blakey or Mingus or anyone like that. 

Um, uh, it seems to be, in terms of the way music breaks down now, though, it seems to very, kind of, everyone in their own corners and breaking down by genre, so band A does music X, and band B does music Y - 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah, well, what generally happens is that you get - sorry, I've interrupted your question. 

No, go ahead, go ahead. 

Colin Greenwood: -- is that you work at something and yoou may have success and recognition in that field and then you're presented with the opportunity to do an even more focused version of what you've become recognized and successful for and to capitalize on and monopolize that area of music. But it gets ever-diminishing returns, really. I mean one of the cool things for me about these European festivals in Germany and Holland over the past few days is meeting people from different kinds of music. Like Outkast and Limp Bizkit stay to watch our shows and stuff which is really flattering. With Outkast, we really like their music and we enjoy their wide musical ambition and sweep and the fact that people who we respect should like us as well - as part of another world and culture - is really exciting, you know? 

Cool. Does the fact that - but at the same time, the fact that you sort of try and break those things, those restrictions down, and that it's hard to even pin you down as a proper rock 'n' roll band now, is also something that it's very easy for critics to pounce on and to say that you're simply being self-indulgent or something like that. Probably by the tone of my voice you could tell that I don't necessarily agree with that assessment. 

Colin Greenwood: I think it's - there has to be some kind of focus. Where that is for us is when we play live, really, and I think when people come and see and concerts, that helps a lot to see how everything fits together and make sense of it, really. It's really important for us and I don't think we'd really work as a band if we didn't have that live performance. That interaction with the audience is like the ultimate form of accountability and that's good. One of the reasons we did the music on these two records in this way was to try and make things a bit more fluid and less verse-chorus-verse and so to try and keep a level of interest for us when we play it so that it's always more authentic and less repetitive and rote when we perform in front of an audience. 

OK. Um, is it fair to say that more of the tracks on Amnesiac are kind of based on a studio concept of, kind of, the band in a room together as opposed to each of you off on your own working on a piece of equipment? 

Colin Greenwood: I don't know. Um, uh, it's kind of a mixture again like the last record, really. There's live things on it. But our last, most live record was OK Computer where this record and Kid A has elements of live and studio but it was more studio-based as a record. 

Uh-huh. 

Colin Greenwood: I mean, like "Dollars and Cents" is a live jam, but then that's a live jam that's been cut up. And "You and Whose Army" was like basically was a whole live performance. But each song is different, like "Packt like Sardines." is straight out of Thom's laptop but we're playing it live, with like this distorted bass thing which is really exciting because a reverse archeology is being practiced upon the music, which is really cool. [Laughter] 

I'd read recently that what you guys have been working on in the studio lately has been maybe a bit more of a band-based - 

Colin Greenwood: Uh, no, again it's whatever we're into at the time. It's really nice to be in a situation where something is that digital and to convert it to analog in a performance. There's no reason why you couldn't try to do it the other way around. It's like trying to become double-jointed, really. [laughter] 

[laughter] Um, I'd read a quote with Ed that now when he picks up his guitar, whereas before he kind of shied away from it 'cause he'd grown tired of it, but that now when he picks it up, there's a certain vitality to it. Are - 

Colin Greenwood: I think he really enjoyed playing with Neil Finn and Johnny Marr and Eddie Vedder and Sebastian - I always forget his surname, from Soul Coughing - Delgado or something, I can't remembeer it, when he played in New Zealand with Phil about a month ago. So I think that gave him a lot of confidence and freshness. 

Is that something you're finding, too? 

Colin Greenwood: I don't know, really. I mean, I guess. I've just been rehearsing for this TV special on Saturday and playing along with one of the new songs which we have Humphrey Lyttleton and his jazz band playing, and we'll be playing along with them. So it's exciting to play with a group of musicians where the band member is like 80 years old and was signed to Parlophone in like '39, you know what I mean? That's pretty fucking cool. 

That'll get you excited, sure. 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. 

I wanted to talk a little bit about Nigel Godrich. 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. 

And that he's, sort of, a very hands-on producer - 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. 

Fixing the mikes himself and basically asserting himself as another member of the band. Is there - can you pin down any, sort of, aesthetic that Nigel brings sound-wise to the band? 

Colin Greenwood: I think, it's like, um, he's great for us because he's good at getting a group of sounds together and presenting them in a good way and it's good to work with someone who's like your own age as well, you know. It's, um, what does Nigel bring to it? And he's quite good with momentum, as well, tries to keep things moving fast. And he's a really good friend of mine as well, and we hang out. Like, he came on tour with us in Europe [laughter] 

[laugther] Yeah. 

Colin Greenwood: and played tambourine on one song every night and he had the piss taken out of him by our crew, making sure his fingers weren't too sore. It meant we could play the song because we really needed the tambourine on it, it's a song called "In Limbo." But he's just great and he's a lovely man and, you know, he's a friend so you just want the best for your friends. And he has an overall sense of fair play which he brings to Radiohead as well which is a really important quality when you're dealing with a group of five people who have their own power-based relationships and political relationships built up over working together for 15 years. 

Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure he can play a bit of a mediator-type role, too. 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah, exactly. You know, mediator and momentum kick-starter. 

Cool. Uh, is he someone that you would plan to work with, sort of, for the duration in a kind of Beatles-George Martin type-way. It might be a bit of a hard question to be asking you. 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. I think so. I think his role as producer, we talk about it a lot, 'cause I think the whole definition of what it means to be a producer is becoming increasingly curious and questionable in terms of how bands record and whether bands exist and technology's so cheap now and you can record things on your computer and all of that kind of stuff. It just comes down to the personal relationships you have with the person who's recording your music. That's what it comes down, really. And getting on with people. It's like being in a band. We definitely don't have any plans to stop working with him, if he wants to still work with us. It's really exciting 'cause it's nice to have re-mixes done by other people. So that whole area is open to us as well as a continued relationship with the excellent Nigel Godrich. 

If there's any Autechre re-mixes of any Radiohead tracks, I'd be the first in line. [laughter] 

Colin Greenwood: [laughter] Re-mixes is a whole different thing, really. We've gone off the radar now, really. There's this [Kid] 606 re-mix album that's got some pretty cool things on it. But you've just got to judge everything on its merits. 

A question with regards to where you go from here. A lot had been written how, after OK Computer, that the band felt that maybe you were maybe in a bit of a corner, but now that you've done something very interesting - it's not avant-garde, but it points towards that direction, let's say - 

Colin Greenwood: Uh-huh. 

Uh, that if you felt cornered a bit after OK Computer, how do feel about things now? Do you have more confidence with more toys and more tools at your disposal? Do you know where this ship is headed? 

Colin Greenwood: Uh. I think we just wanted to, uh, not be pulled down by expectations of a certain career path. Because music in a lot of ways is comparable to working in a bank or conventional business, rather, in that you start off and you gain some kind of recognition for a specific type of behaviour and you are rewarded for your specialized field. And then you focus on that and reap the benefits of it after having early success and recognition. It's just appallingly stifling, really. It's great that people liked what we were doing when we started but to have to feel obliged to repeat variations of that for the next 15 years afterwards would take away the joy that inspired us to do things like OK Computer and the Bends in the first place. It's like when Thom was saying, when we were touring around Pablo Honey and Creep, it was like, we expected to get back in the studio six months and it was like two-and-a-half years later, it's like being stuck in a room with one picture that you have to look at for two-and-a-half years and you can't do anything, you haven't got any materials to do anything else. You know, you want to try and be a moving target, and concentrate on quality, really. Does that make sense? 

Yeah, it does. Your choice of the term "moving target" is kind of interesting because you know you're so highly scrutinized. 

Colin Greenwood: Well, it was really cool. I was getting my hair cut the other day and I was reading this terrible magazine, this Sky magazine or something, and it was like [affects ad-copy writer voice] "we look at the upcoming bands. The twenty that might be the next Coldplay!" And I thought that was brilliant 'cause everyone's been compared to us over the past three years and it's been really boring and it's really nice to see that happening. No one's being compared to us anymore because of our collective acts of commercial suicide. [laugther] 

[laughter] It's like 'try and follow this.' 

Colin Greenwood: I don't know, man. I'm just happy not to have anyone being compared to us. 

Yeah. Another thing I wanted to talk about is the fact that your original six-album deal is, obviously with the next album, going to be over. And you, in particular, have expressed an interest in trying to reach the fans in a more direct way, and the fact is that you're big enough now that maybe you could do that. Is that too much of a business-type question to be asking? 

Colin Greenwood: To do what? I'm sorry. 

To reach the fans more directly and maybe use more independent means of distribution, perhaps via the internet. 

Colin Greenwood: I don't know. I mean, personally, I'm really disappointed with the lack of bandwith in this country and it's proved very difficult to build these castles that are all connected by country lanes. So, it's sort of a bit annoying, really. There's this big article in the paper today by the former head of technology at BT - and they've got a shocking record anyway - but basically there's too much copper and not enough fibre. But what is still cool is the basic, community-based intranet outside of the corporate structure, whether you talk about Gnutella or Napster or stuff like that. So that's cool. It's just one of the things to get across to people. 

But would you be looking at maybe breaking out the deal? 

Colin Greenwood: Well, we're sort of reaching the end of over the next year, quite soon. So, um, it's going to be a balancing act between what we want to do as a group and as individuals and also the working relationship we have with the record company. One of the lucky things we've had is that we've continued to work with the same people at EMI. You know, there are people at EMI now who have worked with us since 1991, who obviously understand us very well, and it would be crazy to not consider that part of the equation. But it will just come down to what we want to as five people, first. 

Um, just one last question and I'll let you go. Thanks very much for your time. 

Colin Greenwood: Sure, man. 

Um, the Beta Band is opening for you guys - 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah. 

And I'm wondering what your impressions are of that band, because I love their stuff, too. 

Colin Greenwood: Cool. 

Have you heard their new material? 'Cause I think they have an album coming out at some point. 

Colin Greenwood: I've heard it but I haven't really had the chance to listen to it all the way through. But apparently the live concerts are really good so we're looking forward to seeing them live. 

Great. 

Colin Greenwood: Cool. 

Uh, those rambling narratives and those ten-minute jam-session-type tracks they have, is that an influence maybe in the future for you guys? And the way that they bring styles together, too, in terms of electronic and acoustic elements. 

Colin Greenwood: I think so, yeah. It's just a refreshing, different-sounding thing, really. That they happen to be on the same label as us is cool, too. We're just really happy that they'd like to come and play and some concerts with us. I really liked those first three EPs, I mean that was a favorite thing that they ever did. So, you know, it's cool, man. 

Cool. Uh, can I just ask you where you are right now? 

Colin Greenwood: Yeah, I'm in the office, in Oxford at the label. 

Alright, great. Thanks very much for your time, then. 

Colin Greenwood: Thank you for your time. Have a wonderful day. 

Thanks. You too. Alright, uh, bye. 

Colin Greenwood: Bye.