Radiohead Quotes
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- News Quotes
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I don't listen to much modern composition.
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I had a series of mini-breakdowns where the public persona - this thing, this face, this person who writes this music... I would walk past that person in the mirror or listen to that person playing guitar and I didn't know who they were.
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'It annoys me how pretty my voice is...that sounds incredibly immodest, but it annoys me how polite it can sound when perhaps what I'm singing is deeply acidic.' - source
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But I was in the Radiohead studio today and Phil was there drumming and Thom was there playing. We feel like we've only just stopped and already people are wanting us to carry on.
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There's nothing like sitting in a completely quiet room, and then the strings start up. It's like when you go to the cinema - the first two or three minutes of any film are amazing. Because the screen is so big. The scale. Directors can pretty much do anything for those first few minutes.
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Sometimes the nicest thing to do with a guitar is just look at it.
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Everyone who's serious about what they're doing must be in constant motion forward.
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I'm always happiest trying new instruments - and honestly enjoy playing, say, the glockenspiel with Radiohead as much as I do the guitar. I think regular touring has forced me to play the guitar more than anything else, which is why I'm probably most confident playing that. And whist I'd be lost if I couldn't play it too, I dislike the totemic worship of the thing... magazines, collectors, and so on. I enjoy struggling with instruments I can't really play.
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I remember when I was in my late teens just getting rid of lots of records, realizing I only ever listened to them when I was reading, or watching TV, or doing something else.
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When it comes to orchestral music, whenever I see a concert with orchestra and strings, and I arrive and there are speakers up, my heart always sinks a little bit, and I think, 'It's going to be down to some sound guy's ideas.' Contact microphones on the violins. I'm a purist, I suppose.
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The thing about rock is that people are not just interested in bands because of where they want to go. It's where they want to escape from that matters.
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I think artists can influence only through making music that challenges people, excites them and flips them out. Music that repeats what you know in ever-decreasing derivation, that's unchallenging and unstimulating, deadens our minds, our imagination and our ability to see beyond the hell we find ourselves in.
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'It's basically about having to make a decision whether to do nothing or try to engage with it in some way, knowing that it's flawed. It's convenient to project that back on to someone personally and say they're a hypocrite. It's a lot easier to do that than actually do anything else. And yeah, that stresses me out, because I am a hypocrite. As we all are.'
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I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.
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I've seen 13, 14-year-olds opening CDs as though they're records from the 1920s, going 'Look at this - there's a little book!'... That makes me think the format has probably had its day.
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Q: Radiohead fans tend to be extremely devoted to the band - they seem to connect with your music and ideals. What do you see as the major aspects of your music which people connect with so well?
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I was just very conscious that I could either bore people by having the music be similar for too long, or I could just wear them out and bore them in a different way by having it changing too much every minute or two minutes. So, there was that kind of balance to get right.
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It would be really nice to be able to put out releases that wouldn't be conditional upon an album format, and just put out music in different ways.
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'So far, this is disco.' - Live performance of Everything in Its Right Place (YouTube video)
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It's a full on job just looking for human social responsibility.
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It is difficult to make political art work.
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When I saw the Penderecki concert in London, in '92 or '93, I thought there were speakers in the room. It was just strings. But I could hear these kind of buzzings and rumblings, and I was like, 'Where is this all coming from?' And that was just better, to my ears. Odder, stranger, more magical.
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If you're working on a computer and you're editing bass, it looks like a warm curvy, sort of feminine object.
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Listening back to your speaking voice for the first time, unless you're James Earl Jones, it's a quite distressing process for most people.
