Radiohead Quotes
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I'm happy to write 10 times too much music.
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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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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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I don't listen to much modern composition.
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As soon as you impose Western chords on an Indian scale, something great collapses.
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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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Sometimes the nicest thing to do with a guitar is just look at it.
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When I first started drumming, when I was 14 or 15, I started writing songs. I wrote for a couple of years, but when we started 'Radiohead' it became very apparent quite quickly that I just wanted to concentrate on the drumming.
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In 1994 we taped everything on video, in 1995 we bought Powerbooks. Our next step on the techno-superhighway is 'the polaroid'. If we go on like this, we'll be painting up our tourbus with charcoal next year.
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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'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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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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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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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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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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'So far, this is disco.' - Live performance of Everything in Its Right Place (YouTube video)
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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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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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It is difficult to make political art work.
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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 was the first time she'd seen us in four years. Before the doors opened, I went round looking at the V.I.P. section, and I saw that Madonna had the best table in the house and my mum's table was way in the back. I thought, 'I'm not having this,' so I swapped the signs on the tables around. So, Madonna was at the back, and my mum had the best table in the house, between U2 and R.E.M. And that's exactly how it should be.
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I hope I'm not sort of blowing our own trumpet, but I think Thom is probably the finest lyricist in the UK of his generation at the moment and hes always trying to progress, as we as musicians try to do ourselves. Theres this nice relationship between the lyrics and the music.
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Motion Picture Soundtrack on Kid A was another Coltrane inspiration.
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'There's nothing more boring than a rock'n'roll star, someone who has been on the road for 10 years, expecting attention wherever he goes, drinking himself stupid, who is obnoxious, incoherent, uncreative and has a massive ego. There's nothing more pointless.' - source