Radiohead have had a spy in their ranks for years. As his excellent new book How to Disappear: A Portrait of Radiohead reveals, bassist Colin Greenwood has been taking snapshots of his bandmates since the early 2000s. In the studio, in the dressing rooms and even somehow on stage in the middle of their concerts.
In the new episode of “Rolling Stone Music Now” Greenwood – who just finished a tour as bassist with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – talks about his book, looks back on the highlights of his years in the band and more. He also makes it clear that he would like to tour again with Radiohead, who have not performed publicly since 2018. But he is not sure if and when that will happen.
A collective decision
At book signings, young fans always ask: “When are we playing again?” Whether we will play again. Whatever. I just think it’s a really good reason to play for people who love your music. It sounds really obvious. But Nick Cave talks a lot about serving your audience, your fans and people who love what you do.” But will it happen? “I mean, it’s a collective decision. I can’t speak for other people because that wouldn’t be fair to them. So, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
We walked through “The Bends.” “Kid A” stuff
Greenwood offers the most detailed account yet of Radiohead’s private reunion earlier this year. “Basically it was just a matter of talking to each other again because we hadn’t done that in so long,” he says. “I think it was also because Thom and Jonny might have something [mit Smile] wanted to do. It was something we could all do because we were all there at the time. It was just nice to just go through things again. We walked through “The Bends.” “Kid A” stuff. We played through a lot. Played for a day, maybe two. We had two more days booked, and then we decided to let it go, not because it was bad, but because it was like, well, my brother said we could do this for another week or so, and we could go on tour if we wanted. Not that we plan to do that. But it would be fine. So, yeah, so we thought, well, instead of just starting over again, we just thought, well, this is good. We know we can do it. That is fun. We like being together. So let’s go out on a high.”
Greenwood’s mother is probably Radiohead’s harshest critic. “She always liked to call our music ‘bompity-bomp music,’” he says. “And then when we started doing more electronic stuff, she always called it ‘Blippity-Blop.’ That’s actually a pretty accurate description of Radiohead’s creative arc. From Bompity-Bomp to Blippity-Blop. But she somehow missed the nuances and fusion of traditional music with electronic sounds. I wonder what she would call it, Bompity Blop or something. She was very supportive of me in her own way. She gave me the money for my first guitar. God bless her.”
“Kid A” instead of “OK Computer”
If forced, he would choose “Kid A” over “OK Computer.” “I really like Kid A,” he says, “and at this time of year it speaks to me as a kind of winter record for some reason. Maybe it’s the artwork.”
He says “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” came about as spontaneously as “Get Back” in the Beatles documentary. “It kind of comes in one morning,” he says, “and then there’s like a backbeat and then a few chords, and it all comes together in a really beautiful way.”
He is fascinated by the idea that Bob Dylan recently saw him play with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in Paris. At least if you believe Dylan’s tweet. “Yeah, that’s amazing,” he says. “He saw me make a mistake in a song. That’s all I can think of. But I have to stop thinking about it because it sounds really silly and obsessive. But yeah, think about it. Isn’t it incredible that Bob Dylan was a show I played at? Perhaps.”