When people say you’re doing something radical in rock or dance music, I’m not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It’s like trying to do something innovative in tap-dancing.
I think It’s a bit of a disappointment that a lot of people’s Golden Age of music is still the ’60s.
I suppose subconsciously I was thinking in terms of having the scale of it matching the scale of the images. Hence the sort of string quartet, jazz band and electronic stuff.
Jamaican reggae is the style of music I always reach for when ranting to friends about how you could listen to one style of music exclusively for the rest of your life – and it would all be great and varied and worth hearing.
Nothing’s more exciting than a day in a studio with a string section – or more ruinously expensive. So it’s good to feed that habit away from the band, especially if it means more experience for the next Radiohead string day.
Maybe I’m used to religious music being gentler in the classical world.
The strangest part of Indian music is its lack of chords: There’s no such thing as major or minor, and it’s unusual to hear more than two different pitches at the same time.
As soon as you impose Western chords on an Indian scale, something great collapses.
I worry about being a fogy and just writing for orchestras. Like, really, I should be doing more electronic stuff, I feel. Laptops as part of the orchestra, and installation sound, and speakers.
I can remember soundtracks that you just can’t separate from the film – It’s just so intertwined, so important. Like the Hitchcock ones where they kind of inform each other and become this larger thing as a result.
Obviously there will be a backlash. If you believe the hype you have to believe a backlash too. Any criticism we get, is always stuff we’ve already criticized ourselves.
Everything I know about pop culture I know from ‘The Simpsons,’ and they say the Grammys aren’t very good.
But over a period of time It’s the melodic things that are in my head all day.
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.
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.
Right now my mind is on the people who stole our instruments, and, specifically, the person with my guitar, which will no doubt end its days having Green Day songs worked out on it. A better fate was deserved – and while the reverence given to guitars annoys me, I shall miss it.
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.
I suppose all of us – we have the old Protestant work ethic of feeling guilty when you’re not working, and getting a buzz from feeling like you’re really busy. That’s the reason to sort of carry on.
I’m happy to write 10 times too much music.
It’s like that scene from The Player when they talk about merging Star Wars and Kramer vs. Kramer, or whatever. You could do that with music and it would just be awful.
It feels like Radiohead are famous, but that no one knows who we are. Which is brilliant, really.