THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.128 - ED O'BRIEN
Episode Date: July 19, 2020Adam talks with guitarist Ed O'Brien about embarrassing Radiohead videos, stolen mini discs, getting cosmic, the romance of space, whether Ed really is the 59th greatest guitarist of all time and his ...new solo project EOB.This conversation was recorded in London in early March 2020.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Matt Lamont for additional editing and Dan Hawkins for bass playing on the Star Trek jingle (Star Trek theme composed by Alexander Courage)RELATED LINKSADAM BUXTON'S RAMBLE BOOK (AUDIO BOOK AT AUDIBLE) (2020)PRE-ORDER SIGNED HARDBACK COPIES OF RAMBLE BOOK AT WATERSTONES (2020)EOB (ED'S SOLO PROJECT) - BRASIL (2020 MUSIC VIDEO ON YOUTUBE)EOB - SHANGRI-LA (2020 MUSIC VIDEO ON YOUTUBE)RADIOHEAD - HACKED OK COMPUTER MINIDISCS (2019 YOUTUBE PLAYLIST)ED TEACHES BEGINNER GUITARISTS HOW TO PLAY CREEP (2020, YOUTUBE)MEETING PEOPLE IS EASY (1998 RADIOHEAD DOC ON YOUTUBE)RADIOHEAD - STOP WHISPERING (1993 MUSIC VIDEO ON DAILY MOTION)REVIEW OF THE GUITAR ED DESIGNED - THE EOB FENDER SUSTAINER STRATOCASTER (MUSICRADAR, 2017)100 GREATEST GUITARISTS by DAVID FRICKE (ROLLING STONE, 2010)DAN HAWKINS (ON LINE BASS PLAYER)HORNE SECTION FEATURING ROBBIE WILLIAMS - ANGELS 2020 (FACEBOOK) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin
Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening
I took my microphone and found some human folk
Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke
My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man
I want you to enjoy this.
That's the plan.
Rosie is squatting on the grass and doing a poo.
Now she has concluded and she's joining me and you.
She is looking frisky, pleased to be outside at last. It's been quite
grey and rainy, but now that's all in the past. Wow. What a song. It just came to me
and just flowed right out of me. It was like I was channeling it. An extraordinary musical moment to kick off a podcast which features a conversation with an extraordinary musical man.
Look, I'm getting ahead of myself. I apologise.
Hey! How you doing, podcats?
Adam Buxton here.
Hope you're doing well. It's a blustery day out here in the country fields of Norfolk, UK, in mid-July 2020.
And I'm going to lay some facts on your ass about my guest today for podcast number 128,
guitarist Ed O'Brien, who, I'm glad to say, is a friend of mine.
I've known him for, well, properly I've
known him for about 15 years now. Here's some Ed facts for you. Ed, currently aged 52, met his
Radiohead bandmates in the mid-1980s while attending Abingdon School in Oxford, though
they didn't settle on the name that made them famous until they were signed in
1991. Though their first album, Pablo Honey, featured the outsider anthem Creep, it didn't
prove to be an indication of where the band was headed musically. I remember being quite sniffy
about Radiohead in those days until Louis Theroux made me a tape compilation in 1996 i still have it i
dug it out this morning and it's called bucky bollocks and on one side it's a compilation of
artists like the rentals the adults souls of mischief roy ayers grave digaz marvin gay and Adults, Souls of Mischief, Roy Ayres, Gravedigaz, Marvin Gaye, and Shuby Taylor.
First time I heard Shuby Taylor was on that compilation.
And on the other side was The Hole of the Bends by Radiohead, which had come out the previous year and totally passed me by.
Side one is labelled The Bends, and side two is labelled The Schmends.
I like The Schmends, but I loved The Bends, and side two is labelled The Schmends. I liked The Schmends, but I loved The Bends.
I was on board from then on.
The Bends was engineered, and partly produced, I think, by Nigel Godrich,
who would produce 1997's album OK Computer,
and thereafter help propel the band to the outer reaches of experimental
yet accessible alternative rock for years to come. So far, band members Tom York, Phil Selway,
and Johnny Greenwood have all made solo albums. Ed is the latest member of the band to do so,
and he as a solo entity goes by the initials E.O.B. His debut album, Earth, was released this year, 2020, in April.
My conversation with Ed was recorded in a nice studio
at Universal Music's headquarters in London's King's Cross,
back in early March of this year,
a couple of days before the World Health Organisation
declared the COVID-19 outbreak
a pandemic. Ah, that was the good old days when the concepts of social distancing, flattening the curve
and of course lockdown were still sexy, fun and exciting. Just saying the opposite of what I mean
there. Nevertheless, Ed and I managed to avoid the subject of the C word
and rambled on instead about embarrassing Radiohead videos,
stolen mini-discs,
and whether the band that made OK Computer
really were as intense and anxious
as the 1998 documentary Meeting People Is Easy,
directed by Grant Gee, suggested. We also talked about
Getting Cosmic, the Romance of Space, whether Ed really is the 59th greatest guitarist of all time,
and why he felt compelled to step out from the shade of Radiohead's mighty creative umbrella.
This is absolutely great music journalism I'm doing here. But we began by slightly rehashing and updating a bit of the conversation I had with Ed about 10 years ago,
which was the last time I interviewed him.
Back at the end for Lynx and Waffle.
But right now with Ed O'Brien. Here we go. Talking House.
We talked before, 10 years ago, when you came on and did the show I was doing for Six Music.
Yeah.
Big mixtape.
I love that.
And you laughed at some of the early names of Radiohead.
That's right.
Whirlygig.
Shindig.
Shindig.
I used to have a bunch of leprechauns.
That's right.
Dancing around a four foot stone hedge monument.
Yeah, I know.
When you mentioned that, I still laugh at it.
Yeah, shindig with waistcoats and horn players.
I was actually telling somebody about this yesterday, saying that.
And it was at the same time that we had a country rock phase.
Like Rodeo Head.
Very good.
Well, there is a band. There is a band called Rodeo Head, right?
Yeah.
Who do very good country covers of Radiohead songs.
Yeah.
So 10 years ago, though, what did we talk about?
We talked about coming back off tour and making that adjustment
from being pampered and having a very strict and easy to follow routine
to coming home where all bets are off
and the responsibility is once again yours
to actually conduct yourself in a mature and responsible way.
Yeah.
And that is, I mean, I was marveling at your ability to do that.
Or maybe not ability, but it was also at a time, you remember 10 years ago when all our children were little.
Yeah.
And it was that thing that you get back off tour.
And rightly, you know, my wife.
My wife.
I'm trying to phase that out i love that you can't phase that
i love it but i didn't want to put on that little voice
i love it so my wife susan was at the end of her tether she'd been holding the fort down
you can imagine your way for in fact the first time when my youngest una was born six months later i was off touring america for six
weeks and you get back off tour and of course her instinct is to pass over the kids and say right
you get up and of course you're not prepared and it's those moments isn't it so it's five days
and you're you know like you said you've been pampered everything's given to you and your life
is sorted out and then
you pick up the pieces and i actually look back on those time because it was you know i'm of course
it wasn't tough but it was challenging at times i think you're allowed to say that everything is
relative right we we take it as read that you and i yeah are the beneficiaries of privilege in all
sorts of ways yeah but there are certain things that are immutable truths.
And one of them is house politics, domestic politics.
It's tough whichever way you say it.
I bet Jeff Bezos has his days of difficult domestic politics that people could sympathize with.
Yeah, no, I think you're right there.
I'm sometimes, you know, because of the feeling like you've, you know, i've won the lottery ticket i want you know that you're reluctant to say it but yeah
it was tough but actually i look back on those times and i really value them because i think
like those moments of rawness as a father and as a family it's not just as a father as a in those
moments when the shit's hitting the
fan you don't know what you're doing and you just hold on yeah the you know the whole thing and
you're feeling like you're the worst dad in the world all of that stuff and it is sometimes it's
literally you just have to hold on and i look back at those times with great affection real
affection and that kind of particularly because now the kids are teenagers,
same with you, right?
That whole time, that lack of sleep, all of that, that uncertainty,
there's a kind of magic to it, right?
I guess I look back at those times with mixed feelings
because I did go through so much angst about being a not very good dad yeah not very good husband
not very just not very good did you feel quite young when you look back on it do you think you
were a kid do you look back on it and go that was when I look back on it yeah I can't believe you
know I was in my late 20s when when we had our first child and I just think well i was a boy yeah i know it's funny it's it's so it's so weird
when you know you're legally an adult at 18 yeah i look at my no disrespect to my soon-to-be 18
year old son but he is not an adult and he would be the first person to admit it yeah he is in some
ways like he's wonderfully mature and
thoughtful and so in in many of the important ways yeah he's very grown up but in all sorts
of other ways like come on mate you're not going to be anywhere close for another 10 years well
it's funny isn't it because you always think i think like the previous decade i think oh
you know god i was still a kid when i was in my early 40s, almost. It feels like a different person. I wonder whether, you know, when I get my 60s, I'll go,
the 50s, I was really, you know,
I wonder whether it's just that accumulation of knowledge
and experience and hopefully wisdom.
Yeah, I think it must be.
And then, yeah, you just sort of go,
I've done it! And then you die.
I've reached maturity!
And then that's it.
Yeah, you just implode.
Yeah.
And ten years ago, band-wise, you'd just done In Rainbows.
In Rainbows came out in 2007.
So we were in the throes of doing King of Limbs.
Doubling up on drummers.
Yeah, I mean, Clive didn't join us
he only joined us on tour but there was lots of
you know sonic chicanery and wizardry
going on with the drums
and that album was a process of
we'd done in Rainbows
and that had been such a kind of
tonic for us
well at least the release of it was
there was sort of like we had fire
in our bellies again and I think that we really wanted to go in and make another record but the release of it was. There was sort of like we had fire in our bellies again.
And I think that we really wanted to go in and make another record.
But the truth of it was we were kind of bored with our instruments.
And that was what The King of Limbs was about,
kind of putting down the traditional instruments
and just trying to jam and make music in a different way,
looping stuff and Serato software,
which is the stuff you use with DJjs use and using all sorts of stuff and
that was fun you know yeah because i can't remember if it was you or maybe johnny or maybe i read it
in an interview the consensus seemed to be amongst the band that pretty much every record you came
close to breaking up one way or another yeah just because the way you worked was so intensive like
when those mini discs came out last year,
when they were bootlegged, stolen, whatever happened.
Yeah.
These are the mini-discs, 16 hours worth thereabouts of OK Computer demos.
They were Tom's mini-discs.
Right.
Yeah.
What did he leave?
Someone hacked a computer with them on, right?
Yeah, I think all our stuff has been,
basically most of the Radiohead stuff has been archived. Yeah yeah and somebody just hacked in on the site and you know it's in the
cloud somewhere and then the guy that did it there was a rumor around that he was trying to shake
the band down for 150 grand was or auction it to the highest bidder something like that i read that
he complained bitterly he said no i didn't he said all I was going to do was sell it to the fans.
Okay, that was it.
Yeah, exactly.
To the highest bidder.
Yeah.
Oh, well done, you.
So he thought he was highly principled because he wasn't trying to bribe the band.
It was just the fans he wanted to rip off.
Yeah.
But anyway, I was one of those people that eventually bought them when Radiohead themselves said,
well, look,
why don't you pay for them and then you can download them legitimately. We'll give the money
to Extinction Rebellion. So I found them really quite interesting. I saw you the weekend that it
happened, I think. And you said, oh, God, some guys hacked these mini discs and they're all
about to come out. We're not sure exactly what's going to happen. And I was thinking, ooh, I'd quite like to listen to those.
You didn't say that at the time.
No, I was trying to be cool.
But I, you know, I'm a fan.
Of course, they're interesting, right?
Yeah, really interesting.
And they were really interesting.
They're sort of my ideal thing to listen to in a way.
A weird combination of songs.
They almost sound like a Guided by Voices album, you know,
kind of scratchy recordings of
songs and then maybe a little bit of something that tom's recorded on the tube in japan or
something yeah weird collage of sounds and then a very nice nigel godrich version of no surprises
or whatever which is a bit different to the one on the album yeah so it's kind of brilliant yeah and it's interesting because we were all recording at the time and i think
i heard some of the live stuff that tom had recorded on his mini disc from that and i was
like oh wow that's what he was hearing because his recorder was set up between him and johnny and
we were in the round i was on the other side and I was just like,
oh, wow, that's what it sounded like.
Because sometimes in that rehearsal room,
because it was quite loud,
if Tom and Johnny were on the other side,
I couldn't necessarily hear them at such volume
because there was me and Coz on my side or whatever like that.
So there's some good stuff
because you can see how a song like Paranoid Android came to be.
You know, the putting of the parts together or Karma Police. stuff because you can see like how a song like paranoid android came to be yeah you know the
putting of the parts together or karma police the thing to do would be to do a massive edit
exactly where you put it together almost you did a like a dolby atmos version surround surround
version yeah with all you guys in hologram that's it that's the future but you know what i mean as
a fan like with those mini discs the temptation is to just spend a couple of weeks
chopping out your favorite bits
and make the ultimate compilation.
The way I did when the Beach Boys released
all that Smile stuff in the early 90s for the first time,
all these segments.
And I just spent weeks
making different compilations of permutations of it all you know yeah and it was great it's great
but i'm always meeting you know musicians and artists of all kinds who get quite frustrated
with people like me because it's like well it's somewhat antithetical to the appreciation of the
art i i kind of think that's the argument yeah and i think that's a bit bullshit you know my own personal point of view is i like to see the humanity behind the musicians and i don't know
i've always liked that whole dispelling the myth and you know i did a blog for when we made today
and someone was reminding me about it the other day and the reason i did it was when we first
had the internet in like 2000 every night i would do kind of dispatches from the studio i remember i used to read it right and my whole
idea was i wanted to dispel the myth that there was kind of this magic sorcery going on because
yes that was magic sorcery central yeah for the which you visited yeah well i didn't know you at
that time when you were doing all that stuff but i I knew Nigel Godrich. Yeah. And there was so much mystique around Radiohead.
And after Meeting People is Easy came out,
it looked as if, wow, this is a unit that's going to implode pretty soon.
Yeah.
And there's a very sensitive, fragile person at the center of it.
And then it must be very difficult for the people around him.
And I've heard you talking before about the fact that that was a hard time for you as well yeah it was a hard time but i
think you know we deliberately constructed this kind of this mystique because that was in a
response to pablo honey and the fact that we we really hadn't got our shit together and we looked
a bit all over the place and
you know some of the photo shoots in america are a bit weird and all of that stuff and i remember
like when it came to the bends at second well who do we look towards we look towards the west
country towards massive attack and porter's head really and they had this incredible mystique you
know they were uber cool you know the way they did their videos and it and
you could construct this so it was partly self-preservation but it was also partly as a
response to really kind of looking a bit naff all together and kind of not having got that stuff and
i mean the first time we hadn't got our shit together we didn't know quite really what we
were doing no there's some very funny stuff floating around.
What are those videos where we did a bug special and there was a video with you guys in an empty pool or something?
Yeah, anyone can play guitar.
Hornsey swing baths with turkeys and those feather boas.
That's right.
I remember kind of, you know, very proudly sort of showing,
because I was living with my dad at the time,
and kind of go, Dad, look what we've done.
And he was sort of standing there laughing.
Going like, what the fuck is this?
I'm not proud of you, sir.
He's very good.
And there was another one called Stop Whispering.
We did this video with this guy called,
director called Jeffrey Plansker, and it was in LA.
And he was giving us the spiel,
and we were sort of lapping
it all up he said I feel the sense of alienation in this song and this guy is going to become more
alienated as the song goes on and the the way I'm going to represent this is by putting on an old
like diving bell uniform so that's juxtaposed against some footage that we shot in this
industrial post-industrial spot that was full of asbestos and yeah it's big rusty good yeah you remember okay so all of that and i'm don't want to put
jeffrey down he thought he was like dino de laurentis that you could see it go to the guy's
head he was riding around in an open shop jeep at 5 p.m finding new locations and he found the
spot and i remember he had phil and i kind of balancing this pin cushion
he he kind of pulled us in and the direction very quietly was guys and there's some hat pins in there
and he said just make it your own and i could hear the hushed tones of people going isn't jeffrey a
genius so you get this video and i remember playing it, you know, because you kind of, you know, there's uncertainty.
You basically knew it was pants, but you didn't want to admit it.
And then, of course, you go and play it to your dad and your dad's laughing.
What's with the guy in the diving suit?
Why is he suddenly in the picture?
Yeah.
And it's like, oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Why is he there?
Do you remember Not Nine O'Clock News?'clock news nice video shame about the song yeah it was a classic nice video it was a perfectly nice song
it wasn't no disrespect no it was pretty crap but it was massively pretentious yeah it was so
pretentious and that was that's kind of that stage when you didn't you know you didn't know to go no
then once pablo honey came out a lot of the time in radio headland 90 is saying no no no we're not
going to do that and that's very important because that means you have a sense of self
you know what's right you know what feels right you know what you want to portray that was very
much like how do you want to be
perceived was stanley donwood involved at that point not pablo honey but he was him and tom
because i think the cover art and the artwork process was a little fraught for tom on the first
record so him and stanley had been to college and so they worked together on the ben's cover and
that was the first one that they did together.
So that's kind of an important part of figuring out a visual aesthetic.
Yeah.
And then that sort of feeds back into everything the band does.
That's a really nice part of the whole symbiosis with Stanley,
often working in the studio while you're playing.
I remember he was doing it during In Rainbows.
It was great.
And, you know, I knew Stanley because he was
Tom's fire breathing friend
from Exeter
and then he joined us
properly
in the studio
around OK Computer
you know
he's with us
every single album
since then
and been on our travels
and he's just
such an important part
of the whole process
because you know
remember our old studio
which we now sold
Butts Furlong
well the control room
had this mezzanine level, if you like,
this kind of, it was an old converted barn,
and it was almost like the gallery up at the top,
and Stanley would set up shop there for a while,
and he used to hear, like, at 11 o'clock at night or something,
and go, I don't know anything about music, but this is fucking great.
You know, he's such a really important part of the process.
And yeah, just we made it more three dimensional, really.
But then your strategy of making yourselves mysterious and creating an ambience and everything sort of worked too well.
Yes.
In tandem with, you know, a very good album and an album that felt mysterious in itself.
So the whole OK Computer,
the strangeness and the mystery of so much of that music,
plus Meeting People Is Easy,
plus all these journalists telling you that you're all geniuses.
Well, the funny thing about Meeting People Is Easy
is Grant G, who's a lovely guy,
that tour, it's one perspective. because every time grant turned up on tour he wasn't there for the
whole tour we'd be having a miserable time but actually we had a lot of fun on that tour as well
where you were all just dancing around and going we're the kings of the world well not quite you
know what we're like yeah we weren't that celebratory. But deep down, it was great to feel like you'd made,
or relieved in a way.
I think it's more relieved that you'd made a really good album
and that you thought was a really good album
and that people were connecting with it.
So it was a very, very funny time
because all those things, it all comes to a head,
I think, for all of us in different ways.
It came to a head and obviously it's quite apparent with tom and quite open with tom and see that in the dark and you know he he comes out in
his lyrics and and the way he performs and stuff like that but i think it came to a head with all
of us in certain ways because i think it's that thing where you know when you've got for want of
a better word shit you know you think that being in a great band and having a
great album will solve all of that stuff you know you think that oh that's the thing that will make
me happy well when you get that and you realize it doesn't make you happy i think that's when
you know it's a really good thing to have gone through because it was you know it forced me to
look at myself which was a great thing you know not easy but i you know i look as, you know, we were kids. I mean, that's the other thing,
going back to that thing, it felt like we were kids. And I think you, especially if you've been
in a band, most of your working life, you get to your late 30s, not just being in a band,
but being an artist, being, you know, living know living a sort of quote unconventional lifestyle or whatever there's much less pressure to achieve a certain level of emotional maturity yes in fact
the reverse is true and so yeah you can you know it's no mystery why so many of these people come
off the rail yeah no for sure and all the things that are on the riders and the you know it can be
the cliche party if you want it to be.
Yeah, yeah.
But actually, you know, it wasn't the cliche party.
In fact, it was the antithesis for Radiohead because it was so sort of,
you know, we didn't want to fulfill any kind of bad rock and roll stereotypes.
Yeah.
But, you know, we had our own foibles.
Why have I been moving so slow?
It's taking ages for pages to load. and foibles. Some people like to see the tea of another man. People be tripping on tea picket.
Yorkshire brew and a nice picket.
But I can't upload.
Because my Wi-Fi's too slow.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Congratulations.
Thank you. You've done a record.
Thank you.
And it's not an embarrassing stinker.
Thank you, Adam.
An embarrassing stink.
Well, the press release.
What was it?
Uh-oh.
It was making me laugh.
Just the wording of it.
Yeah.
And this is quoting you.
Tom, Johnny and Philip from the band are making music, Ed says.
And I'm like, the last thing the world needs is a shit album by me.
And then the next line is, but suddenly a switch was flicked.
Oh, no.
And the songs came pouring out of him.
But I misread it.
But suddenly a switch was flicked and the shit came pouring out.
I misread it but suddenly
a switch was flicked
and the shit came
pouring out
yeah
that sounds about right
but it's not man
congratulations
thank you
it's really lovely
and
what it definitely
demonstrates
is your cosmic side
great
you know
it's called Earth
yeah
it's got a sense
of the cosmic
in so many ways
yeah
it's beautifully atmospheric and
moody it reminds me of one of my favorite albums apollo by brian eno love that in some ways well
it's interesting you said because for me music is very visual and one of the things for me the
perspective was music from space i was obsessed with how music might sound from space right and
i saw this one of the songs is called mass yeah that's one of my
favorite ones so that was i took the kids to see this film called hubble which is made by nasa at
the imax down at waterloo like you know filling a morning oh yeah you know and it's a 15 minute film
about when nasa recommissioned the space shuttle and they recommissioned the space shuttle. And they recommissioned the space shuttle to fix the Hubble Space Telescope.
Anyway, the guy who fixes it
is an astronaut who I'd met
and kind of befriended called Mike Massimino.
And I'm watching it and suddenly,
because all the crew shots,
and it's like, oh my God, I know him.
That's Mike Massimino.
Where did you meet him? In space?
In Houston, of course.
Backstage at a gig in 2012
I get introduced to him
and he shows me a photo of him
in one of the
space shuttles with a copy of In Rainbows
and his daughter Gabby
had given it to him because he said to his kids
I'll take something in space, what do you want to take?
His daughter was a radio head obsessive
so she said can you take my copy of In Rainbows oh wow and he's an amazing guy yeah he's like this new jersey
lovely warm big guy and that's fucking space man yeah what do you want what do you want
fucking space here and his book is amazing it's really inspirational and so i take the kids and
you see this footage of him fixing
the the arm on the space shuttle has got the hubble and they're orbiting around the earth
of course as he's fixing it and the view of the earth below is just extraordinary it's so beautiful
i was so moved by it and i became obsessed with this kind of the view of space and the bigger
picture and also do you know the pale blue dot yeah carl sagan carl sagan so that was the working title for the record that's what i
wanted to call it right because again i came across that about six years ago and that image of the
earth and those incredible words that carl sagan writes to complement this tiny dot this speck of
dust that you see in this photo this arrow saying this is our home this
is it so for me the perspective on the record was it was the micro and the macro so it was going
right down but it was also pulling right out yes it's almost as if the tracks are sequenced so that
it's an alternation of fact yeah you sort of we start the first track is called Shangri-La yeah
and it sounds like you having some great great party fun at Glastonbury.
Yeah, sounds right.
And then you've got Brazil, the second track, which is this massive epic, starts off lovely
folky, finger-picky, and then turns into this big sort of rave track almost.
Cosmic rave.
Yeah.
Great video as well.
And then, yes, you've got these tracks like mass which is the one
that reminded me of apollo most a kind of mood piece i'm really still obsessed with that thing
of the sounds of space and there's really i've been reading a lot of stuff like i was reading
about the great god i've got that age when you know you try and recall you know yeah i'm glad
it happens to you too isosceles triangles that's all i can think of that pythagoras okay yeah pythagoras he was a
really interesting guy he talked about the music of the spheres like each planet had its note had
its frequency so i was really kind of interested in that and i love those nasa recordings of each
planet which is really interesting what do they sound like it's sound but what what like what's
making the sound well i think what they've done is they
it's radio frequency yes radio frequency is an interpretation and they've kind of
they've translated the frequencies into sonic waves or something i'm not quite sure sounds
like bullshit to me man yeah i like that shit don't i i love that stuff up yeah and for me as
a guitarist i actually think I realize in many ways,
Eno is more of an inspiration.
You know, when people say,
who's your guitarist?
I mean, he didn't play guitar,
but sonically, always what he did.
Yeah, I love that sound.
Because you forget with Apollo,
half of it is kind of science fiction moodscapes.
Yeah.
And then half of it is almost like
this quite sunny country music,
like spacey twangy stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's great.
It's great.
And I love that sort of juxtaposition of those two.
Yeah, yeah.
So that for me was, yeah, that's music from space.
And when did you start getting cosmic?
You know, I've always been slightly cosmic, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, you've got more.
I think you've got more.
I've got more cosmic.
I've been licensed to go more cosmic.
So listen.
I like it. When I was at school, it wasn't more cosmic. I've been licensed to go more cosmic. So, listen. I like it.
When I was at school, it wasn't a cosmic time in the 80s, right?
No.
It was anti-cosmic.
Yeah, anyone who said cosmic was a wanker.
I know, I know.
Exactly.
And I was in the Smiths gang, which was very anti-cosmic.
Yeah.
We're 84, minor strike, you know, very feet on the ground yeah so it was always there and then
it kind of you know it gets suppressed down and i think what happened with the whole acid house thing
and the whole rave culture that that opened the eyes again and yeah the veil do you know i mean
i mean i wasn't fully immersed in it in a
way that because i had the band and that the band for me was everything and you know i wasn't going
to go out and get munted every other weekend but i did occasionally you know do it and that had a
profound effect and that whole i think that went in deep i mean i've heard people who and even academics talking about the value of psychedelics and things like that
in terms of connecting you to something important yeah and in terms of stripping away a lot of stuff
that isn't important i'm too nervous i don't think i'm a psychedelics person i've only had one experience with mushrooms at university, and that went badly.
I mean, it started out going okay.
Yeah.
And then I looked in the mirror, and I didn't feel connected to the reflection in the mirror.
Wow, yeah.
Have you ever had that?
No.
I think it's called a sort of fugue state. Right. It's like,
I've read that it happens to some people when they take mushrooms, not everybody. Yeah.
It was really, really alarming. It was like I was looking at a clone. Yeah, that must be scary.
It was so scary. Yeah. But maybe what I was experiencing was some form of ego cancellation.
Yeah. So I no longer felt connected to a physical version of myself.
Yeah, maybe.
And so I should have been celebrating and dancing around and going,
I'm free, I'm free.
But instead I was thinking, why is there a clone in the mirror?
That's bad.
Then I went to the toilet and my knob had shrunk to the size of an acorn.
Which can also... Have you ever heard that what with mushrooms mushrooms i
can't say that that's been i mean it doesn't it doesn't know but but you know i'm not dispelling
that it's not something i'm not something i would brag about i wouldn't make it up no i'm not sure
that's interesting i the only i once got spiked at the reading festival in a year we didn't play
someone gave me some acid and i and i i remember i was just like what's going on
and i had an amazing night oh my god that's my worst night i kept looking in the mirror
thinking i was elvis presley these are classic bad drug stories i think you're they're not for everybody these things
and they're really not no and if you have you know i don't know i may well have
undealt with exactly issues yeah i'm almost certain i do and yeah if you were ever to do
them i think the people i've heard extolling their virtues in a
sort of academic sense would always be doing them in a controlled environment with people who know
exactly what's well you know they're using mdma and mushrooms they're doing a lot of controlled
dosage for ptsd right you know and a lot of stuff and they are having incredible results and for
treatment of addiction i heard as well yeah. And my experience of all of those things are that expression, it gets you out of your head.
Yes.
So you get a perspective of yourself, which is often a really important thing.
Extremely interesting. Your mind to my mind. your thoughts to my thoughts sometimes i thought to myself like maybe
my obsession with space and sci-fi and that kind of bowie-esque space oddity thing of
alienation and the romance of space travel i would say you know to generalize
that is a kind of a typically male thing to fantasize about being out in space on your own
floating around in a tin can and the romance of that and also the kind of romance of missing
everybody on earth yeah it's a bit like being out on the road perhaps like the pioneer
you know being the great explorer but it's also a kind of abdication of responsibility
meanwhile your wife or your partner or whoever is back on earth doing all the fucking hard work
and you're out in your tin can going i'm romantic i'm floating around i'm so alienated yeah so my
perspective on that is slightly different because my perspective
probably formed a bit more like 2001 that cosmic scene and my favorite film of the last 20 years
i think is geniuses interstellar i love it and don't you and for me it's like i'm thinking in
space and i talked to mike massimino about it. Cause I'm like going,
Mike,
I want to go into space with you.
I don't know.
I said,
every time I say this, I said,
I really want to go in space sometime and I want to go with you.
Cause we talked a lot about,
about how it feels up there and how you feel.
He talks about this spiritual connection and a lot of astronauts do.
So it's not a feeling of alienation and isolation.
It's the feeling of incredible connection. Have you heard of this thing called the overview effect no it's a phenomenon that
astronauts have generally they go up to space and they look down on the planet and they feel this
incredible love for the planet and this connection for earth our home and it's not like the sitting in my tin can yeah it's big open-hearted fucking hell
people come back very very changed and he talked mike says if we could send all the leaders up to
space yeah have any of them gone up and done drugs i mean you wouldn't you probably that
would be over egging the pudding that might be that's a double dose that's someone's got to go
up and have some drugs.
You know,
once they do the commercial
airliner thing,
there will be some people,
won't there?
There'll be drug tours.
Did you see Ad Astra
with Brad Pitt?
Yeah.
That's quite good, isn't it?
Did you enjoy that?
I mean, it's not,
I would hesitate to recommend it,
but I thought maybe
you would have dug it.
I started watching because I thought
this is right up my stride
yeah
dad issues
dad issues
space
there was something about it
yeah I know
and he's great
I just thought
it was a bit wooden
it's not the best
it's quite clunky
but
there were
elements to it
that I thought
were quite brilliant
and
there's a sequence
at the beginning
where Brad Pitt's character whose dad is were quite brilliant and there's a sequence at the beginning where
Brad Pitt's character whose dad is Tommy Lee Jones and he's like far out in outer space and
he's gone rogue and Brad Pitt has to go and sort him out and the first leg of his journey is to go
up to the moon where he's going to take a shuttle off to Mars or something and this is in the future when space travel
has been turned into
a industry
and so he goes up on a virgin
shuttle to the moon
and it's really nicely done
it's like 2001
I thought
all that detail was great
I just thought there was something lacking
no I mean the actual story I don't want to spoil it but there are several sequences there's one bit
where he um i don't think this is a spoiler if you're someone that cares deeply about spoilers
maybe you should switch off if you haven't seen ad astra but if you're normal, then there's one bit where Brad Pitt has to,
he wants to get inside a rocket, but the rocket's taking off.
So he climbs up the side of the rocket while it's taking off.
No.
And he opens the door and he gets in.
That's preposterous.
And I don't think that that's possible.
No, that's kind of like a space version of the Dukes of Hazzard.
Yeah. They're kind of trying to get version of the dukes of hazard yeah they're
kind of trying to get into the general lee right yeah it's going off through the window i know it's
like okay i understand it's a science fiction film yeah it's a bit of entertainment yeah but
that's the lie i'm not having that i'd switched off before that so i'm really glad oh okay because
i got to that stage with films now like if i'm not feeling it I give it an hour or so
and it's like I'm not gonna watch this
you know I know I you can tell fairly quickly
so I'm really glad I didn't see it through to it
oh it gets more ridiculous
really yeah
whereas I have to I'm sorry but Interstellar is
I could watch that every week
yeah I mean that's mad as well
it is mad but isn't it based on cutting edge science?
By stone scientists.
You're so cynical.
I'm laughing it up.
Hey, man, you know, like, it would be possible if you, like, just go with me for a second.
I love that.
I love it too.
To me, I know, but to me, I love it so much.
And it kind of resonates in a way that I feel like, and I'm probably wrong here,
but I can feel like almost that it's based on this kind of, almost like these scientific truths.
You know, however preposterous it might seem,
and that whole thing of the mirrors and the different dimensions.
Oh my God, I just...
I dug it. I loved it.
Yeah.
And, you know, the bit wherecconaughey's watching his daughter
oh my god i mean i can hardly describe it without oh my god and as a parent as well yeah i think
it's interesting because for me i think you know i got a bit obsessed and i read about and you know
obviously kubrick 2001 played a really important part possibly for chris finola but it's interesting
when you go back to k Kubrick now because I used to
think I mean in fact when Radiohead made albums I once saved me like we wanted to be like the
Stanley Kubrick of the musical world like Kubrick would make you know 2001 and then he'd do the
Shining or you know you'd do all these different types of different distinct yeah and kind of
experience yeah distinct experiences when you go back to the kubrick
stuff that's so interesting kubrick's is very very cold and male and it is like that sitting
in that tin can it's a very male i did that whole thing with susan i said we should watch dr strange
i remember that being brilliant i love that film genius right and i watched it with her and you
know when you're watching with somebody who's going like where are the women in this you know i was like awakened to the fact that oh yes of
course he was in an era everything is very very male you know the whole making of a film is very
male the protagonists are male whereas christopher nolan there's this beautiful balance and this love
between a daughter and the father and that idea of love for me the
message is you know love transcending dimensions love as this kind of actual force within the
universe for me i really love that whole thing of you know kubrick who was obviously a master what
he did but where we are now with someone like christopher nolan where he's there's so much humanity yeah kubrick pushed the kind of antiseptic it was almost as if emotions
were a sign of weakness and had to be eliminated to make the whole thing pure somehow and to make
it clinical and symmetrical yeah beautiful, which he did.
That's not to say that there aren't emotions and feelings
that are inspired by watching those Kubrick films.
They're subtle and they're strange,
but they're definitely there.
But yeah, I mean, Interstellar, that is raw.
That's right on it.
Being stabbed in the gut.
Yeah, and to put that in space,
into a cosmic kind of existential setting is just genius.
It's such a brilliant observation, as you say, of a very particular pain that comes with watching your children.
It's like the experience of being a parent is an exercise in relativity in a way because your sense of time is so different to theirs.
And it's so cruel how fast it is for you as an adult.
And it's so torturously, boringly slow for them.
And yet you're just seeing it whiz before your eyes.
They're changing from one week to the next.
And you film a video of them being
incredibly sweet i had this video i shot of my daughter when she was about five or something
talking about animals and it just used to break my heart every time i watched it and as i was what
it began to be too painful to watch it because i felt that it was speeding away from you so fast
i know away from you so fast. Yeah, I know, I know. Thank you. I'm going to pivot.
Yeah, let's pivot.
Do you get wound up?
I've got to stop going on about this.
But do you get wound up? I've got to stop going on about this. But do you get wound up when you're listening to,
I listen to sort of news podcasts and things,
especially American ones.
And when the correspondent comes on,
so they say,
Mike, you've been following the presidential carcasses out there.
How's it going?
And they, to a man slash woman,
have to begin the sentence with, so so it's going fine but
anyway look i'm gonna show no the one that gets me is not so it's listen listen tony blair always
yes he loved listen i fucking hate that listen and yeah listen and australian cricketers do it
as well yeah there's something really sinister about listen.
I know what you mean.
It's like you don't understand.
You don't understand.
Listen.
Listen to me.
It's so horrible.
I know, Blair always did it.
He always does it.
And maybe he always did it,
but I started becoming aware of it during the war, you know.
Yeah.
And it was big.
Listen time.
Listen the whole time.
Listen, it's not that simple.
Listen, we are going to have to go in and bomb some people. Listen. Oh! you know yeah and it was big listen listen the whole time listen it's not that simple listen
we are gonna have to go in and bomb some people listen oh that's horrible wasn't it yeah anyway
so it's not that bad yeah so it's not as bad as that so so but it's people wanting to it's it's
in the podcast era i think it's everyone wanting everything to be a story yeah narrative okay and putting so at the beginning
of a sentence kind of makes it i think sound superficially more like oh this is a we're
telling a story here yeah rather than you can just start a sentence by saying well you know
if you don't want to get hard into the sentence yeah that's my problem i've got other problems
peter gabriel had an album called so that's right so that's how it was pronounced so slay a chammer great album oh he's great he's cosmic isn't he
he's definitely cosmic a lot of musicians are cosmic yes it goes with the territory because
they don't have any real responsibilities probably because we're free of the shackles of reality yeah exactly speaking of the shackles
of reality and your job my job and speaking of 10 years ago yes which was the last time i sat
down and talked to you on mike around that time i didn't realize that david frick of the rolling
stone magazine you know david frick i saw him recently at the gig he came to one of my gigs I didn't realize that David Frick of the Rolling Stone magazine,
you know David Frick.
I saw him recently at a gig.
He came to one of my gigs.
He's a cool guy.
I like him. He pops up in a lot of the music docs I like.
And he, for people who don't know what he looks like,
he looks like...
One of the Ramones?
Like the nerdiest member of the Ramones.
He's such a great guy.
And he has such love for music.
It's like he never gets bored of it.
He's got such a lovely energy and he's
interested in musicians. And he obviously likes you because you turned up, this was in
Rolling Stone magazine, 2010. Right. You turned up in the list of 100 greatest guitarists.
And I think it, I mean, it did say David Frick's picks. Right. So it wasn't claiming to be a definitive list.
Yeah, that's very lovely.
But inevitably, those lists are always framed as or read as,
here's a definitive list of the greatest guitarists of all time
or the greatest comedians or the greatest whoever.
Yeah.
And of course, it's meaningless, really.
Of course.
Yeah, we know that.
But still quite nice to pop up.
Do you remember that list?
No, I never.
You don't seek those things out.
No, I stopped reading interviews and all of that around the time of OK Computer
because it was kind of like it was so good
and I didn't like the effect it was having on me.
It was making me feel better about myself.
I was so kind of sensitive to it.
And if it's bad, it's going to bring me down.
So just do it.
Leave it alone.
Leave it alone.
Good idea.
Yeah.
Anyway, where am I?
What do you reckon?
Oh, God.
In at 89 with a bullet.
I don't know.
What?
59.
No, really?
Above.
You see, you already like it.
No, I don't.
Above Johnny Greenwood.
No.
Who's number 60?
You are kidding.
Also above.
That's not right.
Angus Young. No. 96. Bert Jans 60? You are kidding. Also above. That's not right. Angus Young.
No.
96.
Bert Jansch.
What?
94.
Robbie Krieger.
No.
The Doors, 91.
Joan Jett, 87.
Neil Young, 83.
Whoa.
Dave Gilmore, 82.
Joni Mitchell, 72.
Lightning Hopkins.
All of these people you are above.
I'm a fraud.
Link Wray.
Mick Ronson 64 oh my
god it says ed o'brien radio heads two lead guitarists i'm not a symbiotic relationship
where you're you're two lead guitarists well no johnny's the lead guitar i see myself as kind of
like the sweeper role like that's a football analogy that you won't know about okay it's
sport ball right all right.
And the sweeper's the guy who's like between the defense and takes the ball up the defense up the field or whatever.
So it's kind of like between rhythm and sound.
And I mean, yeah, I mean, it's preposterous.
It's a good job I don't, I'm not even embarrassed about it
because it's just not something that bears any relevance to truth.
No, it's nice though.
But it's nice, obviously, yeah. I mean relevance to truth no it's nice though but it's
nice obviously yeah i mean i think as well the other thing is listen about radio it's like
you know i've always felt like i think i've been quite open about i've always felt
deeply insecure about my playing compared to tom and johnny's they're incredible players and i've
always felt myself if i'm honest slightly inferior so my people like eno were so important in terms of
sound and stuff because eno's not like he's not a virtuoso and i'm not a virtuoso and the the people
that i really loved as guitarists were people like will sergeant from the bunnymen johnny marr
from the smiths the edge they can be virtuosos if they want to be, but they chose not to be, you know.
So they were kind of like my yardstick.
So Tom and Johnny were always, like for me,
I've always held them up in really high esteem.
Continues.
Uh-oh.
Johnny Greenwood is closer to a traditional lead man.
Yeah.
Those are his unwell bends at the end of Just and Paranoid Android.
Yeah.
O'Brien likes the wacky noises,
the ghostly above-the-nut jangle.
That's a nice image.
Above the nuts.
Above the nut jangle on OK Computer's Lucky.
And the high reverberating pops on Hail to the Thieves,
2 plus 2 equals 5,
were also Ed's handiwork.
Wow, I mean, amazing he He listens to that in depth.
I mean, it's funny.
I met somebody recently in Australia
who they're the Australian radio head.
And the guy comes up to me and he goes,
I'm you.
Oh, wow.
I do your stuff.
What are they called?
I can't remember.
They don't have a jokey name.
They do have a jokey name,
but of course I've forgotten it.
And I'm like amazed. They don't have a jokey name. They do have a jokey name, but of course I've forgotten it. And I'm like amazed.
And he said,
I find your stuff really hard to do.
And I'm like, really?
And I'm just,
I'm always astonished that someone would listen
because I never listened to my part as a bit.
It's all about the song,
its entirety.
It's always serving the song.
It's the whole thing.
I mean,
that's why I think these things are a bit unfair because really when somebody's singling you out they're not because
it's the collective sound a lot of the time yeah so yeah i'm always surprised when people actually
go oh yeah that sound i'm like oh wow you noticed that yeah oh i think people do at number one yeah
who do you think's number one um for it isn't jasper carrot no okay is it jimmy page
no is it okay can i have a couple of guesses yes what would he do would he go for well hendrix
yes yes of course sorry i should have gone straight in there jimmy hendrix number one
yeah number two number two duane allman oh okay. I mean, that's eccentric, I would say. Yeah, that's...
No disrespect to the mighty Dwayne Allman.
Number three, B.B. King.
Okay, is Clapton in the top ten?
Yeah, I think he is.
Prince?
No, doesn't place.
No!
Yep.
Prince was the motherfucker.
Right.
Him and Hendrix.
I think, I mean, when you watch footage of Prince play guitar,
it's extraordinary.
And you know that footage at the Rock and Roll Hall of Flame?
Yes.
When they're playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
And then he does the mic drop.
Yeah.
Guitar drop at the end.
The guitar drop.
And Danny Harrison's face, George Harrison's son,
is like, what the?
Yeah, it's amazing.
It's extraordinary.
I know, people shared it.
I'd never seen it.
People shared it
after he died and i saw it for the first time he was the greatest and i i think for me like
like him and henry because prince had that that that funk and he could do that clean funk as well
they played kiss on the radio this morning it was just like oh my god even that just the just the
wow you know just amazing, he was extraordinary.
Yeah.
I want to ask you.
Yes.
Before we conclude.
One of my questions was.
Yeah.
Why make a solo album, Ed?
Specifically.
Yeah.
There's so many reasons.
Not to.
As a guitarist in a very successful band.
Yeah.
Not to.
Yes.
Especially a successful band where you are whatever you do
as a solo entity is going to be compared to yeah some extremely good stuff that you've already done
as part of this unit yeah and who needs that grief yeah well it's a good question and it actually
stopped me for years doing anything because i like you you know, it was just like, well, I don't need to do anything else.
And I think for me, you see, there was always I've always felt a bit of a hole, you know, with all the success and all the fantastic creativity with the Radiohead.
There was always for me, there was always something missing and I didn't know what it was.
I thought it was just me. You don't realize.
me you you don't realize and the moment i started writing it was the most compelling thing going into your shed and then coming up five hours later with something that i thought would sound
beautiful and so you then get to say to me you'd have you demo it and it becomes
i think it's a really good point that and it's and like i've had listen i've had dark nights
of the soul on this like what am i doing why am i why am i stepping out and that's usually because i'm tired or i've been you know working on
it for too long it's not a rational thing it's a completely intuitive thing it's like a feeling
it's like listen if i didn't do that's so i'm making you self-conscious
yeah if i didn't do it i wouldn't be me and that's that's all i can say i'm completely
pulled it and i've started thinking about the second record for me the last week has been
amazing because i've i've kind of connected with where I think I want to go.
I've had to double check myself a lot. I'm like, is this right? Is this because you know,
why am I why did I not do this 20 years ago? Why am I doing it now? And I don't know. And it's that thing you get back to there's a kind of, there is a mystery, there is a magic to music
as well. And maybe, you know, you get the calling sometimes you know the ancient greeks used to
see it as a kind of a calling and the muses and put it in those kinds of terms and you know it
happens to different people at different stages in their life and for me this is happening now and
it's i'm constantly at my comfort zone which is the best place to be it makes it you know nick
mason from pink floyd has this lovely expression he said to me he said well of course we could all be at home feeding the peacocks you know and he probably does have
yeah but it's that you don't to answer your question in a short way i think if you are
going to do something outside of radiohead you have to be absolutely sure that it's the right
thing and you feel that and there's a power to what you know
there's a it just feels so right so it's not an exercise in staking your independence no i'm saying
no and i don't know if you but i've always been the opposite yeah i've always hated that idea of
the ego going well i should do something because the others are doing i've got nothing to prove
i haven't got a competitive bone in my body i I'm not like that. And for years, it was Radiohead, which was absorbed my whole creative part of me,
and it was my family. And I was so happy and I didn't have time for anything else.
And then this music comes along and it's, oh, wow, this is, it's like being pulled.
Yeah, that's how it is and then do you have a sort of unspoken
contract with the rest of radiohead that you're just never going to refer to your solo is that
the way it works like or do you guys listen to each other's side projects and comment on them
or is it easier if you just don't i think we listen to one of those projects but no one really
comments i always hopefully say like i you know really know, really like it. I think, you know, Tom was saying at the last meeting, he said, Oh, someone came up to him and said Suspiria was the best song that Tom had ever written. And Tom was like, really surprised. And I said, Well, it's a fucking great song. You know, it's amazing. You know, Radiohead's not, we're not like this big support unit going like you got this well done
you got this high-fiving high-fiving you got this i love your work man you got this you are so
strong this is your moment no it's not at all like that and you know it's not it's all it's all like
everybody's very nice have you heard eddie's album what did you think of it yeah i know there's that
stuff going on i'm sure this and listen i'm under i one of the things i had to do is i had to let go
of what i thought the others would think of it yeah because there was a part of me when i started
the record i put my radio head head on and it's not appropriate for this record and so I had
there's only one track I thought that Bankster's
yeah it's the only one that's vaguely Radiohead
and I had to get because this record
is very much more
I mean if anything there's a cosmic
but it's really for me it's like lyrically
it's more comes to my kind of gospel soul
thing that's where I drew my inspiration
it's about love it's big
hearted warm record
and every time I put my Radio it's about love it's big hearted warm record and every time
I put my radio head head on this it would go like what you're mentioning love about why you you know
it's like and I knew that I had to let go of that because it I just had to let go of it and
that was quite hard to shake and then you go back on tour with you know halfway through the record
you go on tour with the band and so you come back with the Radiohead head on and it took like four weeks to get rid of it to kind of
you know to get in the place where it was a safe space yeah so you know to do it you know what I
mean it was because I wanted it to be a very direct and warm record and very kind of open-hearted
and I at the moment I know that's not necessarily a very Radiohead thing you know Radiohead is a lot
more oblique I think and it's sort of impressionist whereas I wanted mine to be very direct and
colorful and like bang yeah you know and open-hearted was Radiohead is you get the love
but it's not so you know it's comes from a different beauty yes do you if I'm trying to
think about but but I think you said it before when you talked
about kubrick yeah it's that sort of yeah it's a kubrick thing it's a kubrick thing yeah it really
i'm trying to think of a director who you are well maybe it's the nolan thing oh come on
give it to me no i mean nolan's done a lot of work i'm the i'm
who who directs radiohead is kubrick is dr strange love and 2001 yeah and you are
dude wears bike car or the goonies
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Yes.
Continue. I'm feeling very still. Hey, welcome back, podcats.
Ed O'Brien there.
There's a few links in the description of this podcast
to bits and pieces that Ed and I spoke about.
What have we got for you?
Link to the music video for Ed's excellent song Brazil
from his album Earth.
Link to a YouTube playlist of bits and pieces from some
of those hacked OK Computer minidiscs. Link to a video of Ed earlier this year on YouTube teaching
you how to play Creep by Radiohead. Only four chords he reminds us. A fun one to pick up if you're learning how to play guitar.
There is a link to a not especially great quality copy of Meeting People is Easy,
Grant G's 1998 Radiohead doc, that's on YouTube.
That's probably one of those things which will get taken down at some stage,
but anyway, it's watchable.
It's such a great doc doc i would recommend if you're
a radiohead fan and you haven't seen it that you get hold of a decent quality copy there is a link
to the only copy i could find of that early radiohead video that we were talking about stop
whispering the one with the old diving suit and the pin cushion and Tom crouching between some girders looking tortured.
Sadly, it seems that most of those official early Radiohead videos
have been redacted from the internet.
I couldn't even find bad quality copies if anyone could play guitar and things like that.
But there's that list of the 100 greatest guitarists by David Frick from 2010. Also, there is a link to the
Dan Hawkins online bass player site. If you're a regular podcat, then you will know that
Dan Hawkins offers a online bass playing service. You can send him a track and he will lay down a
bass part and send it back to you brilliantly and efficiently. I've used him to provide bass for lots of the jingles in this
podcast before and today it was the Star Trek jingle that Dan played bass over.
I didn't of course write the Star Trek music. What a great theme tune that is. Anyway, there's a link to Dan Hawkins' online bass playing site
should you like to add a bit of great old-fashioned
analogue human bass playing to your track.
What else have we got?
That's pretty much all the links.
Oh no, there's a link to one of the things
that has really cheered me up in the last few weeks.
And that is a video of Robbie Williams
playing a kind of ska version of his song Angels
on the Horn Section podcast.
Alex Horn of Taskmaster fame
has a fantastic podcast that he does with his band,
the Horn Section.
And if you haven't heard the podcast before, I very much recommend
it. It's great. They just, well, it's a combination of Alex's bordering on obsessive enthusiasm with
turning everything into a game and the brilliant improvising and comedy songwriting skills of his
band, one of whom plays with the Robbie Williams touring band. So they got Robbie to be a guest on one of their isolation specials.
They recorded five, I think, five episodes earlier on in the lockdown.
And I only just got round to listening to them.
A couple with Tim Key, who's always great value.
One with Max Rushton, one with Rose Matafayo.
And yeah, one with Robbie Williams, who was really
good value and just committed magnificently to this rearranged version of Angels at the end,
and it was so good. And the video of them all playing it remotely on the Zoom feeds is excellent as well. What else? In about six weeks time, I think,
my book, Ramble Book, will finally be available in hardback physical form. If you've already heard
the audio book, I've put links in the description of the podcast, obviously, to all these things.
But just because you've heard the audiobook
doesn't mean to say you can just ignore the hardback.
No, no, no, no, no.
It's been beautifully designed, the physical thing.
And it's got pictures and photographs
and amazing illustrations from Helen Green.
And it's been laid out by geniuses at HarperCollins
and it's a beautiful, lovingly created object.
You can order a signed copy right now
by visiting the Waterstones website, link in the description.
There are a limited number of signed copies so i don't
guarantee that there will be one available they may have sold out i'm just saying that's it may
happen i didn't sign all that many so make haste rosie come on let's head back okay that's it for this week thank you very much
to Seamus Murphy Mitchell
for his production support on this episode
thanks to Matt Lamont
for his increasingly brilliant edit
whizbottery
thanks to Ed O'Brien
for his time, his good humour, his friendship
his musical skills
and just everything
thanks to Acast for supporting this,
another great, great podcast.
Why not check out the dizzying diversity
of voices represented on their website?
And thanks to you, most especially,
PodCats.
You listened right to the end.
You're great and I appreciate it.
And also, did you know that,
well, I love you.
Bye! Bye. Thank you.