THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.63B - JONNY GREENWOOD

Episode Date: February 9, 2018

A short bonus episode featuring a conversation with Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead, film scores, cheekbones) about music documentaries, writing music for Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread, Oscar speeches and The Fall.Adam Buxton’s Old Bits DVD is out now from gofasterstripe.comThanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support.Extract from 'House Of Woodcock' by Jonny Greenwood. (Phantom Thread (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) smarturl.it/PhantomThreadStrk)Other music & jingles by Adam Buxton Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hey, how you doing listeners? Adam Buxton here. Welcome to Podcast 63B.

It's a special bonus episode. Why is it a bonus, Buckles? What makes it a bonus? Well, it's only short, I suppose. Considerably shorter than the average episode, so I called it a bonus. But of course it's actually just a special gift of love from me to you. You're welcome. It features some not very serious conversation with friend of the podcast, Johnny Greenwood. I say friend of the podcast because he has appeared before. Episodes 22 and 22B feature a longer conversation with Johnny,

recorded a couple of years ago in France, before Radiohead played a show there. And of course Johnny's status as a member of the band Radiohead is now jockeying for position with his work as a composer of film music. Amongst other features and TV shows Johnny has provided original music for two films directed by Lynne Ramsey, her 2011 adaptation of We Need to Talk kevin and the soon to be released you were never really here a thriller starring joaquin phoenix apparently looks quite good but johnny's most regular cinematic collaborator thus far is paul thomas anderson for whom Johnny scored 2007's There Will Be Blood, 2012's The Master, 2014's Inherent Vice, and this year his score for Phantom Thread has been nominated for an Academy Oscar Award. Conclusive proof that it is good.

Now, last week in London at the Royal Festival Hall, I was lucky enough to attend a screening of Phantom Thread with Johnny's soundtrack being played live for the very first time, I believe, by the London Contemporary Orchestra. It was beautiful and moving, and every time the main piano theme, which as you will hear is called House of Woodcock, started up, I felt very emotional and sort of overwhelmed by the loveliness. I considered crying a couple of times in my seat. There was a pain in my throat, and I had to struggle to stop the water leaking from my eyes. Now, although Johnny didn't actually play with the orchestra last week, he was hanging around the Royal Festival Hall throughout the day,

sitting in on rehearsals, and then he appeared on stage before the movie started with Paul Thomas Anderson to have a brief chat with the film critic Mark Kermode. That was good. But I was able to steal a few minutes of Johnny's time before the show began, and we talked briefly about how the Phantom Threads score came together. We talked about Oscar speeches, or I pitched a few Oscar speeches and Johnny gave his responses.

And we talked briefly about a favourite band of mine and Johnny's, The Fall, whose lead singer Marky Smith died a few weeks ago now. Now, I've had Johnny's Phantom Thread score going round and round my head ever since I first saw the film at a screening just before Christmas. And I guess I had this vague fantasy that if I was able to do a bit more podcasting with Johnny, I'd ask him to talk me through how he'd written some of it, what the actual process of coming up with that kind of music is. A little bit like an episode of classic albums, you know, with the old guys sat in front of the giant mixing desks, pushing buttons, isolating tracks and saying, oh yeah, I forgot we had some marimbas on there that ended up very, very low in the mix.

Anyway, you'll hear how that fantasy went down with Johnny very shortly. And I'll be back at the end for a little bit more Toasty Waffles. Here we go. Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a Ramble Chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. I've always promised myself that if I ever find myself sat in front of a mixing desk

as a backdrop to talking about something I didn't years ago, then it's got to be the bullet in the head, hasn't it? At that point, it's terrible. Why? Don't you watch those shows? No, no. But can't you appreciate the thrill that someone like a Steely Dan fan gets from seeing Donald Fagan pulling the faders down and listening to how

those harmonies were woven um there's Michael McDonald listen how high he's singing yes I mean I suppose so but it's just you're not meant to see this stuff are you it's not what you want given out so is that band policy as well is thathead policy? Will you never do that kind of documentary? We would never do. I'd be amazed. We talk about doing, we loved the Genesis one that came out because they all are very friendly and optimistic and cheerful and getting on with each other. And one of them is a bit chippy and annoyed. So we often talk about doing a documentary where we're pretending to be really angry and bitter with each other. Don't do that. That's worse than the other option. Yes.

It's something that's nice to talk about, but never do. Yeah. I don't like it when people do that. It's like either do it or don't do it. Don't do a parody of it. Yes. No, that's beyond us anyway, isn't it? But yeah, I don't.

I can't. Yes. It's like David Byrne did that after Stop Making Sense. Did you ever see that footage of him? He's dressed in the big suit and they did a split screen thing. I suppose Jonathan Demme must have set it up. And it's him interviewing himself. So he's in drag on one side of the split screen.

Right. Playing a kind of caricature of a interviewer, reporter. And then he's on the other side in his big square suit. Yeah. Kind of answering everything like a robot. Yeah. And so she's saying, Why the big suit?

Why did you make that decision? Well, the big suit is about Kabuki. Also, I like the idea that it made my head real small. And so he can't bear to actually just do a straightforward job of answering these questions. And he is kind of answering them, but it's neither fish nor fowl. Having said all that, I saw it again the other day and it was quite good. So I've just undone everything I'd said. I mean, interviews are fine.

It's more the sort of the form of the documentary. Yeah. The kind of archive footage, kind of with sort of talking heads describing, I don't know, makes my skin crawl. I don't know. Makes your skin crawl? How would you feel about like an Adam and Joe documentary? I'd love it. It would be great.

No, of course. You're right. When it comes down to it, it's not something you necessarily want to do but i do enjoy watching other people's ones and we had that problem when we when we released a dvd an adam and joe dvd one of the most exciting things about it for me was that we were going to do dvd commentaries hooray yeah look we've got a dvd we're so important we're going to talk about all the things we did and thought and where all these great jokes came from. So we sat down and

did commentaries for pretty much anything on the disc. There was four compilations representing each series. We never used it because it was dog shit. Why? For all the reasons that we're outlining here, it was just joyless,

pointless, boring. boring right i think we could have done it a different way but to us they didn't seem to be a good way of doing it well then a lot of the process of making records and tv shows it is joyless and pointless and boring and you don't want to really revisit it you've got the kind of the end product that really worked yeah i'm coming around behind that so can you set the scene for us a little bit uh johnny yes adam we're in my sleazy dressing room backstage of the raw festival hall in the afternoon in time for the rehearsal for a live performance of the score of paul thomas anderson's latest film this sentence is very long called ph Thread good scene setting thank you

you've done this kind of thing before I came and saw you play the score for There Will Be Blood here yes yep it's become a pattern in fact when we started this whole process of writing music for the film I was trying to push the idea that we write it in order to be performed a lot so I wanted to do it with just six or seven players and make it all playable and send out the scores to cinemas and say get some local players to come

and play it live and it'd be a really you know regular thing but it's just i really love the idea of the film arriving and then a book of music arriving and these are the two things you put together and make it quite easy and but paul just kept asking for bigger and bigger string section sounds for the romance the big lush thing and that's not going to fit in the phoenix is it we went around like little cinema thinking you can get seven or eight people in here and a piano would be a really nice thing to do. Yeah. I read a story about you and Paul chatting about Beau Brummell. That's right. And in the interview that I read, that was presented as being maybe part of the inspiration for the whole project.

Well, I think he was trying on some shirts. We were hanging out together. We've got, you know, sort of slightly nauseating bromance going on. And we went clothes shopping, as as you do with a close friend and he was taking ages and I accused him of being

Beau Brommel he was like a 19th century dandy he was like the first supposedly the first sort of gentleman to take

an interest in his own appearance he used to get dressed in front of an audience every morning and get everything

just so, and if his tie wasn't quite right, he'd take it off and start again. Not that they wore ties, but anyway, you get the point. And people would come and watch him even bathing, and he had a set of rules that he would have to follow every time he prepared his morning toilet. Yeah, but it was interesting. His clothes were very understated as well.

It wasn't like it was a big, you know, peacocking thing. It was all quite precise and... Yeah. That's interesting. A lot of cargo pants. Some Carhartt gear. Yeah. Yes.

But then Paul does this, I think. He just sort of takes all these scraps and knows all this stuff anyway, really. And then he starts to build scenes and then some of them end up in films eventually and that was just one of them i think thinking of daniel day lewis dressing carefully and that ends up in the film as a small scene and what were paul's directions to you as far as what kind of music you might come up with well he basically likes to take the piss out of me and was joking

about how unromantic radiohead is and said come on you must have some romance in you and give me more strings give me more you know and he wanted the music to be really English and really romantic and be written by me which feels like a kind of big three-way contradiction now I've said that but um but there is a lot of romance in Radiohead's music we sort of talked about this before last time right you and I spoke on the podcast. There's lots of romance, but it's of a certain kind. It's not a straightforward 50s cinema version of romance. It's not cozy.

Yeah, that's true. And so this time, that's what he wanted, though. He wanted the cozier version. Yeah, he was just after real felt emotion, real genuine, you know, without all being wretched and ironic and self-effacing, kind of. Uh-huh.

Just to be... Self-loathing. Yeah, and just actually... It's all felt. It's all sincere. It's not, you know... There's nothing tongue-in-cheek about it. And that was really nice, really interesting.

So hopeful romance, not doomed romance. Yeah, partly. And then some other music for daniel de lucia's character that's a bit more um austere and aesthetic and stuff and now you've been nominated for an oscar now i've been nominated for an oscar prize good job people are very happy for me you've've made it. I think this is going to open a lot of doors for you. You're going to... Great. Who knows what might happen now. It might be Transformers 6. Are you going to go to the Oscars?

I don't know. I don't know. I started thinking that... What does your wife think? She thinks it's quite ridiculous. But then I realised I was quite pleased with myself at the idea of not going uh-huh and i think it's always good to resist that kind of urge that sort of smug you know yeah i'm not gonna show up in your party yeah and that's so maybe do the opposite to that impulse and then

at the very last minute do the opposite to that and then stop overthinking it then start overthinking it again everyone overthinks it though don't they they must do like i said paul no one wants to see a sweaty version of me shambling around looking embarrassed and he said of course they do it'll be hilarious yeah they love it so amusing paul i think is the main goal whatever you know right entertains him is he gonna go yeah i think so he's really he lives in hollywood that would be very perverse for him not to go. It's easy. Yeah, and he's got so many nominations for this film, and I'm really excited for him. I mean, he did everything.

When you get to the end of the film and it says, written and produced by one person and directed by just, I think that's always an amazing sign. I know, someone's up themselves. Yeah, and he even filmed it as well. So that's, you know. It's all about him. Should be recognized.

Him, him, him. Right up himself. If you win, win though i'm just saying yeah i'm here for you speech wise perfect and i've got a few options option one okay short and sweet you know i'd like to thank god my family adam buxton this is amazing thanks that kind of thing option two long and sweet yep but quite self-indulgent okay when i was five i saw a toy keyboard in a shop right and it was my dream ever since then blah blah blah you go on for 10 minutes they start playing the music the host comes over puts his arm around you and tries to still talking to. Tries to get you off stage. Option three.

Yeah. Use the speech as a platform to rant about your favourite political cause. Good idea. That would be good. Yeah. So, why does it take BT so long to sort out my broadband issues? I'm a business customer. You've got to let that go. You're still...

Adam, really? Option four for your Oscar speech incredibly bitter I like that good yeah blaming everyone no one to thank but a few people I want to bring down you were the only person that created your luck

that teacher at school who told you to keep practising fuck you Mr Hopkins Smithberg try sticking this Oscarcar up your bum practice doing that all right it'll go straight up as well i'm thinking i don't know i'm thinking of just pointing at myself widening my eyes and nodding slowly i think it could work that's good not talking just this guy kind of look at this guy and then you could do a sort of mic drop with

the oscar yeah just drop the oscar could do that come on kan drop with the Oscar. Yeah. Just drop the Oscar. Could do that. Come on. Kanye would do that. Yeah. He'd get into trouble. But it always works out for Kanye. I think I might just shuffle on, stutter my way through half a sentence and leave.

Yeah, that's a good idea. What do you think? I like that. Yeah. That's classic Johnny. Works for me. Do you think, this just occurred to me, kanye west the donald trump of hip-hop i he can more or less fuck up as many times as he wants yes and he just carries on i i don't know it's not my my i wouldn't go in that direction i wouldn't

like to weigh in would you have liked to have been in the 70s when rock stars just said whatever they wanted? And it never really seemed to do them any harm. Apart from John Lennon saying that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. But that was just a bump. It didn't stop him or other members of the Beatles just saying crazy stuff that no one would ever say these days later on in the 70s. I think everyone's just very nice and professional nowadays, unfortunately. I think the days are gone when you'd have badly behaved people and actual divas and actual

i don't know it doesn't seem to happen anymore everyone's just got half an eye on their pr and they know how to everyone's just quite well behaved and now markie smith's dead i know markie smith i know that's that crazy talk about and he was really one of that generation that didn't give a shit. Genuinely didn't give a fuck. And if you have the urge, you can find lots of outrageous, unpalatable things that he's said and done. For sure. Over the years. I remember John Peeloffer having to sort of say, you know, amazing music.

I wish he didn't say some of the things he says. Yeah, that's right. His voice was just, was completely the voice of my teenage years more than any other singer or easily it's like when i think of myself my bedroom it's markie smith talking ranting through something completely what were the records you were listening to ben sinister curious orange i mean the first gig i went to was was seeing them and the curious orange tour brixie smith that kind of era it was amazing kind of blew my mind it was i remember when you talked about um you know when you got that pixies record i know a bit too much about your life just from listening to podcasts so but anyway um when

you got that first pixies record and you took it back because it blew your mind a bit i had the same thing with seeing the full life where I saw half the concert, and I'd never seen a gig before, it was the first time, and I couldn't take it. It was just too... I remember walking outside, Oxford Polytechnic, and standing outside, still hearing the music and the songs, just thinking, it was like I couldn't wrap my head around what it was.

I wasn't bored, and I wasn't frightened. It just knocked me over, was one of those things, and ended up getting me really addicted to what he was doing wasn't bored and i wasn't frightened it was just just knocked me over it was one of those things and ended up getting me really addicted to what he was doing yeah weird weird i had the first time you encounter something you later really love can be nearly off-putting can be just you know tough to take yeah exactly realigning your yourself and yeah and stepping through the doorway. But he was funny as well. He was really funny.

That's the thing. I always, I mean, he always, you know, he was on our show, on the Adam and Joe show. Right. And I was very nervous about it. Going and doing vinyl justice where we would dress up as policemen and go through people's record collections. And he didn't want to do it in Manchester. Right. He wanted to do it when he was next in London, which suited us.

So I had to pretend that my flat where I was living in East London was his. And he brought along a carry bag full of records and we stuffed them in with mine. And we'd been told by his record company rep guy who came along with him that we should buy a bottle of vodka and that would be good so that's what we did and he polished it off actually both of them did the record company guy got pretty wasted as well sat in the corner in his black suit but mark smith um smoked a lot of ciggies drank most of the the vodka, and was good fun, quite, you know, as you would think, quite cantankerous, quite physical, pushed us around, bashed us around, in a slightly theatrical way, but it was a bit edgy.

It was all a bit rougher than you would hope. It was so stressful. And then he went over and sat on Joe, like Joe kind of folded over on the sofa and Mark sort of positioned himself, sat on top of him as if he was sitting on a throne. Yeah. And then put a plastic bag,

the plastic bag that he brought his records in, put that over Joe's head and then just started hitting it, like quite slowly and pathetically, but insistently just hitting it and smoking his ciggy and then sort of brandishing his ciggy like i look at me i'm sat on a public school boy throne and i'm hitting it it was good and then he stopped talking i think maybe he just thought huh what am i doing here i'm not really into this this is stupid then he goes how much we're being paid like well we don't we hadn't

arranged a fee we don't usually pay people for these things i don't know i mean how much do you want 200 pound it's very specific so i just ran out and across the square with my cash point card and got 200 quid out and ran back in my policeman uniform handed him the cash yeah and then he seemed a little uh chastened like he was a bit embarrassed that he'd actually asked us to go and get him some cash and then he was really nice and he sort of softened and mellowed he's a funny man really funny yeah strange guy what do you think about dr buck's letter dr buck's letter being such a funny song and also really bleak and like must be you know anyway anyway it's really interesting very interesting man yeah and someone who you couldn't even begin to deal with how politically incorrect

he was it's like where do you start yeah so people didn't really bother he was such an outlier in that way people it was it was impossible to know what to, like, he was someone who was totally unapologetic, abuser of alcohol, and all these things you're not supposed to do, you're supposed to be ashamed of, all these subjects you're supposed to tiptoe around, not weigh in on.

Yeah. He just didn't give a shit. Do you know Extricate that record yeah it's really good bill is dead really amazing music used to play that over and over again when we first on our first few tours extricate yeah i was obsessed with that yeah it's really good what is on that one birmingham book school of business school starts is that extricate i think so or is that code so that's code selfish which i really love that's the one that got me into them that's amazing and that's got free range on it as well amazing wow

yeah that's right because i went to the when we did when we recorded pablo honey i went the engineer was really impressed with me i think because uh he thought i was you know finally a well-taught musician kind of it was harry was true because i was I was, you know, finally a well-taught musician. It was Harry with Street, because the way I was, you know, nerdly talking about recorders or whatever. And then one morning I came in with my extra cake t-shirt on, and he said, we've had the full recording here.

And he wouldn't talk to me after that, because he said Mark E. Smith was just, he was writing lyrics down in the back of a fag packet. They're nothing, they're not a real band. And I was like, no, that's the real band. They're the real band. They're the real real band that's like no that's that's that's the real real music yeah completely so wow yeah wore that t-shirt to pieces anyway before the fall the tea is going out the interruption is staying right here with me the first thing is called see i didn't know the working title. Oh, the first big romantic thing is called House of Woodcock. Aha.

It was called Riddle because I got this great book about arranging by Nelson Riddle, kind of explaining about how to get certain textures and sounds. Did you like him already or was that because Paul was talking was talking about him yeah i'm an amazing arranger just um and just great it's really exciting to have all this stuff coming from you know coming off paper yeah pen and paper it's really still i find it really amazing that it can turn into these sounds so that was that's why nelson riddle was a big thing and that's why that used to be called Riddle. And that's called House of Woodcock. I mean, I will play wrong notes and everything.

That's OK. Where's best to stick these mics, do you think? Anywhere. Anywhere. piano plays softly Thank you.... That's the sweetest of all of them. I love it, man. Thank you, Adam. Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success.

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if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. Officer, please, sir.

Hey, welcome back, podcats. Johnny Greenwood there playing you a short blast from his score from The Phantom Thread on the upright piano in his dressing room at the Royal Festival Hall. And I wish, obviously, that he played a lot more, but he had a rehearsal to get to and I think he probably found it slightly embarrassing, as it was just me and him in the small dressing room. And for him to sit down and start playing in front of just one other person,

who he knows is a bit of a super nerd fan, must be quite weird. But I made it clear to him that if he ever wants me to do the voice of uh messy monster from messy ghost okido the kids tv show that i voice either for his children or for him i will be more than happy to oblige so i think it's a fair deal before i forget i'm going to say thanks very much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his production support. Thanks to Erica Frowman for sorting out tickets to the Royal Festival Hall.

And thanks most especially to Johnny for making time for me and humouring my stupid bullshit. stupid bullshit. I'm out here on my regular walk out in Norfolk and it is now getting dark. It's quarter to six in the evening and it's cold. At least it's getting lighter though. Every day there's a little bit more daylight and before you know it, it'll be spring. Hooray! Boy it's really cold. I mean the weather's been harsh the last few months and once or twice there's been quite spectacular storms up here. We never really got hit too much with the snow which I know a lot of people in the country did. We had a lot of rain, quite extreme wind, which we do have from time to time. But the last big storm we had ended up blowing a lot of trees over. And in fact, look where I am.

I'm stood right next to an old friend of mine, who I'm glad to say was amongst the survivors of that last storm. It's the wise old tree. are you wise old tree yeah not that good right well i'm sure it was pretty unpleasant being buffeted by those storms a few weeks back yeah it was quite a big one now i'm just standing here surrounded by the twisted corpses of my friends and every now and again a bloke with a chainsaw turns up and chops them into pieces it's like i'm in a cross between saving private ryan and texas chains Massacre because of all the chainsaws and the corpses? Yes. Still, I suppose it's some consolation that their lives go on in some way.

How's that? Well, I mean, the wood won't go to waste, will it? It'll keep someone nice and cosy by the fire or, I don't know, make a lovely chair or a chopping board. Are you fucking joking? So it'd be all right if I say, oh yeah, you know your recently deceased relative, you should cheer someone up

by burning their corpse in front of them. Or why not use their skull as a fucking sweetie jar? You could rig up a little speaker so every time someone opens it, the jaw moves and it says, step away from the sweetie jar. Is that what you mean? Well, no.

I mean, I do think there's a difference between trees and people oh right you're one of those are you very nice no look i'm sorry if i'm being insensitive oh i can tell apart from that though i mean how's everything yeah not bad a couple of squirrels moved in the other day seemed quite nice one of them shagged a bird but you know live and let live that's what i say as long as the bird's okay with it okay listen i'm gonna walk away now because i think rosie is getting cold so uh take care of yourself wise old tree i'll think about it all right rosie rosie come on let's head back it's's freezing. My hand's going to drop off. I'm Uriandropov.

Take care, listeners. Until next time, I love you. Bye! Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me bums up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me bums up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

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