Edith Bowman: Hey. Hello, Jonny. How are you?

Jonny Greenwood: Hey. I'm good, Edith. How are you?

Edith Bowman: I'm all right.

Thank you for agreeing to do this.

I don't know if you remember, but I was very lucky to present you with an award a couple of years ago—I think it was an Ivor Novello Award—and I kind of cornered you there and said, "Please come on my podcast at some point."

Jonny Greenwood: Yes.

Edith Bowman: And it took me this long to actually write and ask.

I'm sorry.

Jonny Greenwood: Don't be daft.

Better late than never.

Edith Bowman: Well, I feel like now is a good place to start, because I mentioned Pablo and this amazing score for Spencer with Jane.

Can we go back, if that's all right, and talk about where—and how—and why you made that step, or even whether it felt like a step, into creating music for moving images... for film?

Jonny Greenwood: It was really just invitations from Paul Thomas Anderson, and then Lynne.

I just felt like I was meeting people and doing music for them, rather than getting too mired in the slightly frightening swamp of professional soundtrack writing.

I do occasionally get emails from frightening people in Los Angeles saying, "Would you like your name to be put forward for the shortlist of composers being considered for this project, which I can't tell you the name of, but it's going to be a big film?"

It's all so blank, anonymous and off-putting that, luckily, I don't have to get into that side of it, which looks gruesome.

Instead, it tends to be directors contacting me directly.

There's a relationship.

There's a connection.

There's a way of communicating creative ideas—whether visually or musically.

Edith Bowman: So there's a real creative dialogue from the beginning?

Jonny Greenwood: Exactly.

And I think I've been very indulged.

I've been lucky to keep getting directors who use music very prominently in their films.

They all seem to have long stretches with no music at all, and then sections with just music, rather than lots of underscore running underneath scenes.

You know...

Quiet...

A little bit bland...

A little bit exciting...

Running for fifteen minutes.

Lots of films seem to work that way now, and it just looks like a nightmare to me.

Edith Bowman: Is writing film music a completely different process from writing with a band?

Jonny Greenwood: It's similar, actually.

It's lots of the same technology and lots of the same techniques that I use when working with Radiohead.

I always compare it to being in a band with the director, the editor, and everyone making the film.

I quite enjoy suddenly getting to know a new group of people and feeling like you're part of their band.

Edith Bowman: I'd quite like to see Paul Thomas Anderson in a band.

What do you think his role would be?

Jonny Greenwood: (laughs)

I saw him a couple of months ago.

We were hanging out, and he started playing the drum kit.

Honestly...

I didn't know where to look.

It was gruesome.

Stick to filmmaking, Paul...

Please.

Edith Bowman: What was so nice about preparing for today was luxuriating in some of the films you've worked on.

It had been such a long time since I'd watched There Will Be Blood, and it was a wonderful experience to go back and revisit it.

We're so lucky, aren't we, to have this incredible library of films that we can dive back into whenever we want?

I just thought, "I'm going to watch There Will Be Blood today."

It was a real treat.

What do you remember about that film in particular?

And how does a project like that begin?

I'm interested in when you come on board.

Not just with Paul, but with Lynne, Pablo and Jane as well.

Does the director call you?

Do they send you a script?

Do you visit the set?

Or is every project different?

Jonny Greenwood: It tends to begin very early with all of those directors.

Really, it's just an excuse to write lots of music.

I often feel slightly ashamed that I'm probably thinking about the soundtrack album earlier than I should be.

There'll be a wonderful group of musicians coming together, so I'll probably write more music than the film actually needs.

Terrible confession...

I'll have about a quarter of an eye on releasing it as an album anyway.

It's simply because you know the players are going to be extraordinary.

It's such an opportunity.

You know you'll write the music that's needed for the film, but you also get to play.

That's the amazing part.

It's like walking into a sweet shop.

You start a project and think about all the different instruments, all the different musicians, all the different ways of making music.

That's really the fun.

Then the challenge is narrowing it all down to just a few ideas and following those.

Edith Bowman: I had to drive down to Bristol yesterday, so I lined up all of your appearances on Adam Buxton's podcast over the years.

It was such a lovely journey, just listening to the two of you talk.

One thing that really comes across is how much you love what you do.

Whether it's Radiohead or writing film music, your enthusiasm is incredibly infectious.

You almost never hear musicians talking so openly about how much they enjoy touring or making records.

It's genuinely refreshing.

Listening to you describe writing a score as an opportunity to play, to experiment, and to work with musicians from all over the world...

That wasn't really a question.

It was just something I noticed.

Jonny Greenwood: (laughs)

Yeah...

It's absurd.

I'm incredibly lucky.

I honestly feel like I'm doing exactly what I always wanted to do.

Not many people get to say that.

It's a huge privilege.

And it still feels limitless.

That's what's exciting.

Having said that...

I seem to keep repeating myself.

I keep getting asked why I'm writing all this Baroque music.

So perhaps it's time to move on.

But I do love having deadlines.

I love having music that needs to be written.

I like having a reason to write it.

You get to hide, just a little, behind the fact that it's for somebody else's project.

I really like that.

Edith Bowman: Did you ever have a similar experience with film that you had with music?

I was listening to you tell Adam the story about seeing The Fall live for the first time, and how physically overwhelming that experience was.

Did a film—or perhaps the music within a film—ever affect you in that same way?

Was there ever a moment when you suddenly understood the power of the relationship between music and image?

Jonny Greenwood: That's difficult to answer.

I think my most common reaction to really good film music is simply to go looking for the soundtrack album afterwards.

I remember the Jerry Goldsmith scores being astonishing.

I remember hunting down soundtracks like The French Connection.

But I'm honestly not very knowledgeable about film music.

I don't know the names of many film composers.

It's never really been my world.

Which is one of the reasons I sometimes feel slightly fraudulent working in it.

I'm not particularly film-literate.

I get into lots of embarrassing situations with Paul because he'll ask if I've seen some classic film...

...and the answer is almost always no.

Edith Bowman: I want to stay with There Will Be Blood for a little while.

How did you actually begin writing for it?

Jonny Greenwood: Paul had a recording of a piece I'd written for the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Someone in the audience had made a bootleg recording, and he'd somehow got hold of it.

He played it against the film and simply said, "Can you write more music like this?"

He also wanted music that was a little more tender for other parts of the story.

He'd also heard the score I'd written for Bodysong.

I think he'd seen the film at a festival, and that's probably what made him think of me in the first place.

So I suddenly found myself writing all these short pieces of music inspired by the landscape and the characters.

It wasn't really scene-by-scene writing.

It was more like saying, "Here's a suite of pieces."

Or perhaps...

"Here's a library of music."

That sounds rather pretentious.

(laughs)

But really it was just a whole collection of pieces.

Some of them were fully recorded with the musicians before Paul had even decided exactly where they'd go.

There weren't really demos.

They were finished recordings.

I think only two or three cues in the entire score were actually written directly to picture.

Even then, they weren't recorded with a click track.

Paul would simply say something like, "I need music that feels a bit like the Jaws theme."

Or, "Something that sounds predatory while he's buying up all the land."

That's where "Future Markets" came from.

I'd just write four or five minutes of music with that feeling.

These days, editors can manipulate music so easily that it doesn't matter if something is slightly too long, too fast, or too slow.

Those things can usually be adjusted afterwards.

Edith Bowman: Had you seen any footage before you started writing?

Jonny Greenwood: Yes.

I'd seen some test footage and some very early, very long cuts.

It was enough to get a sense of the characters, the landscape and the colours.

I also had the script.

That's already plenty of inspiration.

Edith Bowman: Once you've read the script, seen some footage and spoken with Paul, where do you actually begin?

Do you sit at the piano?

Pick up a guitar?

Or is it completely instinctive?

Jonny Greenwood: Usually it's just a piano...

...paper...

...and making little recordings on my phone.

Sometimes those phone recordings even end up in the finished film.

Or they're copied almost exactly.

Which seems insane to me.

But Paul likes them.

He likes hearing the clumsy way I've stumbled through a tune for the first time.

That's often the starting point.

Unless it's electronic music, in which case the process is a bit different.

But generally it just feels...

...limitless.

Edith Bowman: One thing I noticed about There Will Be Blood is that some of the music almost feels like horror.

The opening cue—with those painful strings as Daniel Plainview crawls across that enormous landscape—creates such an overwhelming physical feeling.

Then later you introduce these much gentler moments.

And when the piano finally appears, it almost feels shocking.

The music is woven so deeply into the characters' emotional state that every change in instrumentation shifts the way we experience the film.

Was that deliberate?

Jonny Greenwood: What happened was that Paul had a demo of me playing only the first half of that piano piece.

It was basically just the first four chords.

He kept playing it over and over again while he was editing.

Eventually there were so many repeats that I had to write more music in the same style.

That kind of back-and-forth is incredibly helpful.

It means the picture and the music grow together, instead of one simply being imposed on the other at the end.

Edith Bowman: I also think it's so important to know when not to use music.

There's a wonderful example in There Will Be Blood. The obvious thing would have been to score the moment when Daniel leaves H.W. on the train.

It would have been so easy to heighten the emotion and manipulate the audience.

But Paul doesn't.

That silence somehow makes it even more powerful.

Then, later, when Daniel is remembering those moments and we see the flashbacks, the music finally arrives.

It's such a clever contrast.

The two scenes are emotionally connected, but one is left completely exposed while the other is carried by the score.

It's fascinating how music—and the absence of music—can completely change the emotional weight of a scene.

Jonny Greenwood: Like I say, I feel all the directors I've worked with are similar in that respect.

They're all quite averse to simply spreading music across the whole film like a big paintbrush.

It takes away the impact of silence.

And it also takes away the impact of the moment when music finally begins.

Separating those two things is really important.

Edith Bowman: Constant background music can become exhausting as well.

Jonny Greenwood: Exactly.

It just becomes a drone...

Or a tone that's always there.

Very often the sounds that are actually being made on screen are much more interesting than any score could be.

Edith Bowman: Then you arrive at Phantom Thread, which has such a beautiful score.

It almost has that lush, old Hollywood quality to it.

What were the conversations with Paul before you started writing?

Jonny Greenwood: (laughs)

Well...

I kept saying the score should be really small.

Minimal.

Quite empty.

And Paul kept saying he wanted...

"Big-ass strings."

(both laugh)

Edith Bowman: Did that terrify you or excite you?

Jonny Greenwood: At first it made me a little wary.

I thought it might become a pastiche.

That made me anxious.

Then I realised I couldn't really write a pastiche anyway.

What I wrote was simply the best version of that style that I was capable of writing.

I wasn't trying to imitate somebody else.

I was genuinely trying to understand how those romantic scores from the 1950s worked.

Everything in the score is completely sincere.

It's genuinely romantic.

Of course, being English, you feel rather awkward about embracing that sort of emotion.

But that really was the motivation behind it.

Edith Bowman: The very first cue—"House of Woodcock"—immediately wraps itself around the audience.

It's almost like a comfort blanket.

I remember hearing it for the first time and immediately wondering where the score was going to take me next.

Was that piece written right at the beginning of the project?

Did it become a gateway into the rest of the music?

Jonny Greenwood: Yes.

It became the main theme very quickly.

I was sending it to Paul while he was sending me early footage and rough cuts.

It really grew out of listening to lots of music from the 1950s.

I was trying to recreate that feeling of an orchestra being conducted directly to picture.

Back then, conductors weren't following computer click tracks.

They were literally reading the score while watching the film.

A great conductor could constantly change tempo, responding to the picture and still arrive precisely where they needed to.

I find that approach incredibly exciting.

I'm always slightly wary when a piece of music is locked to one constant tempo because a computer says so.

Real performances don't work like that.

When you're making demos on a computer, it's very easy to type in 120 beats per minute at the beginning...

...and it's still 120 beats per minute at the end.

Computers give you enormous freedom.

But they can also trap you on a grid that's surprisingly difficult to escape.

I try to use technology for the things it's genuinely good at—whether it's old technology or new.

Edith Bowman: How important is it for you to see footage?

How important is it to experience the performances before you start writing?

Jonny Greenwood: It's the most important thing.

From a script—or from early conversations—you can get ideas about instruments or atmosphere.

But as soon as there's test footage, everything changes.

Spencer is a good example.

Pablo sent me the very first thing they'd filmed.

It was Diana walking around the grounds of the estate, filmed with a handheld camera following right behind her.

It immediately felt claustrophobic.

Almost like a Hitchcock film.

That made it obvious that anything oppressive, overbearing or frightening in the music would work perfectly.

I realised it wasn't going to be The Crown.

It wasn't going to be Downton Abbey.

It was going to be something much more unsettling.

That was exciting.

That's really where all the musical ideas for Spencer came from.

Edith Bowman: Pablo talked to me about those wonderful contradictions in the score.

You have these Baroque textures alongside jazz.

They almost feel like two sides of Diana's emotional world.

Was it enjoyable to move between those different musical languages inside the same film?

Jonny Greenwood: Yes.

I kept thinking that if you transported a jazz band back four hundred years, they wouldn't actually be that out of place.

The instruments are different, but the musicians wouldn't be.

There are surprising similarities.

Baroque musicians improvised.

Harpsichord players often worked from figured bass, where they're given only numbers indicating the harmony and they improvise the rest.

So there's improvisation on both sides.

I found that connection really interesting.

Edith Bowman: You mentioned on Adam Buxton's podcast that you'd love to take these scores on the road and perform them in cinemas.

I've seen a couple of live film concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, and there's nothing quite like watching a film while hearing the score performed live.

I even took my children to see Star Wars at the Royal Albert Hall.

My eldest turned to me afterwards and said, "I didn't realise there was so much music in the film."

When you actually see the orchestra playing almost continuously, it's astonishing.

I hope you'll get the chance to do that more often.

Jonny Greenwood: We talked about doing that with Spencer.

It almost happened.

But there are really only a handful of cues that use a full string orchestra, so it became difficult to make it work.

The jazz musicians were completely up for it, though.

In a way it's quite a fraudulent score.

I gave those musicians very little written material.

What they created from it was extraordinary.

They generated so much atmosphere through the way they played.

Byron Wallen in particular...

Although all of them were remarkable.

John Edwards on double bass...

He's just ridiculous.

Like an animal.

The sounds he can produce are unbelievable.

Edith Bowman: Do you have a regular group of musicians that you return to for different scores?

Or does every project begin with a new search?

Jonny Greenwood: Usually it's people I already know.

Or friends of friends.

I'm incredibly lucky that I can simply write to someone out of the blue and ask if they'd like to play.

Quite often they've heard of the film and they're excited to be involved.

That's another huge privilege.

That's how I found the French horn players for The Power of the Dog.

I can think of an instrument...

Find a player...

Or have someone recommend one...

Then just write to them.

I do all of this work on my own.

Which means I'm slow.

Projects take a long time.

I don't really have arrangers or assistants.

I remember someone in the industry telling me I should hire assistants, build a team and start making several films every year.

That was probably my opportunity to do it.

But I just couldn't imagine it.

I'd spend my time telling people what to do—which I'm no good at anyway.

And I'd miss out on the part I enjoy most.

Orchestrating.

Arranging.

I love that slightly nerdy, crossword-puzzle side of writing.

It's incredibly satisfying.

Then the musicians arrive, and you discover which ideas work and which ones don't.

You learn from every mistake.

Again...

I'm unbelievably lucky.

I can afford to waste an hour of an orchestra trying something that doesn't work.

Most film composers don't have that luxury.

They're under enormous pressure to get everything right the first time.

Edith Bowman: Every composer's path seems completely different.

The people they choose to work with, and the way those collaborations develop, are always unique.

Can we talk a little about Lynne Ramsay?

I absolutely love Lynne.

Jonny Greenwood: So do I.

She's brilliant.

Edith Bowman: How did you start working together?

Did she simply get in touch out of the blue?

Jonny Greenwood: Yes.

It was for We Need to Talk About Kevin.

She just contacted me.

She's incredibly talented.

An amazing photographer as well.

I remember seeing her black-and-white short film Swimmer.

It's just extraordinary.

And then, of course, Morvern Callar.

Edith Bowman: Oh yes.

I felt as though that film had been made about me.

Growing up in a small fishing village in Scotland, it felt completely familiar.

I connected with it immediately.

I just wanted her to keep telling me stories.

Jonny Greenwood: She's bursting with enthusiasm.

Always full of ideas.

And she's wonderfully modest.

Edith Bowman: She really is.

Jonny Greenwood: She's got some very exciting projects that keep being delayed.

Hopefully the next one will finally happen.

We're already talking about ideas for it.

I really hope it comes together.

Edith Bowman: You Were Never Really Here is an extraordinary film.

I was lucky enough to interview Lynne about it at the Glasgow Film Festival.

We showed clips from the film and talked through her process.

It was fascinating hearing how collaborative she is—not only with actors, but with everyone behind the camera as well.

Jonny Greenwood: Absolutely.

She's constantly suggesting musical ideas too.

On We Need to Talk About Kevin, it was actually Lynne who suggested using a harp with metal strings.

She's involved right from the beginning.

Long before anything is filmed or recorded.

Edith Bowman: I love hearing that.

Jonny Greenwood: It's very different from the experience many film composers describe.

For them it's often:

"Here's the finished film."

"The music has to fit this."

"The demos must already sound like the finished score."

"The finished score must sound exactly like the demos."

"Those demos were based on temporary music written by somebody else."

"You've got three weeks."

"Don't sleep."

Then three different producers all have to approve every cue.

If one of them isn't happy, you rewrite it.

The music becomes the last thing anyone can still change.

It's almost as if they're saying, "Can you make the film work?"

It's a completely impossible situation.

Then, when it's finished, you're quietly thanked.

In terms of importance, you're somewhere below the make-up department.

That's why I always say how lucky I am to work with people like Paul Thomas Anderson and Lynne Ramsay.

It's the complete opposite experience.

Edith Bowman: I was fortunate enough to host a Q&A with Jane Campion and the cast of The Power of the Dog.

I was completely star-struck.

I felt about eight years old.

I was incredibly nervous.

The Piano is one of those films I return to again and again.

People still talk about the way music functions within that film.

How did The Power of the Dog come to you?

What were those early conversations with Jane like?

Jonny Greenwood: It began with an email from her producer, Tanya Seghatchian.

Then Jane wrote as well.

Jane often sent handwritten notes that she'd photograph and email to me.

Edith Bowman: I love that.

It somehow tells you everything you need to know about her.

Jonny Greenwood: They're incredibly long.

Very detailed.

She's remarkable.

She decides she wants to work with you...

...and then immediately places an extraordinary amount of trust in whatever you're about to do.

She doesn't mind if you make mistakes.

We recorded plenty of banjo ideas that simply weren't very good.

But those failures led us to other ideas that did work.

There was a real luxury in being able to experiment like that.

Edith Bowman: I love the simplicity of so much of that score.

The cue "25 Years" has such an intimate quality.

It feels incredibly transporting.

It probably wasn't simple to write, but it sounds wonderfully direct.

Jonny Greenwood: It really is simple.

That's just me playing the cello.

Edith Bowman: It sounds almost like a guitar.

Jonny Greenwood: Yeah.

It's a cello...

Played rather like a banjo.

I've got a cello called...

Well, my wife thinks it's the name of the schoolboy who owned it.

I think it's the name of the cello.

It's called Stephen Bennett.

I have got it right here.

Check it out.

Edith Bowman: Oh, wow!

Jonny Greenwood: And these are all the marks on the fingerboard...

...to show me where the actual notes are in tune.

And that's Stephen Bennett.

He was £150 from a shop in Witney.

And I love him very much.

Edith Bowman: Well, it's a pleasure to meet him!

It's such a schoolboy name as well, isn't it?

Stephen Bennett.

Jonny Greenwood: (laughs)

Yeah, totally.

And his mother's really perfect felt-tip handwriting is on the sticker inside it:

"Please return to..."

Edith Bowman: (laughs)

Jonny Greenwood: I very nearly had that moment of thinking,

"Well, listen...

I'm a cello player now.

I can go and buy a real cello."

I nearly did that awful thing of thinking that, because I could afford it, I should go and buy some incredibly expensive instrument.

Luckily I realised that Stephen is plenty good enough.

He's still got a lot of life in him.

Edith Bowman: Do you feel like you're still learning?

Whether that's discovering what you can get out of instruments...

...or what you can create...

...or finding a new instrument to incorporate into your work?

Jonny Greenwood: The biggest lesson is that every single player can bring thousands of different colours out of their instrument for every note they play.

That's what feels limitless.

Whenever I get really excited by computers, programming and all that side of things...

...I find myself bouncing straight back towards classical musicians and jazz players.

Because you suddenly realise they have far more variables available to them.

When you're using software, quite often all you're really doing is moving two or three numbers around.

You're changing filters, rhythms and sounds.

It changes things...

...but when someone is using their fingers, or their breath...

...it's just more chaotic.

There's more randomness to it.

You'll record exactly the same passage three times, and every performance is completely different.

Whereas with electronic music it's usually much more similar each time.

That side of things can be exciting...

...but it can also suddenly begin to feel a little boring.

So I'm constantly bouncing between those two worlds.

Edith Bowman: Do you get involved when Radiohead are asked to let their music appear in films?

Do you all discuss those requests together?

Jonny Greenwood: Yeah.

We'll all get an email saying that one of the songs has been suggested.

Usually we'll go and see the film.

It's not something we do very often.

Denis Villeneuve used "You and Whose Army?" in Prisoners.

I spoke to him recently for Dune, and he's such a genuine Radiohead fan.

It's really sweet watching his face light up whenever he starts talking about the band.

Edith Bowman: It really is lovely seeing people react like that to something they genuinely love.

I was thinking about examples like Vanilla Sky, and Children of Men as well.

I wondered whether it's something the whole band has to agree on before a song is licensed.

Jonny Greenwood: Yeah.

And there are some songs that were written specifically for films.

Like "Exit Music (For a Film)."

It would always feel strange for that to turn up somewhere else.

So we're a little wary about that sort of thing.

Edith Bowman: Before we finish, I just wanted to mention Licorice Pizza.

I absolutely adored it.

I know there wasn't a huge amount of original music for you to write, but that's still quite a tricky job when a film contains so many needle drops.

You still have to write music that somehow belongs alongside all those existing songs.

Jonny Greenwood: It's nice because you feel you're writing music that's specifically for a particular scene and a particular moment.

You're not appropriating somebody else's song or another piece of music.

If it works well, it simply underlines that the film is sincere.

That it takes itself seriously.

It's not just...

Well...

It's a very funny film.

Like all of Paul's films, there's lots of laughter and lots of throwaway humour.

But it's never just a joke.

Edith Bowman: Exactly.

It's got layers to it.

Jonny Greenwood: Exactly.

Even something like Boogie Nights has this strange core running right through the middle of it that's completely serious...

...while all these very funny things are happening around the outside.

It's a very unusual tone.

That's one of the reasons I love his films.

Edith Bowman: He's such a unique filmmaker.

It was an absolute treat getting to speak to him—and to Alana Haim—about the film.

I loved hearing the story about how her mum had been Paul's art teacher at school.

That completely blew my mind.

It's such a wonderfully small-world story.

And Cooper Hoffman is phenomenal in that film.

Absolutely phenomenal.

I really hope it's the beginning of a long collaboration.

It feels like Paul and Cooper have already built a genuine relationship.

I hope they make lots more films together.

It's always exciting watching a director and an actor grow alongside one another over several projects.

Jonny Greenwood: Yeah.

I agree.

Edith Bowman: Well...

I've kept you long enough.

I honestly can't thank you enough for taking the time to talk to me.

It's been an absolute treat.

I really hope we get the chance to do it again one day.

There was so much we didn't even get to.

Jonny Greenwood: Thank you, Edith.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long.

Edith Bowman: Not at all.

It was absolutely worth the wait.

Jonny Greenwood: That's very sweet of you.

Have a good day.

Edith Bowman: You too.

Take care.