[recording starts]

George Stroumboulopoulos: "We've been talking about this for a long time, very excited to have them! Uh, big record this year called In Rainbows uh, not just musically but also what it's done for the industry, so there's a lot to talk about with this guy! Joining us now on the phone is Ed O'Brien from Radiohead. How are you , man?

Ed: "Good!

George: "Things are going well, eh?

Ed: "Yeah, very nice...

George: "All right. Tell me, talk about the record just in the sense of the lead up to it. There was a lot of talk about this new way to release the album. I mean talk about what some of the conversations were like in the band before you got to this point.

Ed: "OK. Firstly, "We don't want to sign big, huge record deals for lots of money". That was one thing that was becoming perfectly obvious. That we kind of wanted to do an album-by-album approach, but that didn't necessarily negate re-signing with EMI, I have, I may hasten to add. But we didn't want to do the big, huge advance, because that seemed to be something that doesn't usually serve bands very well when they get given huge amounts of money up front and stuff like that. So that was another ...one. And another was, there's a whole... I think we wanted to embrace this whole idea of, of, or at least acknowledge in a mature way the whole idea that when you make a release now, that, um, it's available basically for free on the internet through various means. You know? Every record of ours since Kid A had been "leaked" and was all over the internet before the CDs hit the shops. So, we wanted to acknowledge that and we also wanted to acknowledge that you know, there's a whole generation of people out there who, uh, and I would imagine they're probably students, and sort of... it's the younger generation than my generation. Who... don't expect to pay for their music. Now, I heard a particularly brilliant interview with Quincy Jones about a year and a half ago: he's an incredibly wise, wise man, obviously, undoubtedly one of the standout musical characters of the Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries. And the question was posed to him ...and, he was asked, you know: "How do you feel about the music industry? Are you scared by...Are you scared by the fact that there's music for free all over the internet, and record sales, physical record sales are diminishing?" and all this. And he was like, "NO", he said, "NO," he said, "Man", his phrase was "The genie's out of the bottle." "and there's a whole generation who don't expect to pay for music." and, you know, you can't say necessarily that that's right or wrong, it's just a fact. So I think we wanted to acknowledge that in a way. And, we also wanted to really hold any decisions that we would make on the release of the record right until the end of the record. Once the record was mastered and we had discovered what kind of record we had within us.

George: "So I guess you wanted to sit back and let it breathe, for a while? And then you can go and make... Did you make a lot of last minute changes?

Ed: "Yeah! We always do.

George: "Laughs

Ed: "We didn't really let it breathe, we, what we did was we finished. We finished at the end of June, it was mastered at the beginning of July, the first couple of masterings. And then we had six weeks off. And we reconvened in the beginning of September and there were some further mastering that had been done. But it was done pretty much. "OK, what kind of record do we have?" We decided , our management had, of course I've sort of slightly omitted the fact that our management back in April had come up with this idea of releasing and doing a download release initially with an "honesty box" approach with people paying what they felt was right. So, we knew that was going to be the first release, the way it was going to be released initially, but we also knew that we wanted a CD, a physical CD release. But we didn't know whether we were going to resign with EMI or who we were gonna go with the record, so it was all about the download.

George: "Was everybody in the band on the same page, or was there much discussion about this?

Ed: "Yeah, there was, there was quite a bit of discussion, but I think, you know when something feels right. We felt, we felt it was genuinely, genuinely a brilliant idea and it fitted us perfectly, it suited us perfectly. And I think the only discussion was that they initially said, "Well, let's just not do a physical release at all", let's just do it as a download only. Bang." And, we felt that that was a bit too extreme. We wanted to have a, you know, our generation is one that still likes to have CD or an Album, and likes to flick through the artwork and the credits, and stuff like that, and wants something in their hands. So, that was really the only further discussion, but yeah, we were all, we were all in agreement about it.

George: "We're talking to Ed O'Brien from Radiohead here, uh, the new record called In Rainbows...You know, you mentioned the generational thing, and I wondered, when you experience music differently in that sense, where there isn't the same kind of relationship with the physical package, does that, do you think that changes one's relationship with a record?

Ed: "Uh yeah! I mean I can only speak from my experience that, I grew up with, my first records that I bought were in the Seventies, and they were all vinyl, they were albums, so you had these....

George: "Which was the first one?

Ed: "Well, the first record that my father gave me was Sergeant Pepper's and he was like. Age seven, it was like, "Listen up, son, this is music," and it, you know, it was obviously the double-gatefold sleeve and it was amazing. But the first album I went out and bought myself, apart from, again, The Beatles' greatest hits, the blue and the red greatest hits, was um...ELO: Out of the blue.

George: "Excellent! That explains...

Ed: "And I remember that album cover. You know, cause it was a spaceship, and it was at that time Close encounters had just come out, so it was, you know, and you would open this thing up and in the middle is like the deck of the Starhip enterprise, it was the heart of the spaceship.

George: "I think that might explain a lot about your band, doesn't it, if it's The Beatles and ELO to start, that kind of sets the stone, the tone!

Ed: "Well, ELO is probably a personal one of mine in the early days. I don't think any of the others would claim to...in fact they'd be horrified probably. Now, I mean, yeah, The Beatles obviously for all of us, a huge... But it was that whole thing of, you know, it's just so physical, it was just a thing that you held and you cherished, and you looked after. And I bought the plastic sleeve to put it in so that the artwork and the edges of the record wouldn't get frayed. So, I've grown up with this. So, I still like something that's physical. I love looking, I mean, I was just this morning listening to the Feist record, the new Feist record, well, not so new, the one from last year.

George: "Mhmm.

Ed: "And, again, looking through...I love looking through the credits. I've always loved looking through... "Where was the album recorded?" "Who were the engineers?" You know.. "Name check, that they namechecked..." I don't know, for me, that's what I need to, that's when I love music, that's what I like, to get in there. I would not choose to sort of, you know, patronize or sort of presume that that's the only way you can listen to music and I think that, you know, if somebody's seventeen or eighteen years old who just, not into that, just, music is a kind of; remember, music probably for a seventeen or eighteen year old is just probably there constantly, whereas, when I was a seventeen and eighteen year-old, you had Walkmans but that was the first thing really that you could take...that music was portable. Now it's all portable. It's all about portable music. So it's a different experience. I mean, I've, my foundations are very different from someone who's sixteen or seventeen now.

George: "All right! We're talking to Ed O'Brien here from the band called Radiohead. Um, more to get into with you Ed, so hang on a second. Let's play some music, though. From the album In Rainbows, this is Bodysnatchers. Here's Radiohead. You're listening to the Strombo show!

(BODYSNATCHERS)

George: "Bodysnatchers...there's Radiohead, on the Strombo show, on the Chorus radio network. We're talking with Ed O'Brien from the band Radiohead. We're gonna take a quick commercial break, and we're gonna come back and spend some more time with Ed, you, and myself, on the Strombo show, on the Chorus radio network...

(//////)

George: "All right, we are back here on the Strombo show! Let's carry on our conversation. We are joined by Ed O'Brien from Radiohead.

George: "Ed, let me ask you. When Radiohead goes into a studio now, I don't want to presume that it's much different from how it would've been ten years ago, but is it a different experience, when you as a band Radiohead go in to make a record?

Ed: "Well, frighteningly there seem to be some common traits that run throughout all our recordings!

George: "Laughs

Ed: "Like: One of the things we suffered from this, on this record, was the case of huge lack of collective self-confidence, and then when you've got collective, lack of collective self-confidence, it kind of can become personal as well. It wasn't too bad on the personal front, but on the, because we knew we were OK, but we, it just wasn't happening together for a while, so that didn't really happen on the Hail to the Thief, but it's happened on every other record.

George: "Mhmm

Ed: "And I would consider probably Hail to the Thief not one of, possibly one of our strongest things, so maybe it's an important thing that we need that pushes us up that bit further. I think an interesting thing, is one thing that we did, when we made records in the past, we made a record that...you know... The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A, particularly, the whole idea of those records was that you make this, you record these songs, and then you sequence them. And the whole idea is that, very traditionally, you put the record on, or you put the CD on, and you listen to it from start to finish and it's meant to be listened to, it's an entirity. You know, like my favorite record albums like "What's going on" by Marvin gaye, "Abbey road", Beatles, those kind of records. And of course now it's very different, and we were sort of, one of the questions we were, I mean I was, saying "Well, how important is the tracklisting?" You know, maybe it's, because people just make their own tracklisting and that's cool and that's fine...but I think we still were, kind of like Nigel was very, Nigel was saying "No, you've still got to make a record. You've still got to be old fashioned because there's still people out there who want to hear it from start to finish and it's got to flow, it's got to be a body of work that flows from start to finish." So, we ended up doing that again.

George: "Talk about the collective self-confidence. When, when does it occur to you that it isn't clicking, is it, is it three months into a tour when you guys do look around and say "Uh, I don't know" or is it when there's time off?

Ed: "Well, the touring is, it's a bit of a smokescreen, you know? Because touring is, it's kind of a bit like the payoff for what we do. It's really, it can be really fun, to play your music in front of people and to have these glorious evenings, and when everyone, we all sort of come together, and we all leave, and we're all happy, and it's not very real in a way about what we do. It is because it's immediate but in terms of what we do recording-wise, it's a bit false, so because we were having a tough time of it and it wasn't happening we decided to go out on the road two years ago in 2000 and 6, the summer, and do some shows in theatres, and we came up to, I remember we came up to Toronto and to Montreal, and did some great theatre shows up there. And were playing in the new material, playing ten songs or so, and the problem with that was that we've got a very partisan, loyal audience, who just, are just really pleased to see us, and we're obviously pleased to see them. And they cheer every song, and it's great: You come off the road thinking "Wow, these songs are great" and we're gonna just literally record them live and Bang. And, we got back into the studio and quite frankly they just weren't up to scratch. And you can get away with a lot when you play live, you know? And we realized that. You can get a little bit sloppy if you're not careful. Because it's the vibe, the emotion is something that is so important with that, whereas you've got to be pretty on it when you record. So when we got back in the studio with Nigel, it became fairly obvious that what we had wasn't great. It's more noticable, if you're having like, two or three weeks when it's just really hard work, and you don't seem to be making any progress, it can be quite demoralizing, especially if you have expectations of greater things. And I think what we'll learn next time is to be less judgemental, have lower expectations, but just go "You know what?" Even in this time. And we kept on saying it to ourselves, "Even though it's kind of not going great there will be things from this that are really great" and of course there were things from it. So, you have to hold on and keep doing it really.

George: "Now I wonder, how connected you are, not just to your expectations, but to the fans' expectations in that, while you're doing this you realize that every time a Radiohead record comes out, it's more than just a band putting out a record. There's a very different relationship with your audience in that, when I saw that theatre tour you were talking about, and I loved the shows, but there was a really neat element that had developed that I hadn't seen in previous Radiohead shows and I guess it comes when, with heritage. There was a whole group of people who were brand new to the band and had no idea, weren't that personally connected to the initial explosion of Radiohead. And I wonder if you recognize that from the stage?

Ed: "I don't know... It's difficult, for one, you know, on a, sort of on a basic level, you can sort of see it when, well, what I loved about that last tour is you'd see people my age or slightly older, in their late thirties, early fourties bringing along their kids, who are six or seven. So, obviously, those kids weren't born when Kid A was out. And we just did a show, a small gig in East London a couple of weeks ago, and it was 200 people and it was really interesting that the people that were there were not my age, they were like eighteen, nineteen, twenty, so, I sort of never really sort of take it in, but it's like, that's great! To still get people in who are eighteen, nineteen, who are, rather than just our age group or older, and, it's a great thing! And I don't think we're fully aware of when people arrive new to it, but I think that we see a whole span of ages when you look out there. And that, you know, that's just great for the heart, that's great for the soul when you see that! To think that you might possibly be somebody's first gig, it's like losing their gig virginity with you, it's just a very special thing, you know!

George: "Certainly!

Ed: "I was talking to the cab driver on the way into the studio and he said to me, he knew all sorts of different music, and he's like sixty and he's been into house and club in recent years, and he's been into bands since the sixties, when he was a teenager and he said, "My favorite band was The Police!", and I said, "Wow! That was the first gig I ever went to see, were the Police!". And so, that thing, if someone's coming to see you for the first time... and it's a great, it's a very special thing you know!

George: "Sure! And it's funny that you mention the Police, because they just came back and did their whole thing, but there was a lot of time in between when that band was off, and I wonder, you're at that stage of your career now with this particular band, you have a lot of records. Do you think about Radiohead in the bigger picture, in terms of the longevity of it? Because this never lasts forever.

Ed: "No. Well, you're absolutely right, and it's something that sort of, it has sort of caught my notice a bit. I mean, I think the thing is with bands, as a kind of a rule of thumb with bands; that bands have a window of creative opportunity, and you're lucky if you, sort of if that's over ten, fifteen years. After that, it's very difficult. And solo artists seem to be able to it a lot more better, because it's one person, say, you know, like Neil Young for instance , since he's, somebody's done it right, but it's one individual. When you've got five people and, you know, we all move in different ways, we all grow up in different ways, we mature in different ways, we all move differently and at different times. And so, for the five of you to be completely focused becomes harder, so for instance I felt when we were making this record that it was so hard, summoning all the energy I could possibly, and I know that we all did this, and I think there was a general feeling that this was possibly our last record, doing it! We just, it was the final last push. But now that we've done it, and when we're happy, and blah blah blah, it, I think it's just you have to just take it one album at a time, really.

George: "Mhmm

Ed: "And you're only as good as your last record. Radiohead won't be making records in order to sustain a greatest hits tour for example.

George: "Chuckling

Ed: "To go out there and play live. But, um, we want to make records that really mean something still, that still move people, you have The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A, there's a thing that was in those three records that...a magic that we needed to get back for In Rainbows, and I think the reason we're so happy is because I think we did that.

George: "How did you do it?? Is it a conversation thing? Do you, jam a song out until your fingers bleed? Like, how do you get to break that darkness?

Ed: "You just do it. It's not just about playing until your fingers bleed, I really, you know, that doesn't work with our band, we've never been one that, you know, you hear these stories that like when the Stones did Exile on Main St. they were jamming all night. I mean, that is so un-Radiohead.

George: "Laughing

Ed: "You know, our, classically our band rehearsals, maximum may last three or four hours. You know, we don't need a lot of playing together. We need enough, but not too much.

George: "All right man! Let's play some more music. We'll come back and talk some more. We're in conversation with Ed O'Brien from a little band called Radiohead. Let's go back to OK Computer. This is Paranoid Android. Radiohead, on the Strombo show! (Paranoid android)

George: "Paranoid android, from OK Computer, and Radiohead, they've got a new record called In Rainbows, now uh, they're coming to Canada, right now Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal are on the docket. The official dates are said to be announced sometime next week, he ain't gonna give em to us now.

Ed: "Laughing

George: "We're gonna go to a quick commercial break, we're gonna come back and spend some more time with Ed, and play some more music including a request of his, which I'm getting the sense is going to be a Canadian one. Ed O'Brien from Radiohead, with you, and myself, on the Strombo show.

(///////)

George: "All right, you're back here on the Strombo show, broadcasting across the country, uh, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Hamilton, London.. Hello to everybody who's joining us online and listening via your various cable packages. A lot of people excited to hear Radiohead, we've been hanging out with Ed O'Brien from Radiohead accredited as guitars and vocals. We've played a bunch of Radiohead songs. We'll play one of your requests in a second, but let me ask you. When you get out and you start playing the songs off In Rainbows live, I know next week you're gonna announce actual tour dates in Canada, and we've got cities like Vancouver, and Toronto, and Montreal....

Ed: "Yeah

George: "Are you...are there songs on In Rainbows that you're just really excited to play live, and to get into? Because they were the ones that really connected to you in the making of them?

Ed: "Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of them! I think because they are , I think it's quite an emotional record and I think people have noticed that, and I think that people have sort of really.... I mean I did! That was the first thing for me when we started rehearsing, it was like I really connected with Thom's lyrics. It was like, "Wow, this is very powerful stuff!", so, when you play songs that connect with people, it's an incredible force that you feel. And I, it's a two way thing, you know? So, I mean I can't wait to be playing... I mean all of them, but particularly if we get Weird Fishes-Arpeggi right, on the night, I mean, you know, on a balmy warm summer's night somewhere in Montreal or Vancouver, or Toronto, and there are a few people out there, and we've got the groove right, and the sun's going down, and all's well with the world, those are things to savor!

George: "Thom said that it's a very seductive record, lyrically?

Ed: "Yeah!

George: "Is it nice to be, I guess surprised, or nice to be sort of enveloped by your singer's lyrics, fifteen years in?

Ed: "Yeah! It's really important, I mean I think it goes for not just his lyrics but it goes for everyone to be surprised by what they do to go "Wow, I really like what that person has done!" That's really really important, and that's really cool. And that's kind of a, that's very important to keep surprising yourself. And I think it's a harder job doing lyrics as you get older, in a way. I think particularly in the medium that we're in, it's, I think what surprised me about Thom's lyrics were, "A" that they were so personal, it was the most personal lyrics I'd seen from him in a long time, but they were also incredibly mature. You know, they weren't, they were lyrics from somebody who's thirty-seven or thirty-eight, they were not from somebody who was trying to write for a twenty-one year old. It's the stuff of being a sentient human being on this planet. And we all kind of, we all might seem quite different, but in many ways we all have very common emotional experiences.

George: "And you know how a lot of bands, well, just a lot of people in general, in any group of friends, are very different in the way they handle eachothers' moments. And I wondered, because you hear about Thom not liking to tour, and you hear about within the band there's a push for creativity: Is the band good at dealing with eachothers' issues when they arise?

Ed: "Yeah, I think we are. I think we're getting better, I mean I think that the truth is that we started off as five boys from middle-class homes where, you know, emotions and all that stuff is usually swept under the carpet. And communication, is , you know, it can be quite, um...it can be quite sort of superficial. It can be great when everything's going well but as soon as the stuff starts getting sticky it's sort of "Clear your throat: Oh, I really don't know what to say". And I think we're good at confronting these sort of things, and also, we're good at giving people space, because I mean, at the end of the day, you want the people that you're in this band with to be happy and healthy, and so, sometimes being in this industry, doing the music and stuff like that and the things that we do aren't necessarily conducive to that. So, "A", you have to give space, to let them go through their own things, "B", you also have to recognize when somebody needs some help, and, you know, be supportive when they need to be supported, but, I like to think that we're pretty good. And I think we just care a lot about one and other as well, so you know, it's good that those...when you get older, that you sort of realize how much you love one and other, whereas when you're, when you're in your twenties you're just like, you, sometimes you don't want to see the best in one and other.

George: "Laughs...I wonder what it would be like being in Radiohead, being a man, as opposed to being in Radiohead as a boy.

Ed: "Laughs

George: "Because when that first single exploded for you guys, and that I don't think people were ready for The Bends and then the change to OK Computer, I mean, what was, it was...

Ed: "No.

George: "It was a bit of a crazy moment for you.

Ed: "Yeah. It was, I mean the, it was interesting, because of the initial Creep stuff and Pablo Honey was a bit mental, and it was a bit like "every man for himself" and I think what was interesting about that was that because it was such a violent sort of upheaval and so sort of shocking to our systems that cracks appeared very quickly and you realize that unless you supported one and other, this thing wouldn't last very long.

George: "Mhmm

Ed: "OK Computer I think we sort of, I mean, being quite supportive of Thom, but not also recognizing that on a more personal note that I needed some support as well. See, you don't know quite how to look after yourself, and, I don't think we knew how to look after ourselves, but we knew that his thing needed sort of...a bit of help, sometimes, from one and other.

George: "Well, you know, and you were mentioning earlier about a greatest hits album, that it's not really the Radiohead thing, or to support that tour, that the good thing is, if you had to do a Radiohead tour on a greatest hits package, you'd have to spend half your interviews talking about what that guy was saying in the Just video, and are you sure you want to revisit that part of your career?

Ed: "No, but the interesting thing is that now that we're off EMI, they're trying, they're planning to do a Greatest hits for April, May, to coincide with our tour, so...

George: "Laughing

Ed: "So that's an interesting moment, I mean, we won't be doing any promotion for that, obviously.

George: "Right!

Ed: "But yeah, yeah, exactly, that's right! Apparently Mark Ronson, you know Mark Ronson's done this cover of Just?

George: "Yes.

Ed: "And apparently the video that accompanies it, he's kind of redone the video with him in, playing every single part!

George: "Laughing

George: "I'll wrap on, as we started talking about the release of In Rainbows and the way it happened, digitally. When it was released as a traditional CD, and then in countries around the world, including Canada, it debuted at number 1.

Ed: "Yah!

George: "What did you guys think?

Ed: "Yeah baby. Laughing. It's amazing! It's great, I mean, you know, it's, I think it's funny because if we're honest about it, when we did the download and everything, and doing it ourselves, you know, one of the things that we had to acknowledge was that chart placings was not really something for us anymore, and it was not, you know, it was kind of like, you know, you won't! Because the previous records, in the UK they've all gone to number one since OK Computer. Not necessarily America or Canada. So, we were sort of looking at that and sort of waving goodbye to those chart placings. And then, it's almost like we had our, we could have our cake, and eat it! You know? Because we did this thing and then suddenly that, you know, it went to number 1 in Canada and the U.S., and it stayed in Canada at Number 1 for a while, and it stayed at France number 1, it was number 1 in the U.K., and so it was like, you guys are like some five, six-thousand miles away on the other side of the planet, and Vancouver really is the other side of the planet on the world for us, and people are digging it! So, and and, and putting it at number 1! I mean, that's still good!!

George: "The decision to not release the sales figures of the digital download, how did you guys come to that?

Ed: "Well, we've, because we've only just got it! I mean I was looking at it last night. We just got it as a pdf file, it's been done, and it's every single country, even Antarctica is in the breakdown of it! So I'm sure they will be released!

George: "Do you plan on touring Antarctica? If you sold a lot, then I mean, why not?

Ed: "No!! We can't go down there, (George is laughing heartily) that's a place not for human beings!

George: "Certainly, only for scientists.

Ed: "It's a place for wildlife and definitely not for oil exploration.

George: "That is, hey, that's another conversation for sure! Thanks for your time today, Ed, I appreciate that!

Ed: "It's a pleasure, George, thank you for your time, too!

George: "Let's play a song for you from Feist. What's the Feist song that you love so much right now?

Ed: "Oh, gosh, you know, cause I'm really new, cause we did a TV show with her three days ago, and people have been talking about her record. But I'm hopeless on names, and I don't want to do 1,2,3,4 because, I mean that's obviously beautiful, I know that's been done as an I pod thing, but I really like... It's the third track on the new record. Can you get me that one? What's that one called...

George: "That's...I can find it for you, we can play it for you right now! Thanks a lot for your time Ed!

Ed: "Thanks a lot George, Cheers, man!

George: "Take care man!

George: "Here's Feist, for Ed O'Brien, from Radiohead, on the Strombo show.

(Feist track 3 from The Reminder)

[recording ends]