Radcliffe: That was Anyone Can Play Guitar from what seems like a lifetime ago from Pablo Honey and the dawn of Radiohead and it is the title of a new film about the Oxford Scene which will come out later this summer. One of the things, when I've seen Radiohead and I'm well into double figures by now, every time I've seen them - I have always been struck by Colin Greenwood's baselines and on-stage costumes owe a great deal to Bootsy Collins and I understand, Colin, that you have just met your lead inspiration?

Colin: It's insane, we were walking into the BBC and there he was, you know - incredible I got a handshake and a smile and Ed took a photograph, which I'm happy to send if you want to put it on the website.

Radcliffe: Yeah I'd love that - alright Ed, how are you?

Ed: Alright Mark, Good thanks.

Radcliffe: Is he a big guy, Bootsy Collins?

Colin: He is as tall as Ed, I would say - he was wearing a purple sequinned top hat.

Radcliffe: Which is want you want, isn't it?

Colin: In central London, in hours of daylight. He looked amazing, you know fantastic. I saw him on Later... with Jools last night on the telly.

Radcliffe: I saw that yea

Colin: I thought - what a dude - played with James Brown when he was a teenager, you know and everything else after that. What an incredible man, what a thrill.

Radcliffe: Absolutely. Anyway - Anyone Can Play Guitar is this new film about the Oxford Scene which spawned you and many others, Ed?

Ed: Yeah, that's right. It is done by this directory call John Spria, and he just documents a whole period of time - from about... Well he goes right back to Mr Big...

Radcliffe: Mr Big and Romeo, that took me a back when I watched it But I thought "Wow - those guys can really sing!".

Ed: You're right there, it is shameful, you know, in Oxford - people said in circa '85 "Oh, do you remember Mr Big?" We didn't actually remember Mr Big. And I don't think - I don't think there was a favourable opinion of him, let's put it that way.

Radcliffe: No.

Ed: But when you see that footage, you're right, that had the harmonies down, there've got it right down.

Radcliffe: In the video they seemed like Oxford's answer to Queen.

Ed: Yeah, very earnest, weren't they?

Radcliffe: Yeah but it did sound great. One of the things that inspired this was the take-over of the club The Zodiac which you were involved with and that seemed a moment to document all this. The Zodiac was one of the prime live music venues for up-and-coming bands in Oxford.

Ed: Yeah it was, the main one for us before The Zodiac was the Jericho Tavern.

Radcliffe: The Jericho, yeah.

Ed: That as the place where we did our first proper gig, and we first started gigging probably '86. And we all went off to college and kept our hand in, if you like, and we came back in 1990 - 91 the Jericho - this promoter called Mac and transformed the Jericho, suddenly in '86, no bands were coming to Oxford.

Radcliffe: Right.

Ed: By the time we came back, everyone, you know, Primal Scream were coming through - all the indie bands, Birdland had just come through and suddenly Oxford was sort of on the map, and you know Ride put it firmly...

Radcliffe: Yeah, we will talk more about Ride in a while. Colin, I was surprised, this scene, scenes are loose at the best of times, but it doesn't really seem to start until the back end of punk and the 80s. Was there no thriving Punk scene in Oxford? Did it take time for Oxford to establish a scene because it is, you know accessible to London?

Colin: It is so close to London, people might as well go to London to see a band. But there were these figures in the music scene, this guy Mac who set up The Jericho and promoted there and they were the most important people. Before our time there were like punk bands in Oxford, there was this pub called The Oranges and Lemons at the plain at the bottom of the Cowley Road and we had some friends who worked with us for years who were like part of that punk scene, you know

Radcliffe: Yeah.

Colin: When the National Front came to Oxford they went to meet them at the Station, stuff like that...

Ed: To fight them, not to greet them

[laughing]

Colin: I was using it like meeting someone in that mafia way, where you are met at the airport by the mafia...

Radcliffe: ...a cheery welcome for the National Front...

Radcliffe: A lot of the bands, and you can tell me some of the names, in the early parts of the film kind of not really made it outside of Oxford. The Oxford sound as it emerges is very sort of whimsical, it seems sort of quite polite, it doesn't seem, and I know I'm using a horrible cliche here it does seem a bit "dreaming spires".

Ed: Yea, and a bit twee... Yea I totally agree with you, it was quite literary and quite clever and certainly when we were 14 or 15 the last thing you want to here is clever music, you want straight from the gut and to be quite raw and primal and so I think that... personally speaking I was aware of a bit of the punk scene, but I was a bit scared, 'cos I was a too young to go into any of those pubs. And a lot of those bands, until Ride, there was Talulah Gosh...

Radcliffe: Talulah Gosh - but they seemed emblematic of that slightly whimsical scene, anoraky...

Ed: Yeah....

Radcliffe: The band in this who don't look anything like that are Swervedrive.

Ed: Brilliant band - Son of Mustang Ford - was a brilliant record, they did a geeat album, one of my favourites Ejector Seat Reservation. Yeah, they were the Stoogies, weren't they?

Radcliffe: They looked a bit crusty.

Ed: Yeah, what we used to call doity [spelling unclear].

Radcliffe: I don't know that word.

Colin: Yeah, it is an Oxford thing. But there were so many bands that was what is great about when we were there, 5:30 The Jennifers who were an early incarnation of Supergrass, and everyone was doing their own thing as well. So it wasn't like that scene thing, but there was a diverse one.

Radcliffe: And the early men of this film are The Candy Skins, who seem to be thwarted at every turn, really.

Ed: Yeah, you know what it, when we both watch that for the first time, watch the film that was the thing that came to be me and Coz, we thought almost they are the central figures of it, because there is a huge element of tragedy. They we really good mates...

Colin: They helped us out.

Ed: They helped us out a lot, you know, it was hard for them and it was a bit weird for us, as well. It was definitely hard for us you know when you see your mates and they are struggling and you're doing well. They was a lot of embarrassment and guilt going on there.

Colin: And their guitar song comes out in America in the same week as Nirvana's Nevermind is released, you know, with the distortion and stuff.

Radcliffe: It just gets buried... One of the questions about a film like this is: who cares if you don't live in Oxford, why make a film about it? But one of the things that came back to me was, growing up in Bolton and coming to punk gigs in Manchester, was how bound together the scene was by things like fanzines in every town, they were a couple of notable fanzines that were instrumental in this story, weren't there?

Ed: The two fanzines, the first one was called Local Support and it then became Curfew... The reason that there is a music scene, it is what every town needs, if you are going to have a music scene you need three things: you need a fanzine so, for a band like us it was, when we were starting was to get on the front of that. NME, Melody Maker, Sounds wouldn't touch us. We had to get on the front of that local fanzine. The second thing is that you need somewhere to rehearse and the third thing is somewhere to play. If you have those three things happening you can get a music scene, but you need all three of those things and without anyone of them it doesn't really happen.

Radcliffe: OK, we will talk a lot more, let's hear Twisterella by Ride and we will talk about what an influence this band were on you.

[music]

Radcliffe: From '92 from, was it an album or was it an EP?

Maconie: Grasshopper.

Radcliffe: I can't remember now. Twisterella by Ride. I think they finest moment was Leave Them All Behind, I was thing about playing that but I didn't want to play it if we didn't have time to play the full version, which is eight minutes, which we don't but we will get there one day. Talking to Ed and Colin from Radiohead about this film about the Oxford scene Anyone can Play Guitar. I wrote down while I was watching it, a quote from you Ed while you were being interviewed, it looked like you were in your loft there was a broken computer behind you…

Ed: It was the management office. [laughs]

Radcliffe: It is a quote about Ride you said "They made us believe it was possible, no-one had been cool from Oxford before"

Ed: Yea, a really really really big point, i mean…We started this band in '85 and we had two years just pottering around and we went off to college. I went off to Manchester and, of course, Manchester '87 to '90 is the epicentre of all things cool, for obvious reasons. And coming back to Oxford in 1990 it was like, hang on a sec, there is a bit of coolness here as well. It was Ride, they were on Creation, you know, they were the darlings of the indie press. It is a really important thing, if you come from a place like Oxford, which didn't really have an history...

Radcliffe: It seems extraordinary in itself doesn't it?

Ed: Well, yeah, I guess so, it does but…Bristol down the road was a cool place...

Radcliffe: It is just part of the English landscape, and Cambridge has a kind of strong musical lineage

Colin: There was this Thames Valley thing as well, Reading people, like Chapter House, Slowdive and stuff like that

Radcliffe: Shoegazers.

Colin: Yeah.

Ed: You have to believe a place is... If you are trying to be cool you have to believe that it is possible. If you don't believe that it is possible then you just go "Sod it, we will move to Swindon", you know.

[laughing]

Colin: XTC.

Radcliffe: XTC.

Ed: Yeah.

Radcliffe: Ride were interviewed, Mark Gardener said, it seemed, Colin, "so simple we sent out our tape, we had done a few gigs and then it just took off" it seemed so simple when he put it like that?

Colin: Who said that!?

Radcliffe: Mark Gardener about Ride...

Colin: Yeah, but they looked great and they sounded... I mean Chelsea Girl, the EP they recorded the first one was amazing and we did a demo in the same place years before... It was fantastic yeah.

Radcliffe: Again when you describe life off for Radiohead, again it sort of seemed like, without trying much, you suddenly had a club full of A&R men. They is some great early footage, very grainy, but it is very amusing to see Thom as "method front man" and "rockstar" with his long blonde hair...

Ed: Yeah!

Radcliffe: Ride it seemed easy for them, cos they were great, as you say. Did it then feel easy for you , cos that is how it comes over in the way you describe it?

Ed: It just happened very quickly. Thom finished college in '91 and then we did, that summer, we decided OK we aren't going to wait, Jonny had just started and we were; we not going to wait for Jonny another three years. So we are going to start and it did happen within 6 months, but again I think; the reason it happened quickly was because of all the bands that went before us. I think what is interesting about the film is, that you realise that the seems to be a wave every year or every two years. And each wave stands on the shoulders of the previous wave. So you know, by the time our demo is being touted around in October of '91... There were two thing really. One: it was acceptable for a band to be cool and an alright band to come from Oxford which was, you could get A&R men to come down, which was very important to play in front of your home audience. But the other thing was, for us it was like Teen Spirit and Nirvana. The early Radiohead songs followed a very similar pattern, you know, quiet verses and loud choruses...

Colin: ..Metallica…

Ed: Yeah. And our influences were the same as Nirvana. Predominately like The Pixies, for example, that's a real Pixies' trick. So, of course, when Nirvana broke, they are looking around for more bands like, that sound like Nirvana. People are more open to that thing and we have been doing this for three years in village halls and stuff like that so, you know, good timing is everything.

Radcliffe: Another thing that comes out of the film, one of the sort of general feelings, consensus views of the Oxford scene is: release it, even, if possibly, it is commercial suicide, even if it is totally non-commercial and people may detect that was a kind of adage or axiom that stayed with you right through Radiohead to the current day.

[Colin nervous laughter]

Ed: Yeeessss...

Radcliffe: It hasn't proved to be commercial suicide for you.

Ed: No.

Radcliffe: I mean that kind of experimentation, not sticking to the most obvious route.

Colin: Yeah, but speaking personally, I don't think we would know what the most obvious route was anyway.

Radcliffe: OK. So when is the film out, do you know?

Ed: No, I've got no... [laughs]

Radcliffe: It is late summer we think.

Ed: It has been finished hasn't it? I think they are waiting for some kind of, some finial clearances or something and there is a website. I think, like you said, it is a really good film about, it reflects any small music scene

Radcliffe: Yeah

Ed: It is kind of... My wife, isn't particularly interested in the Oxford music scene, actually found it quite compelling...

Radcliffe: If you have ever been in a band or you are growing up in your town it kind of mirrors certain elements of it. Everyone can get something from it. So where are you up to, obviously King of the Limbs [sic] is out and everything. Are you limbering up to do anything particular or doing any playing or any festivals or anything?

Colin: No, we are just taking a break at the moment and then we are going to get back together and um yeah just playing in a room together, that's the plan really.

Radcliffe: Yeah? I was just thinking about it and watching this and thinking of the time when you dream of headlining The Jericho Tavern. And I also remember taking to you Ed on the several occasions we have met. I think it was after Kid A and you were saying, Next time I think we will do a straight ahead album of three minute pop songs..

[Laughing]

Radcliffe: It doesn't seemed to have happened as yet does it?

Ed: [laughing]No, it doesn't .

Colin: Next time.

Ed: Next time.

Radcliffe: I doubt it somehow. Anyway, guys, thanks for spending some time, it was great to talk to you.

Ed: Thanks a lot.

Radcliffe: See you soon. Radiohead and this is Lotus Flower...

[recording ends]