Zane Lowe: Oh, you're speaking my love language with this music, man. It's so beautiful and immersive and heavy in all the right ways.

And I'm really happy for you, Ed O'Brien. It's good to see you.

Ed O'Brien: Good to see you too, Zane. It's been a minute.

Zane Lowe: Yeah, it has.

We used to see each other on the school run.

Ed O'Brien: We did.

And I was thinking, I think the first time we met each other was at South Park in 2001.

Zane Lowe: Yes. When Beck supported you.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah. It was our homecoming gig.

Zane Lowe: I remember. And we were both skinny and lanky and fresh-faced.

Ed O'Brien: I don't know how skinny I was.

Zane Lowe: I don't know about all that.

I remember that was a very special day because you guys started with "Creep."

Ed O'Brien: Did we?

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: Right.

Zane Lowe: And you hadn't played it for, like, ever.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: And you started with it. Bold.

'Cause, you know, home and all.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah. A little treat for the kids.

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: It would've been churlish not to, right?

Zane Lowe: It would've been churlish not to.

A lot to talk about, man.

But most of all, I wanted to begin by asking you—because this music gets made at a moment in your life when you're going through something, and you capture an honest reflection of who you are, and then you honour it, and you bring it to life, and you hand it to others to help get it out into the world.

Shouts to Ben, shouts to Paul, shouts to Shelby, shouts to the people who get it.

And then you wait for the right moment, then you release it.

And between that moment and the moment you made it, everything can change.

So my really simple question for you today, before we talk about how you were, is: how are you now?

Ed O'Brien: Great.

Really good.

Yeah, really good.

It's funny because stepping in here and hearing the music in the green room...

You sometimes have these moments where you hear one of the songs, and that song was from a very small, very humble, dark place.

And then the extraordinary thing about what we do is that three years later you're in Los Angeles trying to talk about it.

So it's an adjustment.

I'm in a really good place.

I'm just getting used to putting the music out there and how we do it, because it comes from a very intimate place.

Zane Lowe: It's an incredibly personal album.

The right side of vicarious, but vicarious nonetheless to experience.

At times I feel like I'm right next to you, in all the right uncomfortable ways.

And I don't think experiences like that lend themselves naturally to promotion.

Ed O'Brien: No.

Well, isn't that the artistic struggle that a lot of people have?

You think about Kurt Cobain, and the struggle that anyone who makes music that really connects goes through.

Usually it comes from a very emotional, personal place.

Usually from some kind of profound discomfort.

And then you have to put it out.

It's an adjustment.

Thankfully, I'm not twenty-three and having to deal with it.

I'm a bit older.

Zane Lowe: Well, we experienced that too, didn't we?

Meeting People Is Easy.

I'm sorry, Ed.

I'm really sorry, Ed.

This is my fiftieth interview of the day, and I just don't have anything for you, Ed.

I'm so sorry.

I mean, honestly, anyone who interviews people for a living should watch Meeting People Is Easy and then have empathy.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

It was the discomfort of what it was like then.

Zane Lowe: Well, for you.

Because you were the only one who did any interviews, by the looks of it.

Everybody just decided, one after the other, they were chipping off.

Colin had a nervous breakdown.

Thom wasn't having any of it.

Phil never gets on board.

Jonny was like, "I'm noodling."

And you're like, "Well... I guess I'll do it."

Ed O'Brien: Well, you're right in that.

Back in those days there were certain things that had to get done.

If no one else was going to do it...

Zane Lowe: You're like, "Listen, Zane. You're one of those things that needs to get done."

Ed O'Brien: Well, you never...

Zane Lowe: I'll take it.

Ed O'Brien: But it was relentless.

It's not like that now.

And there are worse things than being in Los Angeles.

Zane Lowe: Oh my God, yeah.

Ed O'Brien: I'm so blessed.

I've got so much gratitude for it.

But it's one of those things where you create something in a very specific place, and then it's just an adjustment...

Zane Lowe: Well, there is gratitude on this record.

I mean literally.

The last song—Portuguese for "thank you."

There's a lot of gratitude wrapped up in it as you come to the end of this.

Zane Lowe: Did you get there during the making of the record too? Or was it only afterwards that things started to open up? Does the music reflect coming through the other side?

Ed O'Brien: Yeah. I couldn't have made this record in that dark place. I mean, there's no way, because for me, how it manifested itself was literally not having enough energy.

I'd have three hours in the morning. I'd do my meditation, I'd have my cold shower, which gave me this burst of three hours.

Zane Lowe: Mm.

Ed O'Brien: And in that three hours—it was during the second lockdown, and the kids were homeschooling...

Zane Lowe: 2021.

Ed O'Brien: 2021. And I just had this three-hour window.

That's when I started. It was like therapy for me. It was picking up the guitar. I went to this tiny little room in our house, and there was no expectation. I wasn't trying to make a song.

I was literally in a really dark place. What do I do?

And my gut feeling was that I just need to pick up a guitar and play. And if I found something—if there was something vaguely interesting, or something I reacted to—I would just record it.

But I didn't review it. I just had that thing. It's like a practice: you turn up each day and you do it. You don't know what it's for, but you know you have to do it.

And that's what I did for six or seven months.

Then, after about nine months, I came out of this deep depression. I emerged from it, and then I reviewed what I'd done. I had about sixty musical motifs.

I was just like, "Okay, what's this?"

Then, with Paul Epworth, we went through them. Paul would say, "That," and I'd go, "Oh, okay." And we'd develop that—or there were other things that I already knew I wanted to develop.

But I had to find a place of peace and strength in order to make the record because making an album is eight or nine hours a day. I couldn't have done it in that dark place. No way.

Zane Lowe: Well, I'm sorry you went through such a tough time.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah. And thank you for saying that. But you know what? I'm so glad I did.

And this is the whole thing. This is my... I think the way I framed it was: this is like the Dark Night of the Soul. You know, the sages...

That comes from St. John of the Cross. He wrote about this. This is a stage that a lot of people go through.

So the opening line of "The Country" is, "Midway through life I just lost my way." That's Dante's Inferno.

This is the arc of a journey. Sometimes what happens is we embark upon life, and then you get midway through life and you go, "This isn't working for me anymore."

Zane Lowe: Do you know what triggered it?

Ed O'Brien: I know why.

Zane Lowe: Yeah?

Can I ask why?

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

I mean, Gabor Maté—as he always says, and I love his work—it's all about childhood.

So many of the things we suffer from—depression, addiction—childhood.

Zane Lowe: Mm-hmm.

Ed O'Brien: And we're not going any further than that.

Zane Lowe: You and I are probably, I would imagine, based on what I've read, real frontline divorce kids.

Were you from a divorced family?

Ed O'Brien: Oh, dude...

I feel like I want to say my mum and dad may have been the second couple in Oxfordshire to get a divorce.

Zane Lowe: Wow.

I mean, I'm only saying that because at the time it felt like that. Obviously that's not true, but in the '80s there was no playbook for that at all.

Ed O'Brien: I was the second kid in a class of thirty whose parents split up.

Zane Lowe: I'm telling you.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

But it was previous to that as well, because if you come from a toxic family, there was all of that.

You put sensitive kids in the middle of that, and they don't process it.

What you do as a child—as you probably know—is develop methods of survival.

Zane Lowe: Well, you just want to be helpful.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

That's what you do.

At least for me, I just tried to find a role. What's my job here? How do I make everybody happier?

Zane Lowe: One hundred percent.

And then completely ignoring the fact that I'm nine or ten years old.

People pleaser.

I was a people pleaser.

Ed O'Brien: But what's really interesting is that, in my case, I thought it was on my head to solve my parents' marriage.

Zane Lowe: Mm-hmm.

Ed O'Brien: As a ten-year-old.

So I'm trying to make them okay.

Zane Lowe: Mm-hmm.

Ed O'Brien: My next family was the band.

Age seventeen—that's what I do.

Zane Lowe: Of course.

That's why you do the interviews.

Ed O'Brien: Of course that's what I do.

Zane Lowe: And that's why I interview.

Ed O'Brien: Exactly.

Zane Lowe: So here we go.

Ed O'Brien: There you go.

And then the same thing plays out in my own family.

There's a part of it you can frame and say, "Oh, isn't it wonderful? They're altruistic. They're putting other people first."

But it's unhealthy.

Zane Lowe: Well, my therapist told me something once, and it was a real crusher.

He told me, "It's actually selfish, mate."

I said, "Wait, what do you mean?"

He said, "Well, you're sort of mugging people for your own sense of self-worth."

Ed O'Brien: It's so true.

Basically, my body was like, "You're done with this."

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Because you couldn't process it.

So your body was storing it.

Ed O'Brien: And what I did was hide.

I was hiding.

I wasn't being myself.

So I was never myself.

What's been amazing about this whole process—and I don't want to sound too pretentious about this...

Zane Lowe: Why not?

Ed O'Brien: Well... okay.

The music has been my greatest teacher.

Because on my first record, halfway through making it—with Flood—it wasn't sounding right.

And I remember thinking, "How could it be sounding like this? Why didn't I flag this up?"

It was because I wasn't being honest about what I felt.

That was the fundamental thing.

Zane Lowe: Because you weren't allowed to.

Ed O'Brien: Exactly.

That was what had been programmed from an early age.

You should feel like this—not, "What do you really feel?"

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: So then that was sort of like the wildfire. That led to the next stage, which was going to this dark place. It's like, "What do you really feel about everything?"

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: It's a lot, right? Because it goes through everything.

Essentially, it's like the death of an ego. You basically burn the house down, and I'm at the bottom of it, in the middle of it, going, "Who am I?"

You know, there's all sorts of stuff going on. My bandmates—Thom and Jonny—have got the first Smile album out. Colin's a Bad Seed. Phil's doing his thing. Jonny's making beautiful movie music.

And I'm at the bottom of this hole.

Zane Lowe: I know you said that when the band came to its natural conclusion—that period in time in 2018—came as some relief to you.

Ed O'Brien: Oh, man. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's been well documented. When we went out on tour last year, it had to come out because that was the truth.

I was done with the band.

I'd said about three or four times when we finished A Moon Shaped Pool that I knew that was it for me.

Zane Lowe: How did you know?

You just feel it?

Ed O'Brien: I felt I wasn't feeling it anymore.

It was partly me, but it was also partly what we had become.

You know, bands are inherently dysfunctional.

Zane Lowe: Oh, yeah.

You know that.

Ed O'Brien: Totally.

Zane Lowe: I remember talking to Johnny Marr a lot about it.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: You're talking to a terrible person about staying together.

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.]

Zane Lowe: Let me ask the guy from the Smiths about staying together.

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.]

You're right.

But he's very good when you want to leave a band.

Zane Lowe: [Laughs.]

He does that very well.

That's a great conversation.

Ed O'Brien: Well, I remember Johnny saying he'd spoken to Paul and Linda McCartney when the Smiths split up.

They'd sort of taken him and Angie under their wing.

He was sitting by a fire, hoping for Paul to give him some band wisdom.

Johnny was talking about the Smiths and what had happened, expecting Paul to come back with something profound.

Paul just said, "Yeah... that's bands."

Zane Lowe: [Laughs.]

That's basically true.

Ed O'Brien: That's basically it.

I'm not of the school of thought that bands should go on forever. I just don't get that.

I find it really frustrating when you see a band you've loved, and you can tell they're doing it, but they're not doing it for the right reasons.

You hear all these stories: they're travelling on separate buses, they're in different dressing rooms.

I mean, if you want to do that, that's fine.

But I didn't sign up for that.

I signed up to be in a band with people that I loved.

And for Radiohead, I think one of the key components...

You know, you've got the notes. The notes are mathematical intervals and patterns.

Zane Lowe: Very nice.

Ed O'Brien: But at the heart of Radiohead there's this soul.

Zane Lowe: Oh, yeah.

Ed O'Brien: You know, it's the magic.

And if that's not there—which it wasn't for me—I'm not doing it, because they're just notes.

That last tour was the first time I'd gone out and enjoyed the two hours we played to the audience, but it was the audience I was getting it from.

I just felt there was this hole in the band.

Zane Lowe: So you were relieved when everyone agreed to take a break?

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

We all knew.

We all knew.

Zane Lowe: So a few years later, the Smile comes out.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: Were there moments when you listened to that album and thought, "Man, I'd love to have chopped it up on that"?

There's definitely some groove and some feel in there that you must recognise as being from the DNA of your band.

Ed O'Brien: Oh, yeah.

It's beautiful.

I hear Thom and I hear Jonny.

One of the things I loved about the Smile was that I heard a lot of Jonny.

I loved that.

I was like, "Okay..."

You know, there was stuff he'd put in that, when he'd play with us, sometimes wouldn't be given the space because we'd all be cluttering things up with further notes and melodies.

But I loved the stripped-down nature of it.

And Jonny's angular thing—which is so Jonny.

I loved that.

And, funny enough, the other thing I loved was hearing Thom play bass.

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: Because Thom's an incredible bass player.

The first time I saw him at school he was carrying a bass on the school bus, at about fourteen years old.

There are all these things where, in a band, everyone has their role.

It's very hard to stretch out.

They were able to stretch out in the Smile.

Zane Lowe: Did it give you some clarity and some insight?

I'm glad you brought up roles.

When you step away from that chemistry—that magic that's omnipresent in your life—you get some distance.

As you emerged from your own search for self, did you gain a better understanding of what your role is within the band as you became clearer about who you are as an individual?

Ed O'Brien: I think I always had an idea of what I brought to the band.

I was just really insecure about it.

I always felt that, in the musical hierarchy, there was Thom and Jonny...

...and then there was me.

The rhythm section was its own thing.

Where am I?

So when we made Kid A, I was in a really dark place again.

At the same time, we were dismantling the band as it had been.

I'm smoking a lot of spliff. I'm taking herbal antidepressants.

I'm basically medicating myself.

Zane Lowe: You're coping.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah, exactly.

And I'm thinking, "What do I do?"

Zane Lowe: God, that's tough, isn't it?

It's like, "Okay... I don't know if I want to play a Kaoss Pad."

Ed O'Brien: No, I was fine playing a Kaoss Pad.

I just didn't know whether I could do it.

Because when you're depressed, you have no self-confidence whatsoever.

You see other people thriving, and you're looking at it from the inside.

I think what's interesting about bands is that people view them from the outside and imagine they're all exactly like this perfect thing.

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: But what actually goes on within a band...

That's why I find bands so interesting.

The chemistry.

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: What was so amazing was when we came back...

We had to commit to those shows last year. You have to book shows about a year in advance.

So management say, "Are we going to commit to them?"

And we're like, "How can we? We don't know. We haven't played together for five years. We don't know whether we've still got that thing."

So we had to go into a rehearsal room.

Zane Lowe: Can I ask you to pause that thought?

I just have a side question on that.

What was the motivation for booking the shows if it didn't come from being in the rehearsal room, feeling the chemistry, and then saying, "Hey, that was really fun. Let's book some shows"?

The conversation about having shows was happening before you'd even gone in and found that thing again.

So what was the spark that made you even think about booking shows when you'd been away for so long?

Ed O'Brien: I think we felt the friendship sort of come back.

I remember Jonny's fiftieth birthday. I remember standing around a fire talking to Thom.

Thom and I have always been really close, and I hadn't seen him for a long time. We'd sort of drifted apart.

We were standing next to a fire—you know, the classic bloke kind of stuff.

Zane Lowe: [Laughs.]

My God.

Again, I just want to remind everybody that nothing says "alpha male" like Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien standing around a fire.

"How you doing?"

"Yeah... how you doing?"

"What's going on?"

The two people who've given the world some of the most sensitive music of all time are just blokes at heart, basically.

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.]

It's nuanced... but yeah, you're right.

You could feel the friendship. I could feel the love.

Coming out of that dark place, what came to me was: "I love these guys so much."

We're family.

We are brothers.

What we've been through...

Going through that dark place, you reassemble yourself. I came out of it and thought:

"To have had this extraordinary experience with these four incredible musicians..."

First of all, they're incredible musicians.

And the other thing is, they're really beautiful human beings.

They're like family.

We're all a little bit gnarly, but everybody has a really, really good heart.

Nobody's trying to stiff one another.

There's genuine kindness.

I think that's the thing that came to me.

But I think it came to everyone else as well.

You could feel it in the band meetings.

You have to have band meetings because it's a business, right?

Zane Lowe: Of course.

Of course.

Ed O'Brien: During lockdown they were slightly frosty Zoom meetings.

[Laughs.]

Sorry, Zoom...

...but don't do Zoom meetings.

You don't get the love in those meetings.

You have to be in a room together. You have to feel the energy between you.

It just became warmer.

Then I think Brian—our manager, Brian Message—was gauging the temperature of the room and said, "How about some shows, guys?"

We were like, "Well... we're not averse to it. Let's see."

But also...

...we don't have to do it.

If you don't feel you have to do it, that's everything.

We don't have to play another gig.

It's funny—the fact that we went away, all the streaming numbers went up.

Zane Lowe: I know.

It's so bizarre.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

As artists, we don't really allow our audience the space to appreciate our music because we're constantly saying, "How about this new one? How about this new one? How about this new one?"

Zane Lowe: Exactly.

Ed O'Brien: And suddenly people had the space.

Isn't it amazing?

You know this better than I do, but there are artists who carry on doing it, get a bit long in the tooth, and we all take them for granted.

Then they stop...

Zane Lowe: Well, Bowie was the classic example.

In the '90s he couldn't get arrested.

Look where he is now.

Look where he was at the end of his life.

Everybody seems to go through that.

But you guys stopped, and that was a big moment.

Obviously for you personally, and for what was to follow.

But in terms of how we all felt about Radiohead, I mean, it's classic.

For the first three to five years everyone was saying, "Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?"

Ed O'Brien: No, you're not.

Really?

Zane Lowe: You're not on the internet much, are you?

Ed O'Brien: No, I'm not.

[Laughs.]

Zane Lowe: You're not.

Good.

Okay.

It's probably a good place for you to be.

I'm on the internet.

There's a lot of:

"Wouldn't it be nice if we got a new record?"

"If they came back?"

"If they played?"

Every Glastonbury...

Every Coachella...

You're always on the list.

There are a lot of people who've still never had the Radiohead experience.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: And everyone who has wants another one.

So you're getting it from both sides.

Then, just as everyone thought, "Okay, we're on our third Smile record. Jonny's busy. Colin's out with Nick Cave. Ed's doing his thing..."

Just as we all thought, "Okay... I guess it's not happening..."

...you announce the shows.

You didn't even realise it, but your timing was spot on.

It was exactly when people had stopped waiting around quite so much.

Then suddenly:

"They're back."

Okay...

Getting back to the rehearsal room.

What was the first song you played?

Do you remember?

Ed O'Brien: "Planet Telex."

Zane Lowe: That's why you wanted it in the set.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

We were at Paul's studio—Paul Epworth's studio.

The Church, in Crouch End.

Thursday morning.

Eleven o'clock.

We'd all agreed we'd start at eleven.

Everyone was there five to eleven.

Thom said, "Shall we just start with 'Planet Telex'?"

So we went through The Bends, then OK Computer before lunch.

[Laughs.]

Zane Lowe: How was it when you got to "Paranoid Android"?

Because... I'm sorry...

That's where I'm ready for a sandwich.

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.]

Yeah.

Zane Lowe: That's your fourteenth song in a row.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

It was that classic thing.

We didn't do much talking.

I just had this sense:

"Oh... okay..."

We're like a five-limbed organism.

It was so bizarre.

The muscle memory...

That thing that bands—or any group of people who've played together for years—have...

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: It is magic.

There really is a magic to it.

Zane Lowe: Totally.

But when you're doing it, when the magic's there...

That's what music is.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah. Exactly.

What was liberating about it was that I realised it was kind of like our village hall rehearsals back in the late '80s.

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: Because it was the first rehearsal we'd done where there was no expectation of new material...

Zane Lowe: Mm-hmm.

Ed O'Brien: ...or of going on tour.

There was no pressure.

Suddenly, they were just songs we'd played before.

So it was this very lovely, familiar, deep place.

Zane Lowe: Were there songs that really got to you?

Because that's the thing about Radiohead.

We've got used to the fact that some of the songs we hold dearest just may not be played in this era of the band.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: Because they don't speak to the new album, or they don't speak to where you are as a band and what you're trying to say as a whole.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: So when people saw a clip of "Let Down" again...

Man, I was in tears.

People all over the world were, because we'd waited for that riff for a long time.

You've got so many songs that are just sitting there.

I always think of them like...

[Laughs.]

Should I make you feel really bad?

They're like dogs waiting for their owners to come home.

Just sitting there...

Like "Let Down" is sitting there waiting for you to come through the door.

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.]

Yeah.

It's that beautiful golden retriever.

Very loyal.

Very loyal.

Yeah, that was one of them.

I think "Let Down."

"Weird Fishes."

What's really funny is...

I do think it's kind of the miracle of the medium we work in.

If you think about it, music is mathematical intervals played in patterns.

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: But they're able to hold an energy.

Zane Lowe: How do I show up to work every day, Ed, and someone takes that maths and does something I've never heard before?

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Right?

It's extraordinary.

That's where the magic is.

They're just mathematical interval patterns, yet they're able to hold an energy.

They're able to hold our emotions.

They can hold joy...

...sadness...

...indifference...

...anger...

...fear...

...all these things.

For me—and this is part of the journey, and this might sound strange to you because you've never heard me talk like this before—I've realised it's a co-creation with Spirit.

It's all about Spirit.

We are channels.

Zane Lowe: I agree.

Ed O'Brien: Spirit only joins you.

Spirit only comes in when it sees you're in a place where you're ready to receive.

Zane Lowe: Is that what gratitude is?

Ed O'Brien: Gratitude...

A good heart.

Humility.

All those things.

If you think, "I'm the big 'I am.'"

If it's all ego...

...you're going to get your arse kicked.

There are so many examples of artists and bands that I've loved who had Spirit in abundance.

Then they got huge.

They got confused.

Spirit deserted them.

And what happened?

The music deserted them as well.

I really believe that.

Zane Lowe: Because the scale...

Because the maths takes over.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

They start making the wrong decisions.

They forget how much Spirit—that other thing—plays a part.

So my life is all about that connection.

If I have that connection, then hopefully the music follows.

The notes can take care of themselves.

I'm not concentrating on that.

For me, that's the connection with God.

With Spirit.

With nature.

Hopefully...

...we'll see what happens.

But it means I'm able to keep making music, because that's the key ingredient.

You need the maths as well.

You need the notes.

Obviously it's a balance.

But I realised I'm simply not a good enough musician to do it without that.

Some people can just play the notes.

They can play like that.

I can't.

I remember that if I'm not into a song, I can't contribute.

A part doesn't emerge.

I just can't.

Zane Lowe: You were in a memory before you said that.

What made you think of that?

What was the example?

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.]

Well...

I was just about to go back to the mothership.

There are plenty of tracks that never made an album.

There's a lot of drudgery involved in being in a band.

Working on tracks.

There's one song that I won't mention.

I think we spent more time working on it than any other song we've ever done.

It never made an album.

There's a very good reason.

It's not very good.

[Laughs.]

Honestly, if I mentioned that song to Jonny or Colin, we'd all just roll our eyes.

We're all like that.

But if you don't feel connected to the music...

Zane Lowe: Yeah.

Ed O'Brien: I'm not a session musician.

I can't do that.

I can't.

That's one of the key things for Radiohead.

Not the key thing.

One of the key things.

Because there's the maths...

The brilliance of a Jonny Greenwood arrangement...

A Thom lyric...

A topline melody...

Phil's feel...

There are lots of elements.

But that's the thing that holds everything together.

If you don't have that...

For instance, before those shows last year, people kept asking me how I felt.

I only had one answer.

If there's love between the five of us, then it all works.

If there's no love...

...it doesn't work.

Because, again...

...those are just notes.

How do you elevate them?

You elevate them through the love between the five of you.

I knew that if we had that, the rest would take care of itself.

It's got to come from there.

You can't fake that.

You can't lie about it.

You can't travel on separate buses.

Zane Lowe: No, it would have been devastating if you'd done those shows and it had felt like that was it. I thought you were cooked at the end. Not just you—I thought the band was. I saw footage of the last show in London. You looked like you were in tears. Thom looked like he was in tears. It looked like goodbye to me.

Ed O'Brien: We were exhausted. We'd done twenty shows.

Zane Lowe: Only twenty?

Ed O'Brien: Only twenty. [Laughs.] Yeah, but I think they were like the middle ones. I think they were shows eight to twelve... We were exhausted because it's so emotional. It was so powerful. Not only between us, but because of the extraordinary exchange of energy that happened with the audience. So yeah, we were cooked. And that's when Thom lost his voice. We went on to Copenhagen, he got really ill, and we had to cancel two shows. Thankfully we did them at the end. So yeah, it was beautiful, but there was no way we could have done more than twenty shows.

Zane Lowe: But you're going to do some more, right?

Ed O'Brien: Maybe.

Zane Lowe: [Laughs.] I'll take that as a poorly constructed "yes." That's a Radiohead "yes" for sure.

Ed O'Brien: Maybe.

Zane Lowe: There's a moment in "Incantations" on this album where, as the drums reveal themselves and the rhythm section starts to evolve, I feel like the sun just cuts through the clouds a little bit. It's still cloudy, but then it gets to "Blue Morpho" and everything suddenly opens up. I wanted to talk about that second piece of music in particular. The string arrangement—you and Paul are credited together as writers on that song—and how it really came to be. Because I genuinely think it's the best piece of music you've ever made.

Ed O'Brien: Wow. Thank you. "Blue Morpho" actually began when Paul and I first started working together, back in 2020, before all of this. We spent a couple of days in the studio trying out ideas, and one of them was that guitar riff. What I find extraordinary about the whole process—and why I still feel like a complete beginner as a songwriter—is that these little ideas arrive through you. You're just a conduit. You hear the potential of what they might become, and that's an extraordinary feeling. I find it completely intoxicating. I'm sitting in this tiny little box room with one window, yet somehow I can already hear the whole universe of the song.

What happened with that track was also part of my own process of letting go. That's really been the whole thing in my life—learning to let go instead of holding on. The song began in my studio in Wales on a beautiful summer's day. Paul was away, but Riley MacIntyre—who co-produced and engineered the record with us—was there. We had all the windows open and put a microphone outside to record the birds because I love birdsong now. We thought we might process it and make something a bit like an Eno track. Then I just started playing. I had no idea what the arrangement was going to be. We simply said, "Okay, let's roll." All these little parts just appeared as we went through it once. Literally one complete pass. And that became the arrangement.

Zane Lowe: Wow. That's the arrangement? Because that's exactly what I was going to ask. The reason I think it's such an incredible piece of music—apart from the emotion and the revelation you've found in it—is that songs which don't exist inside a traditional framework are incredibly difficult to shape. You're not leaning on conventions. There isn't a standard verse-chorus arrangement in "Blue Morpho." You simply felt your way through it.

Ed O'Brien: During the first lockdown I had this moment. I was listening to BBC 6 Music—it must have been about week six—and I heard a song I'd always loved by a hugely influential band. Something suddenly snapped inside me. I realised, "I never need to hear this song again." It wasn't about that particular song; it was about realising I was finished with that whole form. I was done with A-B-A-B-C-B. Radiohead were never exactly conventional, but for me, because of what I was going through, I couldn't think in those structures anymore.

I was listening to nature. Nature has form, but it's more like jazz. That's why I started listening almost exclusively to jazz. Gilles Peterson's Saturday show became my church. The way he curates music, the universe he creates... he's actually the reason I came to London in the first place. I didn't come here to chase this career. I came here because I wanted to sit outside Gilles Peterson's house with my demo and try to get signed to Talkin' Loud.

Zane Lowe: [Laughs.]

Ed O'Brien: Obviously that didn't quite work out.

Zane Lowe: Well...

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.] The music wasn't very good either, apart from that. But Gilles is the greatest. His show is a light. The way he brings everything together—and, of course, all the Brazilian music, which I absolutely love. I really was done with conventional song form. I honestly didn't know how I was doing it anymore. That's why I keep saying I just let go and see what happens.

Zane Lowe: You may not want to say, but people are going to want me to ask this. So let me ask it in the most loving way possible. Rather than asking which song broke you out of that form, what was the last song you heard on 6 Music that made you realise the form itself was perfect—but you were searching for something else? What was that song?

Ed O'Brien: That's a good question. [Laughs.] I don't know. I've sort of started embracing those songs again. It could have been something like "William, It Was Really Nothing" by the Smiths. They were perfect pop songs.

Zane Lowe: Perfect pop songs that Morrissey insisted on trying to ruin—in the best possible way. And I mean that as the highest compliment. He'd take these wonderful, spiralling Johnny Marr guitar lines...

By the way, the Smiths never get enough credit for their rhythm section. Unbelievable. Andy Rourke...

Ed O'Brien: Have you talked to Johnny about this?

Zane Lowe: Andy Rourke was such an incredible bass player.

Ed O'Brien: You could tell he'd started out as a guitar player. He played alongside Johnny for so long. Andy's bass playing was incredibly melodic. In my opinion, he was almost a lead guitarist playing bass. Great drummer, great bass player.

Zane Lowe: And then Morrissey would come in singing about demented schools and Manchester streets. It was the best misery of my childhood.

Ed O'Brien: Was it a big thing for you in New Zealand?

Zane Lowe: Massive. My older brother got into them, so I'd sneak into his room. I remember putting on Hatful of Hollow for the first time and thinking, "This guy's a misery..." [Laughs.] "...I love this." It really spoke to me. I felt like it taught me how to understand my own emotions.

Then we'd all go to parties wearing Doc Martens, trying to get the quiffs right, carrying National Health glasses... we were obsessed with them. That was the misery of my childhood.

The Cure, though—that was different. Seventeen Seconds actually scared me.

Ed O'Brien: Oh, same. I loved that record, but it was so dark.

Zane Lowe: The cover alone... all that blurred black and white.

Ed O'Brien: You should have been a teenager in Britain in 1981. It really was that dark. That music became the soundtrack to November Saturday afternoons, every underpass...

Zane Lowe: Exactly. You know what'll brighten the day? The coldest drum machine you've ever heard in your life.

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.] That's why goth had such an impact. It was genuinely dark.

Zane Lowe: Did you go through a goth phase?

Ed O'Brien: Semi-goth. We all did. Well... not all of us. Colin definitely went full goth.

Zane Lowe: He gives off goth energy.

Ed O'Brien: Alien Sex Fiend. Sex Gang Children...

Zane Lowe: You're more Ziggy.

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.] Shout-out to Tony James. He still gives off goth energy.

Zane Lowe: He does. Well, he's a Bad Seed now.

Ed O'Brien: Exactly. But we all loved Bauhaus, Death Cult, Southern Death Cult...

Where we grew up in Oxford was incredibly white. Then I went to Manchester and met lots of people from London, and they introduced me to rare groove and Black British and American music. I realised that if you wanted to be cool in London, that's what you listened to.

Back in Oxford, though, if you wanted to find something on the edge, you leaned towards goth and the Smiths. That's where your edge came from. You were always searching for something just outside the mainstream.

Zane Lowe: You did crack it with your first album, though. I know you guys can be pretty hard on Pablo Honey, and maybe you don't love it as much as some of the fans do, but the first song on your first album is still an absolute classic.

Ed O'Brien: I do love that song.

Zane Lowe: You still play it once in a while...

Ed O'Brien: No.

Zane Lowe: Get out of here!

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.] We didn't play anything from Pablo Honey. We skipped it completely. I actually feel bad for Pablo Honey. It's like one of those scrappy dogs waiting by the door.

We just didn't know what we were doing back then.

Zane Lowe: Maybe that's a good thing.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah...

Zane Lowe: You're struggling for words now.

Ed O'Brien: I am.

Zane Lowe: [Laughs.] I finally found the subject that broke the man—Pablo Honey.

You're going to play these songs live. What form does that take when the music itself isn't built around traditional song structures anymore?

Ed O'Brien: Dave Okumu is going to be a huge part of it. He's such a brilliant musician and like a brother to me.

Zane Lowe: Please say hello to him for me.

Ed O'Brien: I will. Esca's involved as well, and we've been putting ideas together over the last couple of weeks. We're trying to find the right balance. For us it's about finding something that's almost formless, making the performance feel different every night.

It's difficult to explain, but I'm looking for something sacred. That's really what I'm searching for.

Zane Lowe: I know. But also because learning to let go is a lifelong process.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah, exactly.

Zane Lowe: I'm not sure you've learned to let all of it go yet.

Ed O'Brien: No, I haven't completely. Of course not. It's ongoing. But I have the intention of letting go.

Part of my musical rehabilitation has been listening to John Coltrane—listening to A Love Supreme—and almost trying to decode it. Thinking, "This is gratitude to Spirit... gratitude to God. What is actually happening here?" He's somewhere else. There's something about it.

It's also why Alice Coltrane has become so important to me. Sadly, I think drugs played such an essential role in the lives of some of those musicians because, once they came back to earth, ordinary life couldn't match the magic they'd experienced somewhere else.

Zane Lowe: Exactly. That's what I think. We're all chasing transcendent moments, and drugs can give you that. They're a shortcut. When you have to put your instrument down and you don't want to come back to reality, drugs can seem like a way to stay there.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah. But they actually take you further away from transcendence. We understand that now. Back then it was easy to think you could somehow balance the two.

Transcendence is what we're all chasing. That's effectively what I'm interested in now—creating an evening of music. That's what we're aiming for. But you can't announce that you're going to have a transcendent moment. You can only prepare the conditions. After that, it's up to Spirit. It's up to the room. It's about how everyone arrives in that space.

Zane Lowe: Yeah. And it requires grace too, because if the room isn't there, you have to accept that and keep going.

Ed O'Brien: Exactly. I also want to reach a place where we can really stretch things out. We can take a piece like "Incantations," settle into that dubby bass groove, get into that tribal rhythm.

I've always been slightly jealous of DJs. You're a DJ—you know what it's like. The way they can hold a room...

Zane Lowe: You've got to read it.

Ed O'Brien: Exactly. You can move everyone together as one. That's where I'd love this band to get. You don't begin there—it's a journey—but I'd love us to arrive at that place.

Zane Lowe: You know what will probably help? Allowing yourself enough grace to understand that sometimes you have to empty the room before you can rebuild it. I've watched the greatest DJs I've ever known come on after someone has the dance floor completely full... and deliberately clear it.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: On purpose. So they can rebuild it.

Ed O'Brien: Amazing. I love that.

Zane Lowe: Would you do that?

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.] No... although maybe I would now.

Zane Lowe: You would now.

Ed O'Brien: Because I've learned to appreciate that. But before? No chance. I was a people-pleaser. I'd have been thinking, "What do you want? What do you want? Let's keep this going. Don't walk away." That's the fear of rejection. That's what we're really afraid of.

Zane Lowe: Exactly.

Ed O'Brien: That's why I'm fascinated by jazz musicians, but also by bands like the Grateful Dead. I don't completely understand it, but I love the culture around them.

You talk to a Deadhead and they'll tell you the band plays two sets. Maybe nothing really happens in the first set. Then, twenty minutes into the second set, suddenly the band catches something, the audience recognises it, and that's the transcendent moment.

I love the boldness of that. It's the same principle as the DJ emptying the floor. Nobody knows whether it's going to happen tonight. It's partly out of the musicians' hands as well.

Zane Lowe: That's why every great concert you've ever seen feels like a miracle. If you knew it was going to happen every night, it wouldn't be a miracle anymore.

Ed O'Brien: Exactly.

I've become much more comfortable with uncertainty. I used to want certainty. I wanted to know everything was going to work. Now I realise that's actually the opposite of where the interesting things happen.

If there's one thing this whole process has taught me, it's to trust that something bigger than me is involved. My job is simply to turn up, be open, do the work, and let whatever happens... happen.

Zane Lowe: It's a big leap for People-Pleasing Ed. Radiohead shows, when you're out there looking at the crowd, and because of the nature and democracy of the band, it's like, "Okay, we're going to start with five deep cuts." And you're like, "Let's just hit them with a big one. Just give them one big one. Come on." Stone always used to say that about Pearl Jam. He'd be like, "Every now and then, when Eddie would do a set—the fifth night in a row—and he'd start with a deep cut, I just wanted to say to him, 'Let's just hit them with "Alive," baby. Let's just go out the gate.'"

Ed O'Brien: Yeah. It's interesting. Well, you know, Phil, Thom and I do the set lists, and it was funny when I was looking at the set lists for A Moon Shaped Pool. We were putting set lists together, then looking at the old ones, and we were like, "Oh, that's exactly what we do." Every night we were doing deep cuts for the first five songs.

The point about that is it's not gratuitous deep cuts. It's actually not a "you." It's like, that's a hug. That was a hug.

Zane Lowe: Yeah. Exactly. It's like saying, "We're going to do something different. Let's try it and see if this works." We started with "Daydreaming." We basically did the first five tracks on A Moon Shaped Pool. And, you know, when you do Glastonbury, you don't normally do that.

Ed O'Brien: No.

Zane Lowe: You know, it's not like Blur coming out with "Girls & Boys" straight out of the gate.

Ed O'Brien: Right.

Zane Lowe: If you really want to get the party started, that's what you do. I loved it.

Ed O'Brien: Oh, thank you. I mean, it was amazing. You could see the crowd just being so like, "Okay..." Because that's what makes you, you.

Zane Lowe: Well, yeah. But it was funny because I remember thinking, "The weirdest success story of all time."

Ed O'Brien: [Laughs.]

Zane Lowe: No, you're a weird band.

Ed O'Brien: We are, which is great.

Zane Lowe: You're weird.

Okay. The album—I'm going to call it an album. It definitely is. Thirty-eight minutes, seven songs. Beautiful.

I say this to a lot of artists who've come through the other side of a tough time. The point is album twenty, isn't it? Isn't the idea to get to album number twenty?

Ed O'Brien: Yeah, it is. And I had a moment—again, part of coming out of this dark place. Susie and I went to Tate Britain and saw a retrospective by a Portuguese artist called Paula Rego. She was still alive then. She was in her nineties.

We saw her first painting, the one that won the Summer Prize at the Slade in, like, '56, and then you saw the arc of her journey. She was still painting. She still had a studio in Camden. She was still going in there every day and having a glass of champagne with her assistant at the end of the day.

You saw the arc of it, and to me that was a life. I don't know why it struck me so much, because we're all aware of great bands and great musicians who have that arc, but to see it in a painter, in two hours, it really struck home. It was really beautiful. I was just like, "Oh, you're right." It's about getting to album twenty.

Everyone's been celebrating what would have been Miles Davis's 100th birthday. When you see an artist in full... at the time, when Miles was doing his stuff at the end of the '80s, we were like, "I'm not sure about this." But then you see it in context—juxtapose it with something from Kind of Blue, In a Silent Way, or Jack Johnson—and you go, "Oh yeah, that's really cool."

Zane Lowe: Neil. Neil, right? Damn, man. Just rolls up to his barn with Crazy Horse, fires up, gives us "Chevrolet." That song on one of the last Crazy Horse albums, "Chevrolet," is such a jam.

Robert Plant. There's a guy that I feel you're slowly turning into. He's my north star. I feel like you're slowly turning into Robert Plant.

Ed O'Brien: Well, hang on a minute. [Laughs.] You're a little late for that.

Zane Lowe: But hang on a minute. You're out in the middle of Wales...

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: ...listening to birdsong.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: Frodo's over there. [Laughs.] It's Middle-earth.

I guess what I'm trying to say, in a really loving way, is you're a hippie at heart.

Ed O'Brien: One hundred percent. Shamelessly. Yeah, I am. I'm a hippie.

It was funny because we grew up post-punk, and hippies were... I have a theory. I think what happens is you get these cycles. So you had the hippies—Neil and Joni and everyone, Crosby, Stills & Nash—and then what follows? Punk. So you get all the yobs and skinheads.

Then the next wave—we're essentially hippies. We have more in common with Neil and Joni and the Grateful Dead and stuff like that. The next wave after us is Coldplay. They have more in common with U2. I think there's this kind of back and forth. Does that make sense?

Zane Lowe: It does make sense. It feels like you're reacting to what went on before.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah. I just feel Radiohead were born at the wrong time.

Zane Lowe: But if your family was alternative rock, you guys got out of that room really quickly.

Ed O'Brien: We've always hated being pigeonholed. We never wanted to be part of anything. Back in the '90s, we obviously weren't part of Britpop, but we really resonated with Massive Attack and Portishead—that whole West Country thing. They weren't part of that either. So just let us be in the shadows.

Zane Lowe: Shows to come, hopefully. Some kind of night of music. Some kind of reason to go out there and celebrate.

Ed O'Brien: Celebrate in the truth of this. Dave and Esca and I were saying that it feels really important, especially at the moment, to try and create things of beauty. Beautiful occasions. Because there's so much ugliness out there.

When I was at my lowest, I was questioning everything. "Who am I? Am I a musician? Do I have to do this? I can go and feed the peacocks..." I don't have peacocks, by the way.

Zane Lowe: And that's not a metaphor.

Ed O'Brien: No, it's not a metaphor. But the thing that came really strongly was: at this time, what you're supposed to be doing is trying to bring things of beauty into the world. They're just little things, but try and do that.

Dave and Esca and I have been talking about really embracing the beauty that human beings are capable of.

The thing that I worry a little bit about with live music—and this isn't some kind of digression, it's part of this—is that the live thing needs to have some jeopardy. I'm worried when I go and see incredible artists and they've got click tracks, backing tracks... it's like a version of Guitar Hero. You're just playing along with a track.

I want to see some jeopardy. I want to see things happen. Let's get off the grid, because I think it's a slippery slope. I've definitely been guilty too. You go into a studio nowadays... next record: no click tracks, no grid. Feel it out.

Zane Lowe: Free. Go see Djo next time he does a show, man. What he's doing right now with his group of musicians... that's the closest thing to going and seeing a Radiohead show when you guys spiral off into outer space.

It's almost like you don't even need to be there, right? I say, when I see Djo and his band play, you could pull a curtain between the audience and them, put a camera behind the curtain, and they'd still be playing with the same level of complete commitment and immersion as they would if the audience was right there in front of them.

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

Zane Lowe: That'll be a very reassuring experience for you, because that's a young man with a band.

All right. Two more questions for you.

The first one: I know you can't answer about the medium- to long-term future of the band, and you shouldn't, but would you be content with A Moon Shaped Pool being the last Radiohead album?

Ed O'Brien: Yeah.

[Laughs.]

Zane Lowe: Yeah? Okay.

Ed O'Brien: But does that mean we'll make another record? I don't know.

Zane Lowe: No, that's fine. Leave it at that.

Ed O'Brien: No, I think it's a beautiful piece of work.

Zane Lowe: Same. I just thought you might feel there was more road to run.

Ed O'Brien: I've got no idea. I've got no...

Zane Lowe: Just for you.

Ed O'Brien: No. I think everybody's just really happy doing their thing.

Zane Lowe: I love the honesty. I appreciate you being so honest. You can feel it, right?

Ed O'Brien: Oh, one hundred percent.

Zane Lowe: You didn't hesitate. I thought that was going to be a tough one. You were just like, "Next."

All right... I didn't actually have a second question.