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Radiohead's Ed O'Brien: 4 April 1996

radiohead came back for the last round of the bends tour this spring, and i talked to guitarist ed o'brien long distance. this interview ran in the diamondback on 10 april - just in time for their d.c. concert.

ed: hello, hello, on this cold minneapolis morning!

fritz: oh, you're in minneapolis now? how long has the tour been on?

e: we've been here in america for about three weeks, so this is our ... i dunno. we've got about another week and a half.

f: well, how's the tour been going so far?

e: it's going fine, except that flu hit the camp, and we had to cancel a show in denver. it was one of those things - there was no way of performing. thom got it really badly, and johnny already had it. but the shows have been great apart from that. obviously one hates to cancel shows

f: how is this different than the tours you did last fall?

e: the tours last fall?

f: yeah - the american dates you did last year.

e: this is headlining, to start with. all the shows we did last fall were opening for soul asylum and r.e.m.

f: what were those like?

e: the soul asylum tour was a shit because we had all our gear nicked before we joined. we had just finished with r.e.m., and then all our equipment was stolen. that was everything we'd ever owned in terms of musical instruments. it all went, stolen from denver. so we had to regroup, buy new gear, and play a week and a half with soul asylum. that's the worst touring we've done. morale was incredibly low, as one would expect. and sales weren't that good with soul asylum, unfortunately. so this great. we're headlining, and we're having fun.

f: so how many times have you toured the u.s. as headliners?

e: we've co-headlined on one, supported on two and this is our fourth headlining. the whole thing about opening is that it's someone else's audience, and you're trying to win them over. you play for half-an-hour, and it's a totally different discipline altogether. you try to win people over in six songs, where as when you're playing to your fans, you're playing to the already converted. you approach the set diffrently. you can play songs otherwise you wouldn't play, kind of quite obscure songs and b-sides.

f: how did you approach, say, the r.e.m. tour?

e: with a lot of good humor in the sense that it would be very easy to get phased out by playing these huge places. but we kind of got into it and we enjoyed it. it depended really on ... we started adjusting the set depending on what kind of venue it was. if it was an arena, we'd play the slower songs, like "nice dreams" and "bulletproof." whereas if it was an outdoor, in-your-face kind of venue, we'd play the rockier numbers. we didn't prepare any differently, but we thought about it differently, i guess.

f: did you spend a lot of time hanging out with michael [stipe] and peter [buck]?

e: we all hung out together. they're very cool people, and we spent a lot of time hanging out. it was very cool because obviously we've always been huge fans of theirs.

f: now, how do you feel about - i hate to use the term - britpop? it's on the verge of becoming a fashionable trend here.

e: oh, we feel totally distinct it. back in britain, we're not lumped in with this britpop thing. the journalists don't even do that. we certainly haven't been lumped in with it over here because people knew us before it started, from "creep" and pablo honey. so, we're vary wary of these kind of movements, and we're able to keep our distance from it because we're not part of it.

f: but over here, you were one of the first of the current popular british bands to get any regular airplay, because of "creep."

e: i think "creep" was a double-edged sword. it was great in the sense that we came to america, and unlike a lot of british bands, we had a lot of attention on us from the very first date we did in america. that's very unusual for a british band. on the other hand, it's been very difficult to overcome the "creep factor." that song was so big that a lot of americans know the band at "the creep band" instead of radiohead. we thought america would be the easiest place to get over that "one hit wonder" tag, and it actually was the hardest, although america's the first place that gave us a break, in a way.

f: isn't that what "my iron lung" is about?

e: yeah, in "my iron lung" there's a lot of that sentiment. i think that lyric was written when we'd just come back from our first u.s. tour, and we were about to go on our second. it was amazing, because we'd just come over for the first time, and the reaction was incredible.

f: one of the things i've noticed about radiohead songs - the ones that get popular - is that they tend to be the slow, ballad-style songs, like "fake plastic trees" or "high and dry." do you ever feel like that people might only see that side of the band?

e: it isn't a problem because i think we've always wanted to stick out, and i think that on a lot of modern rock station, most of the songs are in-your-face, so having a slow song on there is really cool. it's a bit dangerous, in a way. a lot of these modern rock stations, you know, poll their 18-to-24 year old males, and they say they don't like "fake plastic trees," and it'll come in bottom on a survey, where as birds choose it at the top or whatever. i like that. we never wanted to be safe. we never wanted to fit in a top-20 format. we wanted to be distinguishable from the other people. we'd much rather have an adverse reaction and have people hate it, and have them think 'oh, that's just another song i heard on KBUSH today' or whatever. so i don't mind. i think it's great.

f: the crowds that have come out to the shows - are they the kids who've heard the songs on the radio, or are they the die-hard radiohead-heads?

e: i think they know the albums [more than the singles]. it's amazing. everyone knows all the words. we've gone gold over here now, and i get the feeling - much more so than with pablo honey - that the people who bought this album actually cherish it. from the audience reaction - well, we went out to try to put a set list together the other day, and we just went out to the people queing up for the gig and asked them what they wanted to hear. i was surprised at the number of obscure b-sides the fans have gotten hold of, the imports that must have cost a fortune. so yeah, it's funny. people want to hear the obscure tracks or they have their own personal favorite on the bends, and it's definately not a single.

f: that's something else i've noticed at the radiohead shows i've been to - you guys make an effort to meet your fans. this is a stupid question, but why do you do it?

e: well, i would hope that when i was 16, the bands that i was into - if i had a chance to meet them, i would hope that they would be cool and would treat me nice, because i'm a fan of what they're doing. it's really taking what you were like at 15 or 16 or whatever and making into "do as you would be done by," or whatever. i like to think that we have some very cool fans, ones that you could go and have a drink with, no problem. we recognize people from previous tours who've come up and said hello at the end.

f: it's been a year now since the bends came out. after all that time, what would you change about the album?

e: there'd only be one thing - i'd remix "sulk." we didn't have time to do it properly ... there's so much that's going on with the guitar and the backing vocals that just isn't clear.

f: it's a little early, but do you have any plans for the next album?

e: i hope we maintain our diversity on the next album - the diversity of sound, the diversity of songs, etc. and the diversity in lyrics as well. i think that may well happen. we've tracked some songs. we've done two or three, and they sound pretty good. but it's early days yet, and it's difficult to tell.

f: what are the biggest influences on your writing?

e: we're influenced by books, film, the political arena, if you like ... everything everyone is exposed to in everyday life. it's no different for any other person.

f: what cds are you listening to on the bus?

e: i just bought a great cd - the latin playboys. i bought the new los lobos album, which is fantastic. really, really good. what else? we listen to massive attack. and a bit of oasis, i guess.

f: hmmm. what do you think of oasis?

e: oasis is a good band. top band. i mean, liam's got an amazing voice and noel writes great songs. they're cocky, and i kind of admire their gall for it, because they can get away with it.

f: but having talked to them and talked to you, with their attitudes, it seems like you're total opposites.

e: they are. we've met, and we actually got on pretty well. they do it their way, we do it our way. there's room for both. in a way, i wish we had the gall to be like them.

f: do the greenwoods ever get on like the gallaghers?

e: no, colin and jonny are the antithesis of liam and noel. there's none of that.

f: what's something that your fans don't know about you that would shock them?

e: i dont think they know how boring our lives actually are. There's this myth about rock n roll and being on the road, and wildness and craziness. yeah, sure. in reallity, it's not boring, but it's not exciting. most people want to have a look inside the bus to see what kind of crazy stuff is going on, but they'd be dreadfully disappointed, i think.

f: how do you write songs?

e: what happens is thom comes in with lots of lyrics, a melody and chords, and usually he strums it on acoustic guitar. we then take it from there and beat it up and arrange it. sometimes they need a lot of arrangement. sometimes they need absolutely nothing. sometimes thom will present a song and it's so obvious how it should be done. those are actually the hardest to do - the ones where we have free scope and it can go in any direction are the easiest ones to do.

f: did any one moment stand out while you were recording the bends?

e: if there was something that really stood out when we recorded it, before it was mixed, it would have been either "planet telex," "bones" or "the bends." "bones" and "the bends" were done in the same afternoon. they sounded good right from the start.

f: something that my friends wanted me to ask was about the lyrics - i mean, no one seems to have any idea what "fake plastic trees" means. do you ever have thom explain his lyrics to the band?

e: sure, i ask thom what some lyrics mean. that's cool, isn't it? a lot of bowie lyrics, i never understood where he was coming from. but there's a sentiment there. i think "fake plastic trees" is like a photo montage, if i can get really pretentious. it's like bits in the last 10 years of thom's life that he's kind of pulled out. he knows exactly what's going on in his head, and i think the listener finds the lyric a bit difficult. but they're all bits and pieces pulled from differnt things. that's my interpretation of it.

f: how do you come up with the ideas for your videos? the "high and dry" video reminded a lot of people of pulp fiction. did you mean to do that?

e: we leave the ideas up to the directors. we're not video makers. this is why we get young, fresh video directors. unlike the video for "fake plastic trees," with jake scott, where there was a direct allusion to 2001, and stanley kubrick, in "high and dry," i don't think pulp fiction was mentioned at all in the scripts. we liked the storyline and the plot, and that was enough for us. we weren't really keen to get over that it was a diner. we wnated to get over that it was a restaurant, but it was a diner no less.

f: finally, do you ever worry about whether americans understand radiohead?

e: the lyrics, or?

f: well, when i've talked blur, they seemed to be frustrated that americans didn't "get" what they were singing about. like cultural differences, i guess. does that ever bother you?

e: i could understand (not being understood) if i was in a band like blur, but we're not essentially british. our music definately transcends national borders. if we play in thailand and japan, very few people actually speak english, but they understand the music. they understand what it's about. it's much easier to get your message across to american fans. obviously there's a cultural difference, between britain and america, but our music isn't effected by that at all.