Jonny Greenwood
Jonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwoodis an English musician and composer best known as the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the alternative rock band Radiohead. A multi-instrumentalist, Greenwood also plays instruments including the bass guitar, piano, viola, and drums, and is a prominent player of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument. He works with electronic techniques such as programming, sampling and looping, and writes music software used by Radiohead. He has been named one of the greatest guitarists of all...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth5 November 1971
If I'm on a train, with headphones, MP3s are great. At home, I prefer CD or vinyl, partly because they sound a little better in a quiet room and partly because they're finite in length and separate things, unlike the endless days and days of music stored on my laptop.
But over a period of time It's the melodic things that are in my head all day.
I remember when I was in my late teens just getting rid of lots of records, realizing I only ever listened to them when I was reading, or watching TV, or doing something else.
I'm happy to write 10 times too much music.
It feels like Radiohead are famous, but that no one knows who we are. Which is brilliant, really.
People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis' record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row - there's just too much to get through.
I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.
I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed to play guitar. There's something - I don't want to sound ungrateful - but there's something very old-fashioned and traditional about it. You meet kids today whose grandparents were in punk bands. It's very old and traditional, but then, so is an orchestra and so is a string section.
I worry about being a fogy and just writing for orchestras. Like, really, I should be doing more electronic stuff, I feel. Laptops as part of the orchestra, and installation sound, and speakers.
Obviously there will be a backlash. If you believe the hype you have to believe a backlash too. Any criticism we get, is always stuff we've already criticized ourselves.
My style is so tightly tied in with our songs that I don't think you could even ask me to quit Radiohead and play guitar for another band. I don't think I could do it. It would probably reveal me to be the bluffer that I believe I am. That's how it feels. I wouldn't have the confidence to do anything but this.
As soon as you impose Western chords on an Indian scale, something great collapses.
The strangest part of Indian music is its lack of chords: There's no such thing as major or minor, and it's unusual to hear more than two different pitches at the same time.
Maybe I'm used to religious music being gentler in the classical world.