Jonny Greenwood talked to Rolling Stone about the upcoming performance in New York of his Superhet Popcorn Receiver. The magazine also asked him about ‘In Rainbows’.
Why did you choose to release the album this way?
Partly just to get it out quickly, so everyone would hear it at the same time, and partly because it was an experiment that felt worth trying, really.
Why the variable pricing?
It’s fun to make people stop for a few seconds and think about what music is worth, and that’s just an interesting question to ask people.
How would you respond to complaints about the sound quality – that 160 isn’t a high enough bitrate?
I don’t know, we talked about it and we just wanted to make it a bit better than iTunes, which it is, so that’s kind of good enough, really. It’s never going to be CD quality, because that’s what CD does.
What goals did you have for the album itself?
I suppose we wanted to get back slightly to Kid A in that we were spending longer experimenting and trying stuff out — it wasn’t so much of a performance-based thing, like Hail to the Thief. Other than that, it’s the usual thing of turning up with these songs and the pressure is, “Don’t fuck it up, don’t record them badly, don’t do bad arrangements of them, and do them justice.” So that’s what we’ve done.
What are your touring plans?
That’s exactly what we finally started talking about. Now that the album’s out, we can get together exactly how and where we’re going to tour.
Radiohead news on this day..
- Gigwise: ‘Idioteque’ greatest song of the 2000s – 2009
- Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ first anniversary – 2008
- Another interview with Jonny Greenwood – 2007
- Thom Yorke posts from Dead Air Space – 2007
- Johnny Marr, James Blunt on Radiohead move – 2007
- Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ out now – 2007
- NIN, Oasis, Jamiroquai to do a Radiohead – 2007
- VH2: Radiohead tenth greatest R&R band – 2004
- SPIN WITH A GRIN UPDATED – 2003
- JICKS TOUR DIARY – 2003
