In Today’s Daily Record an interview with Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien is published for The Big Razz. Phil Selway was interviewed for a piece published in Metro. Radiohead explain why they are playing Glasgow Green tonight and not Glastonbury.
Ed O’Brien: “The reason we didn’t do it was because we did it on Hail To the Thief tour. We felt it wasn’t appropriate to do it this year because we didn’t want to be the Glastonbury house band. It’s such a special gig, it’s almost like you have to wait your turn.”
The band also talk about their eco-friendly tour. Ed: “So we bought another set of gear, shipped it to America on a slow container ship – because fast ships, like the QE2, have as big an impact as a 747. Now we’ve got one set of gear in America and one in Europe, so there’s no air-freighting. The other thing we’ve done is invested about £200,000 in batteries.”
Phil in Metro: “‘It still has to be a show that everyone wants to come to,’ he says. ‘But within those parameters there are things you can do that aren’t so wasteful. We’ve got solar generators to run all the sound systems and we’re looking into low-energy light shows, so it’s changing.”
And although Radiohead are now signed to several indie labels for their latest release ‘In Rainbows’, the band miss old label EMI, but won’t go back as long as Guy Hands is in charge. Ed said: “All we wanted from EMI was some kind of control over our back catalogue. The way artist record deals are, all that material we don’t own – we will never own the copyright. We’ve paid for it over and over. EMI have made more than £40million from us and we still don’t own that material.”
“We weren’t asking for money. Universal would have given us five times the amount. We knew that. But we weren’t after the money. It’s ensured that we never, ever, ever re-sign to EMI while there’s a Guy Hands involvement. Who knows what could happen in the future. We could say, ‘EMI is great, we miss it and we could go back there’”
On the recent ‘Best of Radiohead’ release by EMI, Ed said: “The packaging is awful. There are three really bad photos. They’re not going to make any money from it because they’ll spend so much on TV advertising. Another thing is that greatest hits don’t sell in America. I don’t understand why they’re doing it.”
Read the full interviews over at The Daily Record and Metro.
Radiohead news on this day..
- Radiohead Live in Glasgow [live report] – 2008
- Radiohead collect postcards for Scottish Parliament – 2008
- Dead Children Playing: 2nd edition – 2007
- Radiohead in San Diego – Night 2 Live Report – 2006
- The Eraser vodcast and more – 2006
- Rice & Cullum play Radiohead on Glastonbury – 2004
- Ed on Trade Justice Movement – 2003
- Radiohead in BANG Magazine – 2003
- Rock Werchter on 3FM – 2003
- Details on Radiohead/Sigur Ros Ballet – 2003
