UK Magazine ‘Classic Rock presents Prog’ have Thom Yorke on the cover, with 8 pages inside on Radiohead’s past, present and future.

Issue 4 of this special issue of Classic Rock has an interview with Colin Greenwood. In the only UK interview of this year Colin explains that, despite some rumours, the band are not splitting up just yet. Colin: “We’ve never said we were going to do that. But we can’t stop the speculation”.

This Summer Thom Yorke told the Believer that the band was done with the ‘album format’. But Ed O’Brien told NME that with sessions planned this winter the band would “definitely” be releasing a full album physically next year.

In the interview with Classic Rock, Colin explains: “I think that everything is important all the time, when it comes to music. Whatever the format. Downloads are cool, and CD’s are still cool. Anything that encourages people to find new music and share it with others is just fantastic. I hope music still means something to people, and that’s all that matters. (…) These are times when you want to release a full album of songs. But there are others when an EP is more sensible. Again, just putting out one song on its own, as we did with ‘Harry Patch (In Memory Of)‘ is the answer.”

Colin continues: “The Biggest problem that we’ve had sometimes is that we do take an age in the studio. Sometimes doing one track really quickly actually turns out for the best. You can spend forever reworking songs, and remixing them, and never be satisfied. There’s sort of self-considered, analytical self-consciousness that we’ve taken on before which can be crippling – although it can act as quality control, too. You have to strike the right balance. To learn when enough is enough. In the past, that’s a lesson we’ve learned the hard way”.

On releasing the track ‘These Are My Twisted Words‘, which leaked in August and was rumoured to be included on a new EP, Greenwood smirks, “What EP? We decided to make one song available, because we’re going to play it live soon. There are other songs in various stages of development, but nothing else is ready.”

The Radiohead feature also includes an interview from 1992 with Thom Yorke. Besides Thom calling Jim Morrison a fat, talentless bastard, here’s one quote from Thom on being signed to a big record label (EMI), while a lot of artists are getting dropped: “At the moment, we’re in a very strong position because our record label has a lot of faith in us. And it’s one of those things, you have to be very honest with them, you can’t mess them about. But at the same time, we signed with them because it was an amazingly good deal.”

Read the full interviews in ‘Classic Rock presents Prog‘.

Radiohead news on this day..

• Bryan Ferry’s ‘Olympia’ (feat. Jonny Greenwood) album stream – 2010
• Colin Greenwood posts King Biscuit Time videos – 2009
• Radiohead’s ‘Bodysnatchers’ featured on ‘Later…’ compilation – 2009
• ‘Free’ album still stolen on P2P-networks – 2007
• Radiohead in Macca’s fantasy festival line-up – 2004
• SPLIT SIDES PICTURES – 2003