Ed: "Yeah
Interviewer: "you know, that's how a lot of bands worked then. Then bands got into the excesses of the seventies and eighties, and then you know, Fleetwood Mac, Tusk, they spent two years on it...
Ed: "Really?
Interviewer: "you know, and then...so I think it's good to see bands going back to that immediacy
Ed: "I think it's also to be open, you know, it's...one of the things that we...we do work very well...we do work best when we're quick, but for instance a track like Fake Plastic Trees, you know, Thom basically...it was a new way of working for us. Thom did this amazing vocal with an acoustic guitar one night, and we had to build the track up around it, and you know, we had to embellish the track, and everything that we put on couldn't be mediocre or average, everything had to make...enhance the track, and that took about three to four months to actually, you know, coming back to it, and it wasn't until the final mix by Sean Slade, Paul Kolderie, who produced our first album, and they mixed this one, that they actually pulled all these different things together, and they sent it back, and it was like “Wow”, you know, “Jesus, this is what it should sound like”
Interviewer: "Wow, yeah. Another song I understand was recorded in kind of an unusual way was Bulletproof?
Ed: "Mmmm (laughs)
Interviewer: "That they just had the tape rolling while the guitars were playing, and then kind of put that into the song. Is that true?
Ed: "Yeah, well it was...because basically the acoustic guitar...Thom playing acoustic guitar, and the bass and drums were all being done, and the track needed like some kind of like effects and stuff, I guess on it, and we were trying...Jonny and I were playing...
Jonny: "The old Floyd trick
Ed: "(laughs) The old Floyd trick! And we were trying, you know, to add some kind of layers and textures to it, and it wasn't really working when the tape was running, so they said...they said, you know “well, we'll stop the tape rolling”, well “we'll roll the tape, but you won't hear it, just play weirdly funny noises for three and a half minutes, and do that four or five times”, and we did that, and you know, I remember thinking at the time “Bastards! We've never recorded like this before, how are you supposed to do it?”
Jonny: "But we ended up with like six tracks of all very different colours on them that we could fade in and out to change the mood
Ed: "Yeah
Interviewer: "That's the kind of song I call a “headphone song”, you know, it sounds great on headphones?
Ed: "Yeah
Interviewer: "You know, or at night if you're trying to go to sleep or whatever?
Ed: "Well, I think that's the thing about this album, I remember the first time... I only listened to it on headphones really about like a month and a half ago, and it's like “This sounds phenomenal”, you know, it sounds really, really good on headphones
Interviewer: "Well, when I knew you guys were coming in, I've been listening to it over the past week whilst I was doing glamorous things like my housework and laundry and stuff, and instead of like fading into the background, background music, it kept, you know, the music was there, it wasn't like I was daydreaming over it, I was definitely aware of really, you know, listening to the music. It didn't fade into the background
Ed: "Mmm hmm
Jonny: "Well that's good
Interviewer: "It's a way I gauge how the songs stand up. Since they're not here, let's talk about some of the other guys. What kind of people are they?
Ed: "(laughs)
Interviewer: "What are they like to be with, since they're not here to defend themselves. I think an obvious first choice will be your brother, Colin
Jonny: "Right
Interviewer: "There was a quote that Colin said in one of these articles that unlike the Gallaghers, you beat each other up in private, and get on well in public, which I thought was brilliant (laughs). What kind of person is he like?
Jonny: "He sort of keeps hugging me, doesn't he?
Ed: "(laughs)
Jonny: "And calling me a winner, and telling me “you're my brother, and you're great”, and hugging me, and looking at me like a big affectionate dog
Ed: "(laughs)
Jonny: "Or a little affectionate dog, really. It's just great
Ed: "He's...he also...I mean, on tour I share a room with him as well, and he's...you know...I mean, it's very difficult to talk about the others because we are...we have known each other and been friends for so long that kind of...we all know one's own little idiosyncrasies and put up with them, and kind of annoying little habits, but there's an amazing amount of, you know, strength there, and friendship. You'd have to be...(laughs)...to do, you know, tour and I mean, we had two weeks off last year...
Interviewer: "Really?
Ed: "Yeah, and sometimes you sit there, and I remember, I'd been ill, I think it was about three or four weeks ago, I'd just had the flu, and every single day we'd been together, you know since January to this year, January the second, and I sat there in this...at this meal, kind of half joking, but sort of crying into my soup, going “Oh my God, I've spent all my time with you”, and I've seen my girlfriend like...we see our girlfriends so infrequently because we're away or whatever, so it's very difficult because...you know, we're kind of very tight knit, and not willing to let on about...(laughs)
Interviewer: "Right, it says here about Phil that he's usually a little bit more quieter than everybody, and that he was nicknamed the Mad Dog, and people were afraid to approach him...
Ed: "(laughs)
Interviewer: "Thinking “oh oh, this guy's going to be like really off the edge”...
Ed: "Yeah, well it was just, I guess our sense of irony, that's right that we thought it was funny calling him Mad Dog, and he's not at all, you know, the thing is that Phil is the antithesis of...he's the antithesis of your normal drummer, he's very cerebral, he's very, you know, thoughtful, he's a great drummer, and you know, he's not one to go smashing TV sets through the...as none of us are...through kind of windows, or whatever...
Interviewer: "Oh, I'm disappointed!
Jonny: "Why?
Ed: "Well, you know, that's all a bit old hat
Interviewer: "(check 05:55) National Enquirer and some stories are true
Ed: "No, no, that's true. We're much more...we prefer to do it with words or...
Jonny: "Yeah, we can't quite see the point in making so much mess that someone paid a few dollars an hour will have to come and clear it up...
Ed: "That's right, yeah
Jonny: "It's not like the manager will have to do it in these hotels, is it? Someone with the rubbish pay will have to do it
Ed: "People like Voltaire were much more...
Jonny: "Mad, anarchic, on the edge (laughs)
Ed: "Anarchic. Remember Keith Moon? Voltaire versus Keith Moon. Which side are you on?
Jonny: "Who'd win?
Interviewer: "Thom had a great quote attributed to him: “I'd rather be a miserable git than hard”
Ed: "Yeah (laughs)
Interviewer: "Does that kind of sum him up?
Ed: "Yeah, I think it's kind of that, yeah. He'd rather be himself, or whatever, and you know, do what he does, rather than being part of any kind of fashion or trend or scene, or whatever, yeah
Interviewer: "I guess you've probably known him the longest, when you first got together I heard he recruited you because he thought you looked like Morrissey
Ed: "(laughs) Looked like Morrissey!
Interviewer: "Again, I don't know if that's true...
Ed: "Yeah, I did have a bit of a Morrissey and Smiths fixation, I was...my teenage years...you sort of...the wonderful thing about The Smiths was that they gave you license...me and my friends license to sit on park benches, you know, sort of reminiscing and talking of unrequited love, and you know, reading books, and...yeah, sorry I'm going off the point a bit there really, but yeah, that's right, he...I think I was walking across...I'd been in various sort of school plays that Thom had been...I always remember the first time I actually came across Thom sort of musically, I was acting in a play, it was A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Thom was doing the music with this other guy, and Thom was playing guitar, and the musicians, it was him and this other guy, were on top of this scaffolding in the school theatre, and it was kind of like a workshop thing going on, and the director...they were kind of like jamming this kind of...this musak, I guess it was, you know, as the play was going on, and the director wanted some kind of form to each scene, you know, and the music was kind of drifting here and there, but it was, you know, it was really good, and I always remember the director sort of, you know, saying “look, what the hell's going on up there? We're on this scene”, and Thom yelling down at him, sort of swearing, effing and blinding, sort of like “I don't bloody know where we are! We don't care, we're just going to do our own thing up here and jam”, and that was the first kind of time...he was very difficult not to notice at school (laughs)
Interviewer: "Yeah, and the schooling in England is a little bit different than here, you know, with headmasters, and things like that, so were all of you a little bit more rebellious than your classmates, would you say?
Jonny: "Errmmm...
Interviewer: "The schooling sounds a little bit more strict
Jonny: "I'm not sure. Yeah, it was stricter, and when there was rebellion it was fairly wild, there was like contemporary pupils with us who once hijacked a bus, and in fact...
Ed: "There was a bomb, wasn't there?
Jonny: "There was. Someone tried to set a bomb next to the main statue in the middle of this park next to the school. They made a homemade bomb by collecting chemicals every week from chemical lessons over a whole term, until they had like a whole bottle full, and laying it next to the statue. And just the other week, the same school, some kids committed an armed robbery on a wine merchant, which is, you know, bizarre for this kind of sleepy like town in the middle of Oxfordshire. Very hard to imagine
Interviewer: "In chemistry and physics classes I remember after lab day, you know, they would check all the chemicals and make sure that everything was still there...
Ed: "Yeah. Well we used to have great magnesium ribbon bonfires, I remember this sort of kind of great big “WOOSH!!”. These things would really go up...
Interviewer: "And then Colin was the next to join the fold, you guys kind of wound up...
Ed: "Well, Colin and Thom were in the same year, and Colin was in...and then Phil...we did the first gig, after Colin had joined...just like a sixth form birthday party with a drum machine, and it was...you know, it broke down during the first song on...and after more effing and blinding from Thom, it was decided that night that we needed a drummer, and hence Phil...we knew him, and I saw him in the pub the next night I remember, and Jonny was kind of...you were there at all the practices, and sort of, you know, within a couple of weeks was playing
Jonny: "I'm not quite sure how that worked, actually (laughs)
Interviewer: "Is it true that you were like saying “oh please, I want to join the band”, kind of thing, and hanging round the guys...
Ed: "No, you didn't speak for about a year, did you? (laughs)
Jonny: "No, I didn't, I always had my...
Interviewer: "Just hanging out quietly...
Jonny: "And even when I joined the band, I had a keyboard which I...'cos they'd had a previous keyboard player who was sort of into quite loud keyboards (Ed laughs), in a Genesis kind of way, so I thought “Well, the way to stay in this band would be to be very quiet”, so I brought the keyboard, played it in the band, but always had the volume on zero, always, always, so no-one could hear a note I played
Ed: "You were really cunning (laughs)
Jonny: "Which really worked. They kept saying “Wow, the keyboards really add something” They kept saying...the euphemism they kept coming up with was they said “Well, these keyboards sound like...you can't hear them, but if you took them away, then you'd notice they were missing”
Ed: "(laughs)
Jonny: "Which was excellent, 'cos I'd be sat there kind of...playing the right chords, you know, I'd been learning how to play the keyboards in between the rehearsals, and I'd get better and better, but they certainly never heard a note for the first year and a half...two years
Interviewer: "Well, if you played harmonica, they heard the harmonica...
Jonny: "They did hear that, yeah, but we couldn't put that in every song, so...
Interviewer: "Now, at what point did you pick up the guitar, I mean how did you sneak that in?
Jonny: "Well I was...
Interviewer: "All of a sudden you were like “guess what, I can also play guitar”?
Jonny: "Sort of. I was kind of doing an apprenticeship with Thom's younger brother, I was in another band at school...with Thom's equally talented younger brother, and he's got his own band going now, and I sort of learned with them, and would write songs with them, and sort of came along not quite fully fledged, but not too downy
Interviewer: "So, kind of fast forward a little bit, people went off and did their thing at college, but the band was still together in all this time?
Ed: "Yeah
Interviewer: "At what point did your name change from...what was it? On A Friday to Radiohead?
Ed: "Wow, you've really done your homework! It was just after we'd signed. We were never really happy with the name, and we went through loads of name changes didn't we? It didn't make any difference to us, because we weren't doing any gigs at the time, so we...on a whim, each vacation holiday, we'd come back, and it would be “I've got a great idea for a name”, and all think it was great for about, you know, maybe five, ten minutes, and then it got changed again
Interviewer: "I know it's one of those questions that you hate, but how do you come up with On A Friday to Radiohead?
Ed: "(clears throat)
Interviewer: "(laughs)
Ed: "Obviously not with much thought...I mean...
Interviewer: "Was some lager involved in it?
Ed: "Not really. It was just...we weren't happy with the name On A Friday, and I think Radiohead is...it's a song by Talking Heads on True Stories, and it was kind of like...they were probably actually one of the few bands that we all really liked, and admired their diversity and their musicianship and their songwriting...
Jonny: "And they finished sort of just as we were starting...
Interviewer: "Yeah, I forgot all about that
Ed: "Yeah, a nod to the Talking Heads
Interviewer: "Yeah
Jonny: "And we kind of had the feeling that they sort of did it well. I was reading this wonderful review of them touring with The Ramones in France, and really annoying The Ramones, because they kept getting out of the bus and speaking French to all these people, and The Ramones just wanted to kind of kill them, obviously, so we thought they were pretty cool
Interviewer: "Joey's great, but he's kind of like “Hey. How ya doin'? Hey”, you know, and he's not exactly fluent in French
Jonny: "(Check 13:47)
Interviewer: "Now, the summer of '91 was a real, I guess, you know, a turning point for the band, you just went out there, and everybody got their act together, and a tour, and then there was the record company offers, you seemed to have a very...
Ed: "Mmm. We didn't actually tour, we had...
Interviewer: "Oh. Were they like showcases?
Ed: "Well we did...well, they weren't...
Jonny: "We did four shows in Oxford
Ed: "Just four shows in Oxford
Interviewer: "Really?
Ed: "Yeah
Jonny: "And before then we'd never played in public, apart from, you know...
Ed: "Yeah, two or three...
Jonny: "School ones and stuff like that
Interviewer: "Oh, I heard it was like a planned out...you know, stopping off in Bristol...
Ed: "No
Jonny: "No, definitely not
Interviewer: "You know, near Bradford, you know, all over, kind of thing, a whole circuit...
Ed: "We just played in Oxford. Our whole thing was that, you know, we wanted to get a following in Oxford, and...
Jonny: "And we were in the enviable position of getting more than two record companies interested, because as soon as that happens, then you get thirty interested, most of which have never heard of most of your music, but want to make sure they don't miss out on anything, and they're basically following all the others
Interviewer: "I mean, how come the band never relocated to London? Did you feel you'd get lost in London, kind of?
Ed: "It was...I remember when we were...there was a record label that...who were interested, and it was at the time...that summer of '91, and it kind of typified everything...what this woman said typified everything that we thought about London. She said...I said, you know “Have you heard the tape?”, and everything, and this was before we had management, and she said “Yeah”, and she said “but, you know, you don't have to worry about demo tapes, you want to just hang out at this club where all these Indie bands go, and then you'll get signed up”, and it was just like...and this club was in London, and it was like that's the last thing...you know, we never felt comfortable with it, we didn't...you know, we don't feel...you know, there are very few bands that we feel actually comfortable with, because there are a lot of bands out there who are pretty boring and stupid, you know, and particularly this whole thing about the scene and, you know it's very London-centric, and just the fact that our friends are in Oxford, and we've kind of...apart from going away to college, we've always lived around there, and there didn't seem any reason to move, it just seems more...life isn't as good in London, you know, traffic, air, all those things...
Jonny: "Mmmm. Yeah, I'm not sure the other bands...it's not that they're stupid...
Ed: "Yeah, that was a bit harsh (laughs)
Jonny: "But more that they're into the music for other things...
Ed: "Yeah
Jonny: "Some of them are into kind of the intellectual idea of being in a band, and that situation, and the kind of subversion that that entails, which is great, and it can lead to great interviews, and a great idea for a band, but we just want to make a few good records, really
Interviewer: "Was success in the States ever important to you guys, or was it “if it happens, it happens?”
Jonny: "With our first record, everyone was telling us how important it was that it was happening, but for this record, we've got no expectations, that's for certain, because we...I think the term is “crossed over”, into a frighteningly diverse amount of people...we'd even have people turning up to our live shows when we were touring Creep, and they'd leave after Creep, like five, ten people every night, and so we'd get some of the the crew to stop them and ask them “Why are you going? I mean, do you hate the rest of the songs, or something?”, and luckily...or unluckily, they were saying “Well, no we do this to all bands, you know. We saw Nirvana last week an left after Teenage Spirit...Smells Like Teen Spirit, because we sort of don't like live bands, but we watch MTV, and we know the single”. So there's this whole kind of (laughs) bizarre crowd of people who obviously sort of were into our music, which is great, but possibly not a very accurate sort of picture...
Ed: "Mmmm
Interviewer: "I think there's a generation of some fans who are just very, you know, not single orientated, but they know the band from the video, but it seems to be that the ones that are interested find out more about the band, you know they'll pick up the EP, you know, they'll pick up Pablo Honey, you know, if they like this, so it seems that (check 17:35) with your fans. Have...it would help just to touch on Pablo Honey briefly. Now that was made in three weeks, so were the songs also written very quickly?
Jonny: "No, that was part of the problem.. They were songs that had been recorded arguably better...
Ed: "Yeah
Jonny: "Earlier on when we were still On A Friday, and it was that kind of nightmare situation of being a band...a professional band, and having such a limited time to record already quite old songs, which would have been fine, but the plan was to tour in England once, and then do the second album, but things kind of got stretched, and put into stasis by the success.
Ed: "It was kind of like a collection of our greatest hits as an unsigned band, or our supposed greatest hits (laughs)
Jonny: "It was something that we wanted to release and then kind of...now we had free time to rehearse, and didn't have to do rubbish jobs any more, we kind of figured that we could start writing really good songs, something we've only just had a chance to record, really
Interviewer: "One artist I talked to kind of phrased it like he had his whole first twenty-five years to prepare for that first album, and then the second one in between touring and the next album a few months, and it's a very weird thing to reconcile
Jonny: "But in a way that's fine for us...
Ed: "Yeah
Jonny: "These songs were written so quickly. We're the kind of band who would, before we were signed, we were writing songs every week. Sometimes they were very bad, but...
Interviewer: "And you guys toured a lot, as you said when we first started talking tonight, you could have probably continued touring on the recognition of Pablo Honey and specifically Creep. Do you have any memorable...Any strange incidents?
Jonny: "Strange things seem to happen in Canada
Ed: "Vancouver (laughs)
Jonny: "In Vancouver we played on a revolving stage, at this outdoor kind of theme park, which was obviously very bizarre, especially being the kind of band that doesn't look up very much, so on the brief occasions when you did look up, it like...it just looked as if the whole audience had got up and moved a hundred metres to the left, and it was just kind of going round and round while we were playing, which was fairly strange, and that very same week, we played a show in Toronto, and some man grabbed me on the way to the stage, and said “Quick! Write on my arm, write something on my arm, write your name on my arm”, which is...which sort of happens sometimes, but it's a fairly bizarre thing, so I scribbled what vaguely looked like my name, but not really, and went and played the gig, and the following night, he turned up to the next show, which not only was that three hundred miles away, which was quite an alarming thing for him to be doing, he also rolled up his sleeve, and he'd had it tattooed on!
Ed: "(laughs)
Jonny: "And it didn't even look like my signature, worst of all (laughs).. He could have got Thom to do something vaguely kind of artistic
Interviewer: "I was going to say that, I bet he was going to get a tattoo of your signature, and he came back the next day...
Jonny: "Disaster! I know...
Ed: "Terrible
Interviewer: "This person...
Jonny: "What do you say? You can't sort of tell him it was a mistake, you just say “oh wow, great!”, you know
Ed: "You're delighted, you (check 20:50)
Interviewer: "Maybe he's going to show up and get the whole band on his arm, or something. That is very strange, very strange. Do you remember the first time you heard yourselves on the radio?
Ed: "Yeah
Interviewer: "Was it back home, or here?
Ed: "It was back home, yeah
Jonny: "You kick yourself
Interviewer: "Because I'm not a musician, but I would think that as a musician, it kind of solidifies that, you know, “This is real, now”
Ed: "Well it was...
Jonny: "It was bizarre, I heard it on a tape deck cassette recorder, and it's very strange, you had to keep opening the cassette to make sure there was nothing going round...
Ed: "(laughs)
Jonny: "It was very bizarre to have this kind of box with nothing physically moving, but your music's coming out of it. It's hard to explain, but it's a very strange feeling, you know, a bit weird...
Ed: "It was...yeah we were completely excited, it was a mainstream weekend dj on the national radio station, and we heard it...because it was great in Oxford at the time, and it still is, people...we've got a lot of friends there, and someone phoned us up and said “you were played at eight o'clock this morning on the radio, and they're going to play it again on Sunday”, so it was like we all tuned in and listened to it, it was...yeah, it was wonderful
Interviewer: "For the American audiences that haven't seen the live show yet, you're touring this summer?
Ed: "Yeah, we're going to come back in May and June, and do some club dates, about three or four weeks, but that'll be the first tour, and there'll be others. We'll be back
Interviewer: "What can we expect? Lasers? Smoke machines?
Ed: "Oh, no, hopefully not
Jonny: "Codpieces...
Ed: "(laughs) There's a great...our guitar tech, Plank, he used to work with WASP, and he said that, is it Blackie Lawless of WASP, he used to have an exploding codpiece, and one night it imploded, so we're not going to be doing anything like that...
Jonny: "No
Ed: "Thankfully, no, it's just a ... you know, it's difficult to explain, really, we're just kind of gimmick-free
Interviewer: "That is absolutely true, because I did some writing for Kerrang, and Blackie relayed that story as well (laughs)
Ed: "Right, yes. We'll leave the pyrotechnics for Blackie
Interviewer: "Ok, that's great...