Ed O'Brien on That Pedal Show

Ed O'Brien was born in 1968, raised on Top of the Pops and the Radio 1 chart, and handed Sgt Pepper by his father at six, which left him unmoved. What made him want a guitar was the Police's “Walking on the Moon”, less for the playing than because the record sounded as if it had been made on the moon. He has been chasing that kind of spatial illusion ever since.

Most of the conversation with the hosts of That Pedal Show is about delay, which he treats as the instrument itself. They go through the pedals he has used to build those washes, among them a Line 6 DL4 and Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Men, the long hunt for a Memory Man that behaved the way he wanted, and why so many excellent delays still refuse to do the one thing he is after.

His signature Fender began with an email fired off before he could talk himself out of it, and took three years to become a guitar that would sustain the way his modified Strat did without losing what a Strat is.

Being outside London and outside the party was the making of the band, he says. They felt closer to what was coming out of Bristol than to Britpop, and EMI left them alone long enough for that to matter.