Ed O'Brien

Ed O'Brien talks to Klinger of DC101, the Washington station, by video two days before Earth comes out, with Britain in lockdown.

He sang “Cloak of the Night” with Laura Marling one February afternoon in 2018, six or seven takes, and was more nervous than anywhere else on the record, his fingers not going where he wanted. He thinks nerves are the right place to be, and Radiohead still have them before every show. Asked bluntly why the solo record took so long, he says the songs were written between summer 2013 and summer 2014, then the Radiohead cycle ran into 2017 and he could not do both at once. His wish list began while he was demoing, with footage of Daft Punk playing “Get Lucky” at the Grammys with Omar Hakim and Nathan East as the rhythm section. When he later met Daft Punk's manager on a Radiohead tour of America and asked whether Hakim and East would be interested, the manager said yes, and O'Brien rang the two to ask them out for the first three weeks of playing. When the studio got hard he flew Glenn Kotche of Wilco in from Finland. At home he has a 1959 Martin 000-18, the only acoustic on the record, and a Moog One he has yet to get under the bonnet of. Earth runs 44 minutes, nine songs, to fit one vinyl record.

Eleven or 12 years ago he was stuck and did not want to pick up a guitar. Wilco had heard that Jeff Beck practised five hours a day, so when he met Eric Clapton he asked Clapton whether he played every day. Clapton only plays when he wants to, and his fingers are agony for the first week of rehearsals. O'Brien took the point. “There's no point playing if you're not feeling it.”