Ed O'Brien on KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic

Anne Litt talks to Ed O'Brien in Studio A at Capitol Studios for KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, as Earth comes out under his initials. He never felt comfortable as Ed O'Brien; Eddie was too playful and Edward pretentious. Then Alex Perez, who built the prototype of his Fender guitar, headed an email “EOB Strat”, and initials leave room for other people to come under the umbrella.

He and his wife bonded over South America when they met in 1998. Making OK Computer, with everything going well, he felt most alone, and the bossa nova and Tropicália he was hearing brought him to tears. When In Rainbows came out in 2007 he told the band that in five years he would take a year out. The plan was to drive from the top of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in a camper van, until he and his wife realised the children, six and four, would be bored stiff. They lived instead in an adobe house on the edge of a farm between São Paulo and Rio, the children at school from 6.30 in the morning. Six weeks of writing went nowhere until Primal Scream's “Movin' on Up” gave him spine tingles, and two nights at the Rio carnival showed him the feeling he was chasing. His head said make an electronic record, and his heart said pick up a guitar and shake things.

Three-quarters of the way through, back from a Radiohead tour of North America without having heard the record for eight weeks, he heard that it was not working and asked himself what his truth was. He sees Earth as the first of a trilogy, and thinks almost every Radiohead album had its dark night of the soul.