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Jonny Greenwood on the jazz records behind Radiohead's songs
Radiohead wanted a harp on “Dollars & Cents” and had none, and Jonny Greenwood doesn't play double bass, so he stuck strips of electrical tape on a double bass's neck where his notes were and played it that way. He tells George Varga of JazzTimes that he was after what Alice Coltrane does on Journey in Satchidananda and Ptah, the El Daoud. Colin Greenwood had brought one of her albums with strings into the studio and played it alongside the band's take, and they kept turning themselves down and the Coltrane up until it was all they could hear.
That is how they work, Jonny says, speaking from London. The records they admire come into the studio and get played next to the unfinished tracks. Colin calls it ambition over ability.
We bring in our favorite jazz albums, and say: We want to do this. And we enjoy the sound of our failing!
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Jonny names Miles Davis's Bitches Brew as the main model for OK Computer, for its chaos, its two electric pianos and its several drummers. “Pyramid Song” was modelled on Charles Mingus's “Freedom”, whose handclaps, Thom Yorke says, were sampled on the first version.
All five admire Davis, and Jonny is uneasy even calling him an influence.
Discussing Miles makes you feel like a dimestore novelist talking about Shakespeare.
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The jazz behind the songs, as JazzTimes gives it
| # | Song | Album | Jazz source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | “The National Anthem” | Kid A | Art Ensemble of Chicago, “Theme de Yo-Yo” (Les Stances à Sophie) |
| 2 | “Pyramid Song” | Amnesiac | Charles Mingus, “Freedom” (Epitaph) |
| 3 | “Dollars & Cents” | Amnesiac | Alice Coltrane's harp (Journey in Satchidananda) |
| 4 | “Life in a Glasshouse” | Amnesiac | A New Orleans funeral march |
| 5 | “You and Whose Army?” | Amnesiac | The Ink Spots' vocal style |
| 6 | “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” | Amnesiac | The South-east Asian music John Coltrane drew on late in life |