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Colin Greenwood says Hail to the Thief is not a protest against Bush
first posted on Treefingers by Miro · rewritten for the archive
The title of Radiohead's new album echoes a book about George Bush's disputed election win, but Colin Greenwood tells the Orlando Sentinel that the record, out in American shops on 10 June, should not be read as a protest against the policies or character of the US administration.
You can't say this song is about invading that country, or this one is about the Republican regime.
Colin Greenwood1
He describes the lyrics instead as being about rights and responsibilities, and how an individual takes a stand within society, and more broadly as a set of responses to living now.
The songs were tried out on the band's European tour last year, which Greenwood likens to instant focus groups. If an audience stayed to the end of a song, the band knew to record it. That made the sessions quicker. They were held in Los Angeles, a city unfamiliar to the band, because Nigel Godrich, who had made two Beck albums there, could get good sounds from the studio.
We're all in our 30s now, so it's time to smell the flowers and stop recording in concrete bunkers in Scandinavia in the dead of winter.
Colin Greenwood1