Colin Greenwood on “Creep” coming back and a next record with no deadline

Colin Greenwood says this American tour has been fun, which the ones before it were not, and fun enough to bring “Creep” back into the set. Thom Yorke has changed the “perfect soul” line he always hated. It's quite difficult to play, technically, not emotionally.¹

He talked to Craig McLean for the Scotland on Sunday magazine in New York in mid-October, just woken and nursing a coffee at the Trump International Hotel, between the band's two nights at Madison Square Garden and their music for Merce Cunningham's dance company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The pressure on Yorke has been lighter this time, Colin says, though the ballet added some. Jonny Greenwood's music for it, made with analogue machines, drum machines and radio transmissions and closer to “Idioteque” than to Bodysong, could be where their next studio session starts.

Vancouver, he says, was great for Yorke. At the end of REM's show on 29 August Peter Buck hung a guitar round his neck so he could thrash out the end of “It's the End of the World as We Know It”. Thom looked about, oh, 14.¹ The next night Michael Stipe joined Radiohead for “Karma Police”. The two singers have been friends since Radiohead supported REM on the Monster tour in 1995, and Yorke credits Stipe with getting him through the pressure that came with The Bends and OK Computer.

Americans have had no trouble with the album title, and crowds go wild at the anti-government line in “No Surprises”. The New York Post did run a piece called “Radio Dead”, made of people in the street who hated the band. Colin puts it down to Yorke's criticism of the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, and finds it funny.

Colin's first child is due on 11 December and Ed O'Brien's in January; Phil Selway has three boys and Yorke and Jonny a boy each, so whoever has the first girl, Colin says, will be very popular with the rest of the band.

After the shows end in early December the band take two months off, then go to Japan and Australia and finish touring in the spring. The plan is try to record for the sake of the songs rather than the sake of an album, no deadline or anything, just having fun.¹ McLean reports plans for an American mini-album of remixes next year, and Yorke has lately pointed to iTunes and to listeners who split albums into tracks. We don't know where we're going next but it's unlikely to be another 14-track record.¹