Ed O'Brien: “We haven't wanted to kill each other”

Ed O'Brien says Hail to the Thief, due on 9 June, is the first Radiohead album the five of them finished on good terms. This is the first album where, at the end of making it, we haven't wanted to kill each other.¹

He was talking to Gavin Edwards of Rolling Stone for a preview of the record, most of which was made in one intensive two-week session in Los Angeles with Nigel Godrich, their regular producer. The band did not want a long stay in the studio. They wanted to learn again how to put out a short song, and keep it succinct instead of taking the listener on a long trip.

The title is a line from the opener, “2 + 2 = 5”, and O'Brien says it is not meant simply as a dig at George W. Bush.

The swagger he talked about in January goes back to the last American tour. On tour in 2001 in America, I think we learned to swagger as a band. We wanted to capture that on record.¹