Ed O'Brien says Radiohead wanted a deal with EMI's new owners

Radiohead wanted to stay with EMI, Ed O'Brien says, and left because the label's new owner would not give them what they wanted. The band answer questions sent in by readers in Observer Music Monthly's December cover interview, out today.

One reader asks whether the band let their contract run out and then put out their most accessible album in years as a parting shot. Colin Greenwood says they were working with EMI right up to the release of In Rainbows.

It fell through, O'Brien says, because EMI was in flux after its takeover earlier this year by Guy Hands and his private equity firm, Terra Firma. In his view the new owners have never run a record company and don't understand the music industry. But he wouldn't give us what we wanted. He didn't know what to offer us.² Phil Selway gets a running joke out of the name, guessing that one pointed question came from “G Hands” and crediting a later one to “G Hands, disconsolate of London”.

Thom Yorke says the CD deals with XL and, in America, with ATO are licences for one record each. He dismisses comScore's November estimates of what downloaders paid. As Colin puts it, If we'd set out to do this to make lots of money, we'd have signed to Universal Records two months ago.²

EMI's box set of the band's first six albums comes out this month. O'Brien says the decision to release it came from “the Terra Firma lot”, and the band knew during the negotiations that it was coming. Yorke's verdict, through a laugh, is We're not allowed to slag it off.²