Thom Yorke denies Radiohead left EMI over money

Radiohead left EMI after their talks with Guy Hands, whose firm Terra Firma owns the label, came to nothing, and this week the two sides have given opposite reasons. On Saturday 29 December Thom Yorke answered EMI's version on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, in a note typed in a jumble of capitals. He calls The Times' report a lie and says we did not ask for a load of cash from our old record label EMI to re-sign.²

Earlier in December Ed O'Brien and Yorke had told BBC 6 Music that Terra Firma did not understand the record business. O'Brien said a renewal had never been likely, and Yorke said of EMI they had us on a very long leash for a very long time.⁵

The Times reported that the band walked away because Hands would not agree a deal worth about £10m, where EMI had offered a £3m advance. An EMI spokesman said on Wednesday evening that Radiohead had demanded an extraordinary amount of money, and that the label's other artists should not have to subsidise it.

What the band wanted, Yorke writes, was some control over their work and over how EMI would use it in future, which they thought reasonable. Mr Hands was not interested. So neither were we. We made the sign of the cross and walked away. Sadly.² He calls it strange for the head of an international record label to air such things in public, and says the band are very upset that the story is being spread. Radiohead took no advances at all from XL or TBD, the independent labels putting out In Rainbows on CD, he says. The XL CD is in British shops on Monday.

The Times also reported that the band had asked for the copyright in part of their back catalogue, which EMI would not consider, and for a £3m worldwide marketing budget, a figure their management dispute. Bryce Edge, one of the band's managers, told the paper that the talks never got as far as an advance or marketing money. We couldn't move ahead with EMI because Guy Hands irrevocably refused to discuss the catalogue in any meaningful way.³

Radiohead's original EMI contract made no provision for digital sales at all, Edge points out. The band hold moral rights over their six EMI albums and want a say in how they are used, but EMI keeps the recordings, The Independent reported, for the full term of their copyright.