Clive Deamer says Radiohead are no rock band

Clive Deamer, Radiohead's second drummer beside Phil Selway since 2011, once had to stop a Rolling Stone interviewer who kept calling them a rock band. He tells the story to Nick Hasted of The Independent, who met him as he got ready for the tour. Halfway through the interview I had to say, 'Hang on mate, we're talking about Radiohead – what's rock about Radiohead?'²

Having spent nearly a year with them, they don't see themselves as a rock band, and they're not trying to maintain that.

Clive Deamer²

Deamer sees jazz in their thinking instead. He plays it himself, in Get The Blessing with Jim Barr, his partner in Portishead's rhythm section, and the group's record won best new album at the 2008 BBC Jazz Awards.

His example is “Bloom”, from The King of Limbs. He calls its rhythm complex, antagonistic and tangled, and certainly neither pop nor rock. It's got the same intensity as any Sun Ra, or Elvin Jones burst with Coltrane.²

Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have jazz references they like, and they come up, but Deamer doubts either would call anything Radiohead do jazz. The jazz he means is in the way they steer clear of cliché and standard forms for the sake of the song and of Radiohead as an idea, which, he says, rock bands don't do. Jonny certainly, there's a jazz player in there, along with all the other things.²