Jonny Greenwood gives “Spooks” to Supergrass for Inherent Vice

Jonny Greenwood said on Twitter on Monday that the “Spooks” in the end credits of Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice is not Radiohead. it's really a half idea we never made work live. I rewrote it and got supergrass to play it.¹

In a second tweet he narrowed that to two thirds of Supergrass, who play on one track of the soundtrack. Jonny named nobody. The Guardian thinks the two are probably Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey, who played with Colin Greenwood at a Velvet Underground tribute in 2011.

The song's name was spotted on Saturday, when Anderson showed the film to the press for the first time on the morning of its premiere at the New York Film Festival. The film, from Thomas Pynchon's novel, is set in 1970 and has Owen Wilson as a surf-rock saxophonist. Writers at those screenings tied the song's sound to the story. Jonny wrote the whole score, his third film in a row for Anderson after There Will Be Blood and The Master. The Guardian says he recorded it with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The film opens in the US on 12 December.

“Spooks” is a surf-rock guitar instrumental that Radiohead played on 18 nights in 2006, in the run-up to In Rainbows, from Copenhagen on 6 May to Amsterdam on 28 August. They have not played it since, and never released it. Asked whether the band might go back to it, Jonny said maybe one day. He calls the new version not very Radiohead. It's better now than the pixies/surf pastiche it was.⁵