Jonny Greenwood says “Lift” still hasn't found its form

Jonny Greenwood has been asked about “Lift”, the song Radiohead first played live in 1996 and have never released, and he sounds surprised it came up. Atze de Vrieze put the question for 3voor12, the Dutch broadcaster VPRO's music site, ahead of Greenwood's orchestral set at the Best Kept Secret festival on Sunday. De Vrieze told him the band's manager, Bryce Edge, had said they were also working on a very old song called “Lift”.

Oh yes? Did he say that? It's rather a management favourite.

Jonny Greenwood⁷

In February Greenwood said Radiohead had changed their method again and that a couple of months of recording had gone well. We've stood still a bit too long, so starting up again took a lot of time. We're working in periods now, on and off.⁷ With longer gaps between albums, he says, everyone brings more new ideas to the studio. That afternoon he and Thom Yorke were due to carry on with a song they had begun the day before.

Every Radiohead album, Greenwood says, has one song that has been around much longer than the rest. “Nude”, by his count, had existed for 20 years by the time it went on In Rainbows: its first version was recognisably the same song, but the band never found the right arrangement until then. Lift is another of those old songs that hasn't found its right form yet. But if an idea is good, it stays good, whatever form it takes.⁷ Blondie's “Heart of Glass”, he points out, started life as a country and western song.