Radiohead sign the #LetTheMusicPlay letter to the government

Radiohead are among about 1,500 artists who have signed an open letter to Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, asking the government to support live music through the pandemic. Ed O'Brien has written a statement for the campaign about the small rooms where the band began.

The letter, sent under the tag #LetTheMusicPlay, says live music supports 210,000 jobs and put £4.5bn into the economy in 2019. It expects concerts and festivals to stay shut until 2021 at the earliest and asks for help until then to prevent mass insolvencies. Coldplay, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, PJ Harvey and Nick Cave signed too. Dowden answered on Twitter that he was pushing hard for reopening dates.

Radiohead played about 100 shows throughout the UK in small venues the length and breadth of this country. This was where we started to learn our craft.

Ed O'Brien¹

By 1997, O'Brien says, they were headlining the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.