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Ed O'Brien says Radiohead are not a rock band
But despite what people might think, Radiohead are not rock.
Ed O'Brien said it while building a quieter pedalboard with Dan Steinhardt, who owns the pedal maker GigRig and presents That Pedal Show, in a session MusicRadar has written up. Radiohead have had rock moments, he says, mostly when they were younger, but the music is more nuanced than that. Watching U2 from the side of the stage around 1997, he noticed how loud they were up there. A four-piece can do that. With O'Brien, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood all playing guitars in a similar range, MusicRadar adds, Radiohead never could.
Turning down has taken him a while. On his last EOB tour the Fender Vibro-King only came alive at about three and a half on the dial, loud enough for the sound engineer to hear it from the middle of the arena, while his technician, Adam, insisted that was where the amp started cooking. A pair of Audio Kitchen Big Choppers came next and were still too loud for the studio. Now it is a hand-wired Fender Deluxe and a Vox AC15, and Steinhardt's board pushes them with boosts and preamps, round a Soundgas 636 Preamp and an Eventide H90, instead of distortion pedals.