Colin Greenwood tells Kyle Meredith how Nigel Godrich arrived

Colin Greenwood has told Kyle Meredith of Louisville Public Media how Nigel Godrich became Radiohead's producer. As he remembers it, the band slipped off with Godrich to record “Black Star” while John Leckie was mixing The Bends at Abbey Road. Everything after that was Nigel.¹

His book, How to Disappear, covers Hail to the Thief to A Moon Shaped Pool, what he calls the middle part of a career, when the band were neither super-famous nor washed up. He put the idea to Nick Cave on their tour together in North Carolina the autumn before, and Cave loved it. Charlotte Cotton, a childhood friend and museum curator, taught him photography and checked his negatives. Most of the band were not keen to be photographed, apart from my brother who is a shameless hussy¹.

The places Radiohead recorded in, he says, were old houses rather than studios. One had been home to the Mitford sisters and had greenhouses bombed by the US Army; another was full of baskets of dead flies and bird mess.

The band played together in the summer and are talking about doing something, though Colin does not know when. But if we hadn't taken this break, I never would've gotten to tour with Nick Cave or make this book. So I'm grateful.¹