Ed O'Brien doubts Radiohead will play more than 20 shows a year

Ed O'Brien has told the Los Angeles Times not to hold Radiohead to his plan for 2027, though he still doesn't expect the band to play more than 20 shows. In March, announcing his second solo album, Blue Morpho, he told Rolling Stone that from 2027 they would play 20 shows a year on a different continent each year. Mikael Wood, the paper's pop critic, put that to him on a walk along the beach at Santa Monica. Take that with a pinch of salt. I don’t think we’ll do any more than 20 shows.¹

The limit comes from the 20 arena nights in Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin last November and December. He says the songs are too powerful, and the shows were so emotional that by the end the band were drained. Playing more would mean giving less to each night, and he doesn't think they will do that. The audience has got very young, too. Streaming figures show that the band's biggest group of listeners is aged 16 to 24.

Wood reminded him that Radiohead have lost album of the year at the Grammys three times, each time to a veteran: OK Computer to Bob Dylan, Kid A to Steely Dan and In Rainbows to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. O'Brien remembers sitting behind Steely Dan. I wonder if we ever did another record, which I’m not saying we would, but would it finally win album of the year at the Grammys?¹ He jokes that if it did, it would only be because they were 85. His favourite of their albums is In Rainbows, though he doesn't think it the best. The worst is Pablo Honey, an easy call, and “Creep” was an aberration, no part of the canon.

He hates awards ceremonies. He and Phil Selway went to Radiohead's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in Brooklyn in 2019 only because no one else would, and it was a nightmare. The day before, he had turned down the offer to put his speech on the teleprompter; everyone else, Trent Reznor included, read from it.

Blue Morpho grew out of a depression in the middle of the pandemic, in 2021. He made it with Selway, the saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings and the producer Paul Epworth, whom he knew as a fellow parent at his children's school. When Wood told him that his first solo album, Earth, did little for him, O'Brien agreed. He says it held half-truths and that he forced his obsession with Brazilian music into it; the new record taught him to get out of the way and be completely honest.

On Gaza, O'Brien says the five of them are very different people who should hold a plurality of views. They have never all agreed, and agreeing on the music is hard enough. I said that October the 7th was a pogrom, which it was. But I’d also say that Gaza was a genocide.¹ He was hit from both sides for it, and his mantra is Confound the binary¹.