Ed O'Brien tells Musikexpress he twice told Radiohead he would leave

Ed O'Brien has twice told the rest of Radiohead that he was leaving, he says in a long interview with Martin Pfnür in the German magazine Musikexpress, published today.

The first time was after the band finished recording A Moon Shaped Pool; he doesn't date the second. The band were worn out, he felt it had come to a natural end, and he told the others he would not tour the record. They asked him to do it out of respect for what the five of them had, and he did, though that period was too much for him. By then Radiohead had become an unwieldy undertaking, with a lot of people around it who depended on the band.

He rates last year's 20 nights in Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin above every other tour. For me it was the most beautiful Radiohead tour so far, which, given more than thirty years of touring with this band, may mean something¹, he says, and he puts it down to the love, respect and gratitude among the five. Radiohead had not played since Philadelphia in August 2018, and he never really grasped how good the songs are until he had gone about seven years without playing them. Meeting Thom Yorke, Phil Selway and Colin and Jonny Greenwood at 17 was a kind of lifeline.

Pfnür asks him about the plan he gave Rolling Stone in March, about 20 concerts a year on other continents from 2027. O'Brien says there is no fixed master plan. It depends on how the five of them feel, and if it isn't right, they may not play live again for a while.

He also talks about a serious personal crisis that began in the second lockdown, in London in the winter of 2020, and lasted most of 2021. He was not suicidal, he says, and came through it without therapy or medication, with cold morning showers, meditation and breathing, music in his home studio and walks in the woods. Much of Blue Morpho came out of mornings alone in that small studio, and it carries his own name rather than EOB because he no longer wants to hide behind an alias.