Ed O'Brien: “It was never a breakup”

Ed O'Brien tells Steve Appleford of SPIN that Radiohead's seven years off the stage before last year's return were never the end of the band.

It was never a breakup. It was a hiatus. We wouldn’t be that stupid.

Ed O'Brien¹

Blue Morpho, his second solo album after 2020's Earth, is tuned to 432 Hz throughout. He first put the idea to Radiohead at the start of A Moon Shaped Pool in 2014, and the others thought he was mad. On his own record, players needed about an hour to settle into the pitch, and he asked Shabaka Hutchings whether any of his flutes were tuned that way.

He wrote the songs mostly on acoustic guitar in the second lockdown, when depression set in, and credits his wife, a kinesiologist, with helping him through. SPIN says the album was made in London with Paul Epworth; to O'Brien it felt liberating and far removed from Radiohead. Tõnu Kõrvits arranged the strings and suggested the title, and Philip Selway drums on a couple of tracks.

The two things that most identify Radiohead are Thom’s voice and Philip’s drums–the feel.

Ed O'Brien¹