Jonny Greenwood tells MOJO why he tried to spoil “Creep”

Inside Radiohead, “Creep” was known for ages as “The Scott Walker Song”, Jonny Greenwood tells Dorian Lynskey in the new issue of MOJO. The guitar crunches that cut into it were his attempt to wreck a song he thought too soft.

I suppose the nauseating adolescent in me found it a bit wimpy and wanted to make it the opposite.

Jonny Greenwood¹

“Creep” went to number 78 when it first came out in September 1992, and to number seven a year later, once America and the rest of the world had found it. Greenwood remembers Sean Slade, who co-produced Pablo Honey, saying it was a shame nobody would ever hear the record. He calls The Bends a much better one.

He was 13 when he was asked to join the band Colin and Thom Yorke had formed at Abingdon School with Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway. They called it On a Friday, after the day they rehearsed in the school music room. It was always Colin's friends' band¹, he says, and he is still the irritating younger brother.

In the studio his job has been to push for finishing things and putting them out. Yorke brings the patience: he was the one who sat through Greenwood's long, exploratory jams from the Kid A sessions and found the chord sequence that became “Idioteque”. Greenwood says it is wonderful that the band are playing again and enjoying each other's company, when other reunited groups arrive with several managers and several sound crews.