Song · Radiohead
The Chains
The song where Jonny Greenwood's viola was meant to make them sound like the Waterboys.
early years
the viola
“Taking advantage of Jonny's ability to play the viola, this song was the group's attempt to sound like the Waterboys,” says the note on the 2003 site, and that is all it says. Colin Greenwood named the Waterboys to La Stampa in 2001, with Elvis Costello and R.E.M., as what the band were listening to at 16. The song has never been released.
Jonny Greenwood's string writing went somewhere else in the end, to 16 string parts set a quarter-tone apart on “Climbing Up the Walls”, after Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.
sources3
- This site's own preserved 2003 lyrics pages, for the Waterboys note and the sixteen parts a quarter tone apart on “Climbing Up the Walls”.
- Bryan Wawzenek, “Radiohead Uses a String Section to Go ‘Climbing Up the Walls’”, Ultimate Classic Rock, 17 May 2022, for Penderecki.
- The site's news story “Colin and Jonny Greenwood talk Amnesiac with La Stampa before Verona”, 5 May 2001, for what the band listened to at 16.