Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood has spoken about the band's landmark release, 'In Rainbows'.
In a rare interview with the Gothamist blog, the guitarist gave some insight into the band's thoughts on the album, released as a 'pay what you like' download yesterday.Here's an extract from the interview with the Gothamist's John Del Signore:
So today's a big day? Yeah, big day today. It's the launch. Like a ship.
Seems to be going flawlessly. At least for me, it downloaded very quickly. Yeah, I know, we're all quietly surprised because it's mostly done all on our own back with a small group of people.
I've been able to listen to the album twice this morning. All I can say at this point is WOW. Oh great! A good wow, I hope. We're just really, really relieved that it's out, and people are hearing what we've been listening to for so long.
What's motivating the band to distribute the album this way? Just getting it out quickly. It was kind of an experiment as well; we were just doing it for ourselves and that was all. People are making a big thing about it being against the industry or trying to change things for people but it's really not what motivated us to do it. It's more about feeling like it was right for us and feeling bored of what we were doing before.
Why give people the option to pay whatever they want? It's just interesting to make people pause for even a few seconds and think about what music is worth now. I thought it was an interesting thing to ask people to do and compare it to whatever else in their lives they value or don't value.
Have you gotten any figures of how much people are choosing to pay? No, we get the numbers tomorrow supposedly. Yeah, I don't know. The more exciting thing for me is just hearing it on the radio today and knowing it's landed on everybody's desk at the same time. That's what's exciting. But yeah, I'm sure our manager will have some idea soon.
How did the process of making 'In Rainbows' differ from 'Hail to the Thief'? It was more like earlier 'Kid A' stuff, more based in studio experiments and trying out ideas and spending quite a long time. That's what we did with 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac'.
What song on the album proved most difficult to finish? Even ones that we finished quickly we spent a long time deciding if they were good enough. None of them were easy, actually. 'Reckoner' kind of came together quickly.
