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40 G huh? Hey, TED Talks Daily listeners, I'm your host, Elise Hugh.
Today we have an episode of another podcast from The TED Audio Collective handpicked by us for you.
Since 2003, radio head spacist Colin Greenwood has taken his camera to the studio, and On the age to document the rise of one of the world's most cherished bands.
In this episode of Design Matters, Colin sits down with host Debbie Millman to discuss his legendary career and why he turned to photography to capture the essence of music.
You can find episodes of Design Matters wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn more about the Ted Audio Collective at audiocollective .ted .com.
It was one point we were playing.
I was playing with Nick Cave and the bad seeds, and Nick is playing the piano next to me on stage.
And he turned around and he said, are you taking photographs?
I think you must have heard a clicking sound or something.
And I was like, no.
From the Tet Audio Collective, this is Design Matters' with Debbie Milman.
On Design Matters Debbie talks with designers of other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on.
On this episode, Debbie talks photography and music with Collin Greenwood, the bass player for Radiohead.
Our first few records are more book.
For years you've been taking pictures with a small black camera in hotel rooms and bars backstage and even on stage and then the time comes when you release a book of those photos and many unguarded fugitive moments of your band are on display as never before.
I'm speaking about how to disappear a a photographic portrait of Radiohead by Collin Greenwood, the bassist in Radiohead.
One of the most important, successful and experimental rock and roll bands every last 40 years.
Collin Greenwood joins me today to talk about his career in music and his brand new beautiful book.
Collin, welcome to Design Matters.
Fabi, thank you so much for the invitation and for that wonderful introduction.
Absolutely, my pleasure.
Colin, you were born in Oxford, England.
But because your father served in the Royal Ordinance, your family moved to Germany, and then to Dydkott, Suffolk, Abingdon, and Oakley.
I believe you attended five primary schools and even lived in Germany long enough to learn the language.
Can you still speak any German?
I spoke some German and sadly I did it at the secondary school, high school, but I didn't have a very good teacher, and sadly not, but I did do French a level so I can order a baguette in Paris.
The thing about what you talked about at all those schools, I guess when you say that, I think you can either become a raging introvert or you just get very good at making friends all the time.
And I think that's a quality that can be part of being a band too.
Like Michael Stipe.
There's a bunch of people, Mark Itisill, some people I know like that.
They were like army brats as you like to say.
I think there's an interesting correlation there could be perhaps between people who are moved around a lot like hats and worked in entertainment.
You grew up in a home with music always in the background.
And I understand your parents' favorite records were by musicians including Symon and Garfunkel, and even Mozart's horn concerto - that's quite a range.
Yeah, I guess my parents would have liked the kind of music that was sort of described as classical music and more of the pop stuff would have been Simon and Garfunkel and my first - me and my brother's first record was probably Berl Bold's Junior Choice which A bit too much.
A big rock candy mountain.
You know that obviously.
Yes, yes. So those are kind of our first records, me and my brother growing up in Germany because there was no television while we were in Germany that was in English so we didn't have a television, so we just had to entertain ourselves with records and books and writing.
Your parents brought you, their older sister Suzan, and your younger brother, Johnny.
musical instruments and encouraged you to play them and what instruments did they get you all?
Well my sister she's a bit older so she kind of , her musical contribution I suppose was that she brought music to the house, so we listened to records that she would buy, whether it's like Dillon or Beethles or Reggae or whatever or Post -Punk.
And then in terms of musical instruments, my brother, I think his first instrument was a recorder and I had a guitar and then my brother made a viola.
I carried on the classical guitar.
That's what we did really until radio had kicked off when we were in our teens.
Now you mentioned your sister, and the music that influenced you.
What did that include?
She brought lots of different records into the house, which was really great.
like Scasso, Regge, quite a Catholic taste but I would say record that was big for me which you probably didn't bring into the house was Joy Division, I love.
That was my favorite when I was about 13 but lots of different kinds of music, to be fair to her.
We'd bop around the front room and my mother bought a Sony receiver, one of those sound systems.
But yeah, that was made The main musical influence is with me and my brother growing up.
M. Foundation Tell this about your Toshiba radio cassette player?
A. It was a single speaker, probably about—what's that, three -inch sized speaker.
And a little black receiver thing with a cassette, and that was kind of my gateway to my gateway drugs of music.
Cossettes, it was the cocktail twins, listening to EPs, everything was on cassette, yeah that was the thing that I found music through and then after that I little tiny JVC stereo receiver tiny.
I'd call it a beat -box or a boom box but it was more of a sort of murmur -box it was so small but it was just you know it was just fabulous and since then I've spent my life in front of speakers whether it's like in recording studios or at home.
You attended Abington School wherein you had a lot of after -school activities options and you took classical guitar lessons with the same teacher as your classmate, Tom York.
Um, was the teacher Terence Gilmore James?
He was a director of music at my school.
And he was actually my our neighbor where I lived.
He was just a wonder he is wonderful, inspirational, full of energy.
One of these people who's very driven and positive.
And you know, I was kind of outside of the music system.
I felt outside it because I wasn't doing music to study I was just you know exam I was just doing classical guitar.
But you know, he was a fabulous leader for music in my school.
And I have very fond memories of him.
He introduced both you and Tom to 20th century classical music, avant -garde music of the post -war era, classic jazz, and film scores.
And I read that your first experience in a band together was when Tom joined the punk band TNT that you were in.
Was that your first band?
I read that you were in three different bands before Radiohead.
I wasn't really in that band TNT.
And I don't know if they were...
They were just, like, a couple of kids at the school.
I think Tom did something with it, but it was all early days.
And then Tom was in a band and after my school, when he was college called the Headless Chickens.
They put out a single called I Don't Want to Go Back to Woodstock I think, which is fun, and when we were at school, it was just basically Radiohead from the ages of about 14th I guess, and we may have jammed to some other people but that was kind of the thing.
Why were you only able to play in rehearsal on Fridays?
I don't know why, it was probably because as well in the school, music school was free to practice or whatever.
The first name of the band was On a Friday, after TNT, Tom , invited you and Ed O 'Brien to start a new band, which was named on a Friday.
Is it true that your headmaster of your school once sent you a bill charging you for the year?
Instead of a cast. Why would he do something like this?
you know as I get older as most people when they get older well perhaps some people they get more sort of hard in their opinions and stuff actually my my recollection of what happened is sort of softened as I've got older and I understand that my Sundays his house has been near quite near the music
school and we were rehearsing on a Sunday not a Friday I think we probably liked it disturbed his his weekend so he sent us a bill for practicing on ever on a Sunday You perfectly agree, but the director of music tore it up and left it on his desk.
I think he was brilliant.
And the facilities at the school were amazing and I will always be very grateful for that.
One of the things they did was this thing, I realize now it's called… Do you know Active Listening?
Do you know what that is?
Yes, that's a little bit what I have to do with the show.
Yeah, it's like an educational tool that was developed maybe after the war.
It was a way of, like, teaching people about music.
the idea of like, you know, you're not just you just wash over you.
So, we had these music lessons which were listening to like Tameeta's version of Masulki pitches an exhibition or something like that.
I realized what we were doing was we were having these lessons in active listening which is of course what you do a lot when you're making a record.
And it's hard it's not something that you just tell yourself you're going to do i 'e going to listen you know, really hard.
It takes a lot of training.
Yeah, well it takes some energy and maybe like what Samuel Johnson said about books could apply to this too is like, if you listen to something and it's kind of boring that's fine, you can just turn it off like you would say about a book.
But I love listening to things that are satisfying in lots of different ways and do not just sort of modulate mindless.
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Today. Because Ed already played guitar, you became the bass player?
Yes. Did you know how to play the bass at that time, or did you pick it up once you were sort of … Yeah, my mother, I think, probably got me a bass, a black bass called Westone DX Spectrum.
Most important thing about it was that it was black, and I played along with my Toshiba thing.
I managed to plug into the microphone input of the thing to, like, lots of Otis Reading and Booker T.
Because their baselines are fairly straightforward, and that was a way for me to learn really.
And then other stuff after that.
So that's how I started.
You've said that the decision to play bass allowed you to dodge a bullet?
Yes. Why is that? Well, I think it's because there's three brilliant guitarists in my band, I think it would he've been very difficult for me to get a note in headquarters with all the other people.
So it was a good thing.
I was fortunate and I'm grateful to everyone for giving me the opportunity to play bass with them.
The first gig you played was at a drunken school party with Ed and Tom and a drum machine?
Oh yeah, that's right.
It was at West Hincsi Rugby Club.
There was a drum machine.
It and Dr. Rhythm Drum Machine.
We were sort of stood in the middle of all these sort of you know, drunk sort of I don't know, 17 18 -year -olds and it was just the three of us it's quite fun.
When did Phil Selway your drummer join the band?
Well he was like three years… two or three years older than us so we thought he was cool because he was already in a band Jungle Telegraph so we poached him.
And I read that your younger brother Johnny begged you to join the band.
Yes, that's right. And we briefly had another keyboard player as well.
But then my brother came in, my brother came in to play keyboard, I think that's what he did.
Originally had a keyboard.
Wasn't he also playing the harmonica?
Yeah. harmonica, record, Penny Whistle, maybe this one track he plays Viola, on an old track.
It's a beautiful song, actually, called Chains.
And then he picked up the guitar the Pixies and Lu Read.
We love this album by Lu Read called New York.
Did you sense at that time that he would end up becoming the musical genius he is today?
Well he's always been into his music.
He had a scholarship when we were at school, so it's been his thing since he was a little boy.
So it's something he's always loved.
I read in your book that you have never let him forget that it was you that got him into the band.
Yeah, that's right.
I call him up like, every so often, be like, you know, remind him, no, it's just - it's really good, you know.
It's been really nice.
We're not like other brothers perhaps in music who've been in bands together and might have a sort of fraught relationship.
It's already been very good.
You played your first public gig at the Jericho Tavern on Walton Street in Oxford on August 14, 1986.
You were 17 years old and you shared the stage with your bandmates and four other bands.
And you write in the book that this experience gave you the ambition to make a life in music.
What was it about that night that solidified this for you?
I think it was just the excitement and the culmination of the rehearsals of being on the stage.
The volume, like noise, the sheer sort of physical, visceral sound of everything is so thrilling.
It was just great to be part of something in the band that was then was then part of a scene in Oxford, you know, in some way some kind of a connection with all the music that were listening to at the time whether it was you know, Scarr or Postpunk, you know, so that was just a really wonderful way
to spend time, you know.
As our mother said, she used to say, well, at least it keeps you off the streets.
Didn't she want you to be a lawyer?
No, I don't know what she wanted me to be, but what I loved about my mother's take on our music was that she didn't sort of care for it, per se, but she called it bombity -bomb music, And then when we went to more electronic stuff, which she obviously had heard like sort of some modern classical, I think
she called it, Blipety Blok, something like that.
And I like actually a very accurate description of like theatre musical, creative art in what way, how would you?
Well, I'd say our first few records, a more bombety -bomb, and then perhaps I later records of more sort of Blipety Blok in in ...more as in electronic blips and blochs, bloops and things, bloopety -bloopity, you know.
In many ways I think my mother's commentary foreshadows a lot of like the finest music...
...journalists who've written about Radiohead and 20 Years Ahead.
So well done her, I say.
Would you say your bass playing is changed between boppity bop and blipity blip?
They've always been trying to find somewhere to fit in, I suppose, but no, my bass playing is some of the reassuring, reliable, dependent staples of the sounds, something you can rely on.
Well, I mean, if you listen to songs like Fifteen Steps, Weird Fishes...
Those songs would not be.
I mean, there's so many songs that wouldn't be the same without your baseline...
Very kind of you. No, no.
Fifteen Step is one of my all -time favorite radio head songs.
Oh wow! And I listened to that song to feel the bass, to actually feel.
Like, there's this crescendo, when the bass comes in, that just kills me.
Yeah, it's great. It's fun.
Yeah, what happened was it was on a...
I'd got a 909 drum machine a few years ago, and then, we just had it set up in rehearsal, and then we just used it as a sort of rough pattern for that.
And then basically sort of, wrote around the pattern, I think it was.
And then Lieudice flower as well.
That song would not be the same without your bassline.
Oh, thanks. I think that that's like, I can't remember, that's like a keyboard and then I played it or it's a keyboard and then I played it live?
I can't really remember whether Tom did a keyboard bassline on that or Wow whether I did it sounds like your base but that's just my understanding.
Well it is live. It's fun playing live.
It's yeah there's this guy called Joseph Lucky Scott who played with Curtis Mayfield and there's another guys that they may always forget so that's not very helpful who played on move on up and stuff like that as well and I bring them up because that would be the kind of thing that I would in my dreams
aspire to is that kind of playing, that combination of groove and melody.
I read that you learned how to play by listening to Duck Dunn, Peter Hook, Lee Scratch Perry.
Yeah, and then people who played with James Brown like Charles Sorrell, and I can't remember all these other people.
And the Motown book with James Jamieson, I learnt about two -thirds of those.
So that was amazing.
Yeah, so bass is - it's a very sympathetic instrument, it's They're bridged between the rhythm and the melody, the drums and the voice in the top line, that's what's so amazing about the bass.
Is the ability to combine rhythm and emotion I suppose and to change the emotional weather underneath the cords, which you can do with the bass as well so.
Oh my God. Yes, especially 15 steps.
It kills me. Oh thank you.
Now, you all had an opportunity to sign a record contract.
contract but decided to go to—you all decided to go on to college, instead of signed with a regular company.
Well, we didn't have a contract before university, but we decided to go to university first before we tried to get a contract in that very, very sensible way of thinking, well, if it didn't work out, we'd have university degrees to fall back on.
that's why we went to university first, perhaps, and also just to have more, have fun and try different experiences, that's what happened.
You studied English literature.
That's right. Any particular authors that you found to be— I really like a lot of modern American writing and I like a lot of 17th century writing and poetry.
17th century, like Milton, Marbel poetry, stuff like that, Shakespeare, and then I really like modern stuff.
And I don't know Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Edith Wharton, just lots of stuff.
Willa Cartha, but lots of history as well, so you know, history buff, as a lot of people are now, with the podcasts.
Were you still playing together through college?
Yeah, we would meet up every holiday and we'd rehearse in village halls around Oxfordshire, and we keep in touch whilst we were at college sending cassettes or tolm operates in cassettes of new songs that we listened to and think about and then we'd get together and work on them.
By 1991, you recorded your first demo tapes, the Manack Hedgehog demo was passed to Parlophone and A &R rep Keith Woesenkroft He did that after seeing you play live at J demographic and I believe that's when you got your record deal with EMI and I think that was another connection that you made I was working
at a records store and Keith Woesenkroft was going to get a job in A &R at EMI and he was working as a rep selling records out of a rusty white van so I gave him our demo cassette and I used to give our demo tapes to any record company sales rep who was interested and they generally weren't fair enough.
But, it was also our management kinda had a connection so it wasn't just me and Keith it was our management with friends with this guy called David Ambrose, he used to be in a band called Brian Auger trinity.
He basically signed his two EMI together with a guy called Nick Gappfield, he used to play with Um, Dexter's Midnight Runners.
Oh... So that was how we sort of got our first contract.
You write in your book that you were probably one of the last bands to sign a traditional record deal, and I'm wondering, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I mean, I'm sure that other bands have signed record deals after us.
And you used to think what would've been like if we had been signed to the record label people 20 years earlier, 10 years earlier, because you could see at EMI the vestiges of what the business used to be before, when you had artists like Queen or Beatles or whatever.
It was a big international company.
We signed to Parlophone, which was one half of their company.
The other half was EMI.
They're two marketing labels, EMI and Parlophone.
So we yeah. So we signed to Parlophone, which is amazing.
So he had all this ...
home of Beatles and then through the American company.
It was Beach Boys, Beastie Boys, anybouth boys in it basically on Capitol, so we were going to become the Radiohead Boys in America on Capitol, and obviously just Radiohead and EMI on a parl Iron in the UK.
Yeah. It was very exciting to be part of this British institution, the records that my sister bought when I was like nine, ten years old.
I don't know if you know The Beatles Red and The Beatles Blue albums, which are sort of compilations of their songs, and they have pictures of them looking down over the center stairwell at an office in Manchester Square.
Well that's where we signed.
That's where we went.
Wow, yeah. So that sort of artistic cultural heritage is incredibly exciting.
As I was growing up I would look at those album covers and I'm sad that album covers aren't as big as they used to be.
But I would get lost in photographs and I would get lost in the worlds that these bands created with their visuals.
Another band that I loved at the time and still love was Yes!
And Roger Dean was doing all their artwork for their albums and and they were otherworldly.
I felt they were cosmic.
Yeah. Well, I just met Anton Corbin with Nick Cave on tour.
And I think he was doing some project with Ignosus, which I want to check out.
But I think it must be some kind of documentary that's out.
But yeah, that was brilliant.
They had the photographs of the band on the They had a lot of the artists, depending on where you were in terms of, I guess, sales and success.
The least popular, the least selling ones was like some, like 80's hair bands down by the drink's vending machine in the basement.
Each floor, as you got to the lofty heights of golfeddy fairs or whatever, you'd get like Starting shots of Paul McCartney or Beastie boys I don't know, team Eterna or something like that.
Wow, there was a hierarchy to the stairs.
That's what we all aspire to.
Now your first album, Pablo Honey included the worldwide hit Creep.
And I don't want to talk too much about that.
I don't want to talk about that song really at all.
But I'm curious to know how it felt to go from a small, local, hardworking band with your schoolmates, to essentially an overnight global sensation.
Did it make you feel differently about who you were at the time?
Well it was all happening far away.
It was like Star Wars, you know, somewhere long -long ago and far away I suppose, because was happening in San Francisco and in Tel Aviv.
Well, we had our first radio plays for that song.
What it meant though, was that when we went on tour for the first time say in America, we never toured in a van with the trailer.
Our first tour, we had our own tour bus with beds because we played all these clubs which you would normally do with a van.
Yeah, but I guess because we had some money for the record company to advanced the touring and also because we seemed to be selling the shows.
There was a budget for a tour bus.
So we're playing these clubs around America and arriving in a really nice American Eagle tour bus.
So we were spoiled, really, but it was just the best experience, just fabulous.
Yes. Danielle Pletka You write in your new book that the sugar rush success of your first single probably saved you from being dropped by EMI and granted you the grace to record the album, The Bends in 1994.
That album was initially overlooked when it first came out, and some dismissed Radio Head as a one -hit wonder, which just sort of baffles me now.
Did you worry about the notion of becoming a one -hit wonder at that time?
no because I wouldn't say that we would think about what we do in terms of individual songs but we were making our second record Ben's we were like you know we were we spent a long time in rack studios in London which is a fabulous studios in St.
John's Wood around the corner from Abbey Road super famous plays so many brilliant records and artists have recorded their Al Green, Robert Plant.
We had the time to make that record too and that's one of my favorite albums.
Mind to. You and the band went on to release seven additional studio albums that have changed Rock and Roll.
You've sold over 30 million albums worldwide.
You've won six Grammys.
In 2019 the band was included into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Now, in addition to work as a musician and a member of Radiohead, you are a photographer!
And I read that the first book of photography that captured your imagination was the book Vagabond by Gaylord Oscar Herron.
What was it that intrigued you most about that book?
I think it's that thing where like you see a book of photography that's like the first book that you see so like anything whether it's your first record or your first painting or whatever you, it stays with you, but I think what I loved about that book was how he managed to make a documentary book about his family
neighbourhood and sort of turn it into something engaging, and there's a text as well where he quotes, I think from the Bible, about a Cain and Abel, I think.
But I think it's the idea that, as a photographer, you're basically something sort of solitary about what you're doing but at the same time, you're capturing other people collecting crowds, portraits and things like that.
So it's quite sort of romantic I suppose as well, that idea of how you see the world.
I loved, I loved it.
I loved the different types of photography in the book, there's landscape, there's groups, there's portraits, there's documentary, kind of abstract but close -up photography.
It's just a great book and I was very lucky to see that and yeah it's very beautiful and I recommend it to anybody you know and it was a very influential book as well for um Larry Clark.
Larry Clark? Yes, I do.
I have a photograph of his in in my bathroom of naked people.
Larry Clarkson, Tulsa I think, and Gaylord Oscar Heron is from Kansas too, so not that far away, I don't think, but I think he was a big influence on all those people.
What motivated you to start taking photographs?
Well my friend Charlotte, who was in my band when we were eight kids, she's a curator of photography and she did art history and then went to work at the Victoria & Albert and she's museum in London and she's like written some beautiful books on fine art, art photography, for Thames & Hudson and other
manraiture, and she very kindly patiently indulged my limited ability, but interest in photography and I think that's, you know, it's through her, I met some very fantastic photographers, so I've got a lot to thank her for.
You've said that the photographs the photographs in Vagabond influenced how you captured your experience of the Radiohead crowds.
And I'm wondering if you can talk about, in what way, it did that?
Well, I think what's cool about when you take a picture of a group of people, you can get a sense of how music works too in that you can look at people individually, but you can also see how they're interacting with the people around them, as well as how they're reacting to the music that listening
to or the experience that they're having because when people listen to things or look at things with other people both those things are going on at the same time you know they're sort communal collective and there's the individual solipsistic as well you know that's how musical those those things work
you know and they're amplified by being shared with all those people so i just really like that and i like photography, i like typological photographs you know things of photographs, collections of things, so, you know, what is a crowd if it's not a collection of people that's been assembled?
As human beings or as animals we're always looking to make connections or combine what we see and make sense of the things that are put together in nature and that's what you do with crowds.
Either by seeing what they have in common or what they look that's different.
What's different about them?
So, that's kind why I like all that stuff.
Was the band your first subject, or were you shooting other things before that?
Uh no, I think it was the band, really.
So, and in fact, the beginning of the book I'm using a camera similar to the one that I got Gaylord, Oscar Herron was using.
It was like a simple Japanese SLR camera.
One of my regrets is that I couldn't have used it on stage because it's too heavy, but I wish I just kept that one, really.
But I still have it, it's amazing.
I read initially that you took a lot of photographs with remote cameras and GoPros?
Yeah, I did. I got those photographs and the colors kind of cool...
I placed them all around the stage before we played.
But the point of his kind of weird, because obviously I couldn't have them in people's faces so I've got them like on the floor.
Or strapped to some mic stands and things!
What kind of camera do you currently use?
Well I've splashed out.
I was in I went to Leica in Melbourne and they had the shop demonstration of a Leica Digital m11.
I've been using that and it's actually kind of—I really like it.
It's my first, well, it's my second, digital camera I suppose.
I've been using it, I've been photographing snick caves and the bad seeds with it.
I think I've got some nice pics.
You said that an analog camera records light sound, like a vinyl does sound.
I suppose an analog camera records light, like photons landing onto a chemical paper, photo sensitive paper, or film rather, and then vinyl obviously records vibrations.
It's kind of similar, but yeah, I think, you know, I love both, I've just been listening to two records this morning here.
I keep going back to vinyl because think I find something about the process of playing a record goes back to active listening when you're at school I suppose.
There's something sort of engaged about it that I really like and then whereas I love digital as well, don't get me wrong, but it's just something about records that makes me happy other than the price.
Well in addition to the active listening there's sort of a physicality to it because you're Constantly having to move the needle back if you're sort of obsessive listening like I used to do and then turning the album over.
And the sequence was so important as well.
What two albums were you listening to this morning?
I was listening to Schubert, Amadeus Kautet playing Schubert.
And then I was listening to some lute music played by Jacob Lindberg playing the Rawolf Lute, playing a guy called Jacob Lindberg.
I listen to records and music more than I look at the television, I don't really look at the television.
You've collected quite a lot of your photographs and have published a new book.
It's called How to Disappear.
Yes. And it just came out, and it is a beautiful collection of your photographs of the band.
Between 2003 and 2016, from the album's Hail To The Leaf until the most recent studio album A Moon Shaped Pool.
And the title of your book is taken from a partial title of a song from the album Kid A.
This song had to disappear completely.
And the song also contains the lyrics, I'm not here.
This is happening, which I know is inspired by by conversation that Tom had with Michael Steyt.
Now does the title have anything to do with the sort of way in which you were photographed and the desire to not be intrusive?
Yeah, absolutely, you're completely right.
I think it's not, it's a joke, it's a cheaponn, it's a gag for the title, I suppose, it's like, it's about the fact that I'm not really in the book.
and so there's one picture of me in the book the my brother to and so I haven't completely disappeared but yet it's just how to disappear the joke is of course I can't be in the picture because I'm taking the pictures I kind of had the title for the book and I had the cover for the book way ahead of anything
else because in fact the cover of the book which is on these flight cases that we had all done in purple when we started because we thought No one would steal the ugly purple flight case.
We had on the Radiohead website.
We had that for about...
A long time. About three years.
In our really sort of very graphical image to have on them on the website.
Now you weren't taking photographs from the outside in the way that a cameraman might be filming a concert.
You were actually in the middle of all the activity in the performances.
Yeah. Did you take photographs covertly, or did your bandmates or crew or audience see you at the beginning?
Yeah, I never took anything covertly, and — but I always felt really awkward about taking photographs.
I still do, probably.
But I think a lot of photographers do.
I was talking to one of my heroes in New York, a guy called Paul Graham, who's just an incredible photographer, and he said the same thing to me.
there's a sort of awkwardness and reticence that he has about interrupting people.
When he makes a photograph of somebody, if he's on the street in New York, we'll show them to see if it's OK because of course you can do that with digital.
You can show them, and then if they don't like it, you just go, OK, and you just delete it there and then, rather than the film.
I kind of wish I'd be more upfront with it, but I never see it as a sort of career plan You know, so it was my career, was planning to be a music.
In my prep for this show, I came across an interview where you stated that one of your regrets is that you haven't been bolder with the lens, got closer or taken more photographs.
And you said, you're shy with the camera.
Do you still feel that way or has it changed at all over the years?
No, I'm still shy. But then I also know that, you know, there are things that, if you're interested in something, you think there's something there.
And there's this great title by one of my favorite photographers Wolfgang Tillman's you know?
It's called If One Thing Matters Everything Matters.
If you see something that you want to photograph then the question really becomes not should you take a picture of it, but I guess you have to think about how you want to frame it or what is it about it that you see.
My other favorite quote my friend taught me was that Nick Knight, you know who Nick Knight is, is absolutely amazing.
He's like a super famous photographer.
You know the cover of Buech's album, Homogenic?
Yes. So he did that.
And he has a great quote, which is like one of these things, this very simple thing to say, but it can be very difficult or very liberating to photograph what you see and or photograph what you want to see.
And all those two statements, like they're two different things, all...how you combine those two things is what could make a successful image.
You photographed your bandmates in the recording studio, in dressing rooms, in tour busses.
Yawning, meditating.
There are even photographs and bathrooms.
You shot Ed playing a guitar in a white, tiled box of a bathroom and Johnny playing a viola in the bathtub.
There's even a shot of Johnny photographing Tom, and they're all candid.
Yeah. But there's a real intimacy to them that makes them more than just band photographs.
They almost feel private.
Was that intentional?
Well, I love that book.
I'm not making any great claims as a photographer, but likely with the music, you obviously influenced or inspired by great photographers.
One of my favorite photographers is a guy called Robert Frank.
He made a book called the Americans.
his Swiss German photographer.
He was a sort of photographic survey road trip of America and he managed to make this book of photographs that were sort of intimate glimpses really of a nation.
Do you know what I mean, if you ever see this captured sort of moments across the country?
I'd like to think that I'm not very technically very good so all the ones I really wanted to take, generally were two, were under -exposed or blurry or both." I'm immagining that you've probably taken thousands of photographs.
Yeah. My understanding of professional photographers who I work with, who I've met rather, is when you look at contact sheets, if you have, say, one image and roll a film that you like, that's good.
I'm very lucky, I suppose.
Had some lucky moments where I pointed to camera and it worked out.
The photographs feel like their markers in time and evidence to what happened.
And they're sort of cast in time, so to speak, their memories, but they don't feel nostalgic.
No. Well, I think that a photograph is a recording of something using time, like shutter speed of the camera, but there's another dimension of time, which is the time you leave the image that you take, then the next time you look at it, which could be like five years later, and when you look at it,
you know, the passage of time has had an effect upon the image, so it's not actually the same photograph that you took five years previously.
And then of course you can make an edit and combine it with other images, there's another layer of meaning that you add to it, that it may not have had when you took it originally.
So, there's all those different processes that are going on, which I think is very interesting.
One of the things that I love about photography is how it gives you an accurate memory of something.
When you think about your past and it's just an idea or a thought, you have memories of memories, whereas a photograph stays the same.
You might have different ways of interpreting it, but the image is the image frozen.
Yeah. Yeah, right and I think anything that works just as depending what kind of photography I suppose if works as an image, it sort of will resist becoming dated.
Like someone at Alfred Stieglitz, who is one of my favorite photographers or Bernie Sab sake, you know who make a photograph, this is fresher, freshly minted is the day it was taken.
Yeah. I listen to an interview with you, on… I think it was on YouTube.
Where you said that the idea for the book began when you were in a car with Nick Cave in Ashville, North Carolina.
So how did he help solidify the idea?
Oh, he's just such a brilliant, engaging, curious, super smart person who I was in a car… We were doing these shows where I was 14 while she was playing the piano.
So we have these conversations and I was struggling to find a way into the book and how to start writing it and then he just said to me, Well, when did you start take, where were the pictures starting from?
And I said, Well, they start from this period 2003, and he said what were we doing in this band then?
And he said, well, we were sorted in the middle of our career from where we are now I suppose.
And he said, why don't you write about what that was like, what that's like.
I said, oh yeah. So he's I told him I think I gave him a credit in the book and he was surprised and I had a great chat with Warren Ellis.
Yeah Warren Ellis? Yes, I knew.
At the Dirty Three and the Bad Seeds obviously, and he co -writes with Nick.
And Warren was telling me about when he wrote his book on Nina Simone's gum and what that was like.
God, that book is amazing.
I mean, even the idea, like, let's make a book about Nina Simone's chewing gum.
Yeah. So, they're both really supportive.
And I have nothing but gratitude and respect for both of them and I'm very lucky that I've had the opportunity to work with them.
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Very dear friend of mine is very good friends with Nick Cave and I asked her to ask Nick for a question to ask you today.
So, so my next question is from Nick Cave.
Collin Greenwood is one of the most unassuming and humble people I've ever met.
I have long suspected that his ever present camera is a way of diverting attention away from himself and Back towards the person he is photographing.
Is this true? Is his camera a way of holding people at bay?
I don't know if that is true because I think that feels like an egotistical act in itself, really You know what it's about.
It's about light It's like where lights works and falls in somewhere on someone or something You know, I don't think I use the camera to keep people away because I think you'd have to be sort of quite egotistical to think of it like that really, and it's like I'm more apologetic when I pick up a camera,
less sort of self -protective, so I don't think so.
But he's probably right, I don't have any confidence in doing that.
But as I said, I met some of my heroes, shows, they seem to share that lack of confidence.
So, no. I wouldn't want to do that because I love people and being with people.
So I wouldn't keep people at bay with a camera.
I don't think so. Does that give you an answer?
Absolutely. You've been touring with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and you mentioned that you're also taking photographs of the band as well.
When you're taking photographs, Do you take a lot of photographs and then decide once you've seen them which you're good or do you have a sense as you're taking them that this is the moment?
Well both. Well, I wasn't taking pictures on stage because that's not my band unlike Radiohead.
At one point we were playing, I was playing with Nick Cave in the Bad Seeds and Nick stopped playing piano next to me on stage and he turned around and he said, are you taking photographs because you must have heard a clicking sound or something and I was like no, and the other things I can't take photographs
with them really because I'm playing all the time.
I have more photographs of the bad seeds of Warren, well of everyone really except Nick because I just don't want to intrude too much.
I've got more candid pictures of Nick rather than like sort of stage pictures of Nick if you like, more backstage and working pictures, I don't have welcoming, kind, creatively open people who when they're dealing with stuff like musical stuff on stage, they all talk to each other.
It's been just a real education and a privilege.
In addition to photography, the book is also a beautiful object.
How did you decide on the design and the layout?
Well that's a fantastic question because it's something I care about and I'm so proud of as well, a book was all printed in paper and the printing was all done in Verona and it was designed by this amazing guy called Duncan White.
He's from London, but he lives in France and he's a really incredible book designer.
He's made some beautiful photography books over the past few years, and he's also worked with a really famous photography book designer called He is called Gerhard Steidel, who's made some of the most beautiful books in the world.
He worked with him in Hannover.
And he... I found Duncan through an old friend of mine called Michael Mac, who has a beautiful publishing photographic book imprint called Mac Books, who publishes people like Paul Graham, and basically tons of amazing people.
and one of my favorite photographers is this one one called scholarly ashore makes these beautiful portraits.
And I briefly was in touch with her in the 90s and yeah, I just I'm a big fan of hers and that's what score Instagram, you can find all this work still.
So if the book was put, was, was very much, we basically did what Duncan said, in terms of the design and layout.
And I'm just thrilled with it, and it was published by a fabulous house called John Murray, who also published Slow Horses, do you know Mick heron and Slow Horses?
Heather of Francis, Louis Mantel.
These are just incredible publisher and editor.
So I'm so flattered and grateful that he would consider working with me.
And the whole experience has been an unalloyed joy from start to finish.
How were you able to choose the photographs in this narrative arc of the book?
well the edit was like hell we had about three hundred and fifty photographs and then we boiled it down to about 100 or they suppose but it was like Duncan the editor we had them in the pile of like rough prints and but yes yes no no yes yes and then from that rough edit rough selection Duncan basically
helps with making an edits whether flow of images kind of goes from the studio and song writing, music writing, working on the songs to the recording, to the promotion, to the stage.
So there's a nice outwards...
sort of funnelling outwards of the images, which I think is really beautiful.
And then it's interleaved with three sections of text, of around ten thousand words, where I sort of act as sort of commentary I suppose to how we started as a band and described, like some of the situations that some of the photographs show you.
I think it's more than commentary, though.
It's almost diary, like.
It's very… in the moment.
What was the process, like, as you went through?
Oh, well, I had, like, a sort of setup where I would, like, try and write around 300, 500 words a day and I sent the writing off to Nicholas, who is famous for his Christmas cake baking looking, and he baked two a year and he basically, the analogy, he was like folding what I'd written into the rest of the ingredients.
So sort of, he was making a sort of Christmas cake with my photography book.
Debra Ruh I love that analogy.
I'm wondering if you would consider reading a short excerpt of your essay from How to Disappear?
A Portrait of Radiohead.
I've chosen the excerpt because I think it's one of my favourite in the book.
I'd love to! It starts like this, There's a photograph of Tom with his hands held together in front of him.
It's the end of the night somewhere in America.
I can't be sure where, because the images so murky, and the vast blacked out caverns are so similar.
Let's say it's New Orleans smoothie king arena, 3rd April 2017, around 11pm.
time. We finished our second encore and Tom is here thanking the 20 ,000 people out front.
The White strip to Tom's left is his Black on White Rhodes piano wheeled on and off on a riser like a musical prop.
I've stayed on stage while the others have drifted off and I'm standing stage left, closer to Ed's microphone to take in the image of Tom and crowd.
The preceding two and a half hours were full of light and colour.
Acid blues, greens and yellows, near ultraviolet purple that lends everything on stage an extra 3d glow.
There are remote controlled spotlights, cameras, multiple mirror balls, film projections from front of town onto a stage -wide silvery surfboard screen that is studded with thousands of light emitting diodes.
Thirty years ago, you could burn your leg on a floor lamp, and now the white hot heat of technology runs cool, is pixelated and fiercely bright.
One day, this back screen will have more resolution and fidelity than the performers in front.
But at the end of the show, the stage lights go down, the house lights stay low.
And we are finally left alone without our force field in front of all those people.
They have their phones raised up like cigarette lighters for the last power ballad.
TheirAhlides are lit this time, to help illuminate the sun darkness as the audience records the scene.
Many are live streaming from their phones thousands of one person outside broadcast units for the web kids across the world and all its time zones.
These haloed points of light throw up a weird phosphorescence, like creatures from the deep, hailing each other from inside the black belly of the smoothie king, rippling up from the arena floor all the way to the nosebleed rake of the gods.
In another 60 seconds, the house safety lights will flood this scene and wash it away until it ebbs back two nights later at the Dunkin' Donuts Center".
Collin Greenwald, thank you, thank you, thank you for making so much art that matters, and And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Thank you, Debbie. It's been fun to talk to you.
Thank you so much. Colin Greenwood's new book is titled How to Disappear, a Photographic Portrait of Radiohead.
And to read more about Colin's work, you can go to Radiohead .com or Waisted contracting .com.
And I'd like to thank you for listening.
And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both.
I'm Debbi unknown, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
Design Matters is produced for the Ted audio collective by Curtis Fox Productions.
The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters and branding program at the school of visual arts in New York City, the first and longest running branding program in the world.
The editor in chief of Design Matters media is Emily Whyland.
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