Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead guitarist: ‘Cancelling music is the same as taking books off shelves’

Until not too long ago, Jonny Greenwood (Oxford, United Kingdom, 54 years old) was largely known for being the guitarist of Radiohead. But the repertoire of the classically trained musician goes well beyond that role. He has composed pieces for the London Contemporary and BBC Concert Orchestras and, famously, the soundtrack for every Paul Thomas Anderson film since There Will Be Blood (2007). He has been nominated for three Oscars for best original soundtrack (most recently, this year for One Battle After Another). Plus, he has recorded three albums with The Smile, another group he shares with Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke, and that is rounded out by drummer Tom Skinner. He’s collaborated on projects with artists from the Middle East, the Israeli singer-songwriter Dudu Tassa — controversially — as well as Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajasthan Express, a group of musicians spread throughout Israel and India, with whom he has made two albums. The first of these, Junun, was released in 2015 to critical success, and was accompanied by a documentary directed by Anderson himself. 11 years later, the same crew of musicians is back with Ranjha. The musician speaks with EL PAÍS on a video call from his home in Oxford.

Question. What is most special to you about this album?

Answer. I just think it’s quite unusual to be doing music that’s so sincerely religious, devotional. These Indians are singing about their sincere belief and faith in the Sufi saints and and the divine, and singing about it with real passion and aggression, and it’s beautiful. There aren’t many bands making music about that subject in my background. Great bands, right? But they either sing about their alienation or fast cars and girls and drinking. I think lots of people visit India as tourists and come away with an impression of its music, but what’s different about Shye, who was born in New York and grew up in Israel, is that he dedicated his life to Indian music. His conviction really impressed me, his dedication and passion for the music, and that he takes it so seriously and understands it so well.

Q. Radiohead took these musicians on tour as the group’s opening act in 2017 and 2018. What was the fans’ reaction?

A. They reacted really well. Their rhythms are so fascinating and the conviction and strength of their singing is very passionate. It’s like seeing a funk band, you’ve got the same sort of repetition, the same passionate frontman, the same kind of bass lines...

Q. You seem to have a very symbiotic relationship with Paul Thomas Anderson.

A. Well he’s a very good friend, and he likes to joke around with me. He’s also a big music fan. I love how he makes fun of me and at the same time, gets so excited about what I do. He’s a very funny man, like his movies.

Q. What is your composition process like for him? Does it follow the same lines, or is it different every time?

A. Each project is different. I think the only similarity his movies share is that they are hilarious, yet take on very serious subjects. That’s why the music has to be sincere, there’s nothing ironic in it, it’s not a joke.

Q. I imagine you receive a lot of offers to make soundtracks. What makes you accept or reject a project?

A. Well, composing music for a movie is a little bit like joining a band. You’re in a band with the director, so it’s about working out if they’re the right person, you know, and if they have a similar sense of humor, and just sharing that passion. I suppose that what convinces me is the story and what you can do with the music, with the orchestras and the instruments. It’s an incredible amount of work — at first you feel as if there are no limits, that’s what makes it so fun.

Q. Your work is so prolific. What is your daily routine like?

A. I wake up thinking about something to try with the guitar or with a computer, I usually can’t wait to start. It’s a wasted day when I haven’t had time to work on something new. Right now, I’m playing the guitar a lot and trying to create a computer program that helps me to compose new music.

Q. Last November, Radiohead went on tour after not having played together for seven years. How did that feel and what was its true meaning?

A. It felt amazing. I just stood there listening to Thom singing, thinking ‘What an amazing sound. What great songs.’ We’re very lucky we can still do it and people want to see it. There were some great shows, in Madrid they were particularly fun. We’re very bad at forward planning as a band, and when we go on tour, we have to decide like a year and a half before the concerts begin, which is crazy. We’re talking about how to do it again, but obviously nothing will happen for ages.

Q. Does that mean that there won’t be a new album any time soon?

A. I have no idea. Thom’s working on recording by himself, so he wants to finish that and then like I said, we don’t plan ahead, so yeah, no one knows yet.

Q. Are you planning to go on tour with Shye and The Rajasthan Express?

A. We would love to, but it’s so expensive getting eight or nine Indians to come to Europe. We have to wait and see if anybody’s interested in the record.

Classical music tends to expose you more. I feel safer in a group. When I play with Radiohead, I feel like I am in the audience, listening to the band

Q. A year ago, the concerts you were going to do with Dudu Tassa in the United Kingdom were canceled after a boycott. The organization that promoted the campaign holds that, for example, the rejection of South African artists was fundamental to ending apartheid. You expressed your disagreement at the time. Has your opinion changed since then?

A. [Long silence] I’m a fan of lots of Israeli films and writers and musicians, and the music I make with Dudu is resurrecting songs that are older than most of the countries that are currently fighting each other. That’s always going to be more important to me. There are bookshops in Madrid that are openly selling Amos Oz’s novels and he’s Israeli. To me, cancelling music is the same as taking books off shelves.

Q. I know you are well aware of the situation there. [Greenwood has been married to Israeli visual artist Sharon Katan since 1995.] What is it like to experience what is happening right now in Palestine and Lebanon, from the perspective of the Israeli people?

A. David, I’m not sure how that connects to me making a record with Indians in Oxford.

At this point, the BMG music label representative asks that the interview focus exclusively on music. The journalist is not allowed to ask the two questions he had prepared regarding Palestine, about how it felt for Greenwood to see British peers detained for having protested in support of the organization Palestine Action and whether Radiohead had internal discussions on the subject.

Last October, the British newspaper Sunday Times published an interview with Radiohead — the last in which the group jointly addressed the conflict — in which Yorke said, “I wouldn’t want to be 5,000 miles anywhere near the Netanyahu regime.” To which Greenwood responded, “I would argue that the government is more likely to use a boycott and say, ‘Everyone hates us — we should do exactly what we want.’ Which is far more dangerous.” In that same interview, the guitarist said he had attended protests in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square. “I have been to anti-government protests in Israel and you cannot move for all the ‘Fuck [Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben-Gvir’ stickers. I spend a lot of time there with family and cannot just say, ‘I’m not making music with you fuckers because of the [Israeli] government.’ It makes no sense to me. I have no loyalty — or respect, obviously — to their government, but I have both for the artists born there.”

Q. Does it make you more nervous to play in classical music venues or on rock stages at music festivals?

A. Classical music tends to expose you more. I feel safer in a group. When I play with Radiohead, I feel like I am in the audience, listening to the band. But if I’m in an auditorium playing a Steve Reich piece on the guitar, I am the band playing for the public.

Recording is a constant development, an exploration that goes deeper and deeper. Jonny always wants to go somewhere else

Shye Ben Tzur

Q. When you make music, what are you trying to avoid?

A. Boredom, needless repetition. And it’s tough, because you want the next note on the next chord to be a surprise, but it’s also got to be right, satisfying, and not be a cliché. You’ve got to find the middle ground between these three points. Some songs, you hear the first two chords and you know the next four chords, and that I find depressing. But sometimes, you hear music that’s just so random and alarming that it’s exhausting and it makes you tired, because it’s just about the next chord or the next note each time.

Q. Is it harder to compose classical music or a rock song?

A. It’s so different, because classical music is all on paper and you work on it for six months or longer and then it’s all over in one hour, you hear it once and that’s it. You can’t really tell if it’s going to work until you hear it, and by then it’s too late. Someone once told me it’s like a firework display; you spend ages setting it up, days and days, and then it’s all over in five minutes. With rock music, you know what it’s going to sound like from the beginning, but with classical music, you have to hear it in your head and it’s quite different.

Q. Who are your musical heroes?

A. Tom Waits, Olivier Messiaen… who else? I really like jazz trumpet players like Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. And I love Steve Reich. I think that his music is very interesting and he is a true master. It was interesting when I got to work on the recording of one of his pieces, Electric Counterpoint. I had to learn the score really well, and eventually you realize there’s all these little changes he makes so that everything fits these tiny adjustments. It sounds like he’s just put everything on top of each other, but there’s lots and lots of thought gone into it.

Shye Ben Tzur, the Sufi-inspired Hebraic poet

When Greenwood approached Shye Ben Tzur to make music together, the latter was not familiar with Greenwood’s work. “I knew Creep and a couple other Radiohead songs from high school, but at the end of the 1990s, I dedicated myself to listening to classical music from India and the qawwali genre,” he says, referring to Sufi devotional songs, which is now the style in which the musician works, recording songs in Hebrew. “I have composed music since I was a kid, and I’ve always been looking for something new, something fresh, something different. At the time, I needed new sources of inspiration, and to listen to things that weren’t directly related to my typical style. A friend brought me to a concert in Jerusalem of classical Indian music and it was really special. Incredible. After that, I decided I needed to go to India to better understand that music, that art form. I stayed longer to go deeper into the subject, and then a little longer, and now I’m still trying to understand it better,” says the musician, who connects to the video call with EL PAÍS from somewhere in Israel.

Junun, his first project with the Radiohead guitarist, proved to be a transformative experience, but the nonconformist nature of the Oxford musician was the most surprising aspect. “I felt like we had found something truly special, so when we started this second album, I thought, ‘OK, that was great, let’s do it again!’ But he told me, ‘No, that was incredible, let’s do something else!” The same thing happened during the recording process. We sat down to play and it sounded so beautiful. Suddenly, he decides he wants to swap out the guitar for a synthesizer, and then he decides he wants to try something completely different with the rhythms. It is a constant development, an exploration that goes deeper and deeper. Jonny always wants to go somewhere else,” says the musician.

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