Colin Greenwood was born in June 1969 in Oxford. In 1985, he and schoolfriends Thom Yorke, Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway – along with younger brother Jonny Greenwood – formed a band, On A Friday, and began playing locally. In 1991, the band members regrouped post-university and their demos got the attention of record labels. They signed to EMI in December that year and changed their name to Radiohead.
Their debut album, Pablo Honey, was a moderate hit, reaching No 22 in the UK. That all changed with the release of the single Creep, which became a huge hit worldwide. 1995’s The Bends saw them escape the one-hit wonder tag and two years later OK Computer was heralded as a masterpiece, selling almost eight million copies. Subsequent albums saw them embrace electronica and jazz while becoming one of the most beloved bands of their generation.
Speaking to The Big Issue for his Letter to My Younger Self, Colin Greenwood looked back on teenage enthusiasms, questionable fashion choices and landmark shows.
When I was 16 my preoccupations were music and books. I’d probably gone past my science-fiction period by 16. So I was reading history books, The Communist Manifesto, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. American writers like Richard Ford and John Cheever. A big thing for me when I was 16 was the ‘Red Light Zone’ on Channel 4. That was a sign of cutting-edge content – I saw Jean-Luc Godard and Derek Jarman and Antonioni movies there.
I didn’t enjoy school much but what was great about that time is it’s when Radiohead started. We all rehearsed in the music room at school when we were on breaks. I was in the same year as Thom [Yorke, singer and guitarist] and we had classical guitar lessons with the same teacher. Then he got a band together with Ed [O’Brien, guitarist] and because Ed already played guitar, they asked me to play bass. I think I dodged a bullet on that one.
We all had one thing in common – we loved playing music together. And we also maybe struggled with some bits of the school. So we had that connection too. We used to play covers of other bands – we tried to play the New Order song Procession. We started practising in village halls around Oxfordshire. I remember Thom used to pass tapes around and I listened to his tape and thought what an amazing voice he had. His brother’s got a great voice too. They used to have a party trick where they’d go to parties and sing My Funny Valentine together.
Our headmaster tried to charge us £60 to rehearse in a school room. I think his problem was that his house is about 100 metres away from the music school where we were practicing, and it was a Sunday afternoon. And we were probably just playing New Order’s Ceremony over and over again. So he was grumpy about that. The director of music, Terry James, he saw it differently. He thought it was brilliant that we were all in on a Sunday, organising ourselves to rehearse and practise together, so he tore our bill up and put it on the headmaster’s desk.
Colin Greenwood in New York, 1993. Image: Bob Berg/Getty Images
I guess I was quite a garrulous teenager. I spent hours on the telephone in my mum’s room talking to lots of girlfriends which was really brilliant. But a lot of my social life revolved around the band. Though we didn’t play many concerts, we generally just rehearsed a lot. We didn’t really have any kind of profile, weirdly, for something that we all took so seriously from an early age. I didn’t know how I’d make a living because making a career of music – I couldn’t see it. But I didn’t know what else I might do. Be an academic or a writer maybe.
Being in the recording studio can be difficult because it’s where, as they say, the rubber hits the road. It’s when you find out whether what you’ve got is any good or not. But everything else about being in a band is just brilliant. You get to travel the world, play music, meet people and eat interesting food and then come home again. None of us had the slightest interest in being high-profile or having notoriety or being a celebrity. Being onstage can make you a bit nervous but, as our old tour manager used to say, if you’re not nervous you don’t care. So I’ve never been blasé. I’ve just done some shows with Nick Cave and waiting backstage before I walk on, which is when the spotlights go on, just before Nick comes on… that made me nervous.
I remember the Glastonbury [Pyramid Stage headline] show in 1997. I was in tears after it. It was so traumatic. Everything sort of broke down – the monitors and the lights went. Thom walked offstage and Ed had to get him back. The BBC recorded it brilliantly, and I listened to it a few years ago. And I just thought, god, we were all so shit scared. We were all concentrating so hard. But fucking hell, it sounds amazing.
2007: Radiohead members Thom Yorke, Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood during the In Rainbows sessions. Image: Colin Greenwood
When I was a teenager there was a lot of Australian music on John Peel so I heard [Nick Cave’s band] The Birthday Party. Then I sort of drifted out until the ’90s and [Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds albums) Let Love In and then Murder Ballads. I love soul and the blues, so that’s what I love about Nick’s music; his songwriting and his love of American soul and blues. I see him as very soulful. Such a brilliant writer. I’ve had the time of my life working with him. I think the 16-year-old Colin would be a bit trepidatious about playing in his band but… excited to be wearing a suit.
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I never let my brother Jonny forget that it was me that got him into the band. I think it’s very important that I see him acknowledge that more publicly more often. Put that as your headline – Jonny would like to thank his brother Colin for giving him permission to occasionally play on a Radiohead song. But no, actually, it’s brilliant playing together. He could play the keyboards and then he learned the guitar very quickly, listening to Pixies and Lou Reed’s New York album, and that was it. It was just amazing. I remember the first string sessions he wrote for Radiohead for The Bends. It was just brilliant. What an amazing musician and artist he is.
Creep was our big breakthrough moment. Things weren’t looking great just before that – we’d put out our first album, Pablo Honey, on EMI and then we had this big hit with Creep and that just changed everything. We’d probably have been dropped if we hadn’t had that. It gave us the currency and breathing space to do a whole bunch of tours to promote it in America and teach us about playing more shows together.
Looking back, there were two things, terrible things that I inflicted upon people around me. One, I’d tell my younger self, don’t ever have a ponytail. I expect people were appalled by that. The other thing is a rainbow stripy woollen cardigan I bought in Banana Republic when I first went to New York. I didn’t ever wear it on stage, but it is in photographs. But you know, I really don’t care. So it’s fine.
Bassist Colin Greenwood on stage with Nick Cave at the Orpheum. Image: AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
If I could ask anyone’s forgiveness it would be my old history teacher at Cambridge. Because I started studying history when I was at Cambridge and then I changed my mind over the summer. I went to the library in Oxford and read all my favourite poetry books and decided to change history to English. My teacher sadly died a long time ago. And he really believed in me, so I’d apologise to him for that. A lot of historians think that English is not something you study. It’s like a pastime, like going to the theatre. So I’d like to say sorry to him because he was very kind and supportive to me.
The best moment I’ve had recently was halfway through a show with Nick Cave in Helsinki. It was on my birthday. Nick had arranged various things with the venue. Somebody brought a cake on stage I had four-and-a-half thousand people singing Happy Birthday to me, led by Nick. Then after the show – because it was summer in Helsinki – we went back to the hotel and I just sat outside in this beautiful tree-garlanded park, under the shadow of a tree. It was about midnight and I just took a breath and marvelled at how lucky I am and how grateful I feel for the chance to travel and play music and play with my friends in Radiohead and with Nick Cave.
Colin will join Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds for their UK and Ireland tour this November.
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