Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien opens up about his love of nature and reveals how that love influenced OK Computer.
BBC 6Music’s Shaun Keaveny hosted a panel on the “musicality of nature” and the Radiohead bassist was one of the special guests. It is quite clear from King of Limbs and Moon Shaped Pool that the band are inspired by the natural world, but O’Brien reveals that the inspiration has been there from the start.
“As a musician, for me, there’s something I find completely inspiring about being in nature. It’s never really quiet,” O’Brien told the panel audience.
“The first record we made solely in the countryside was OK Computer. It was [recorded] just outside Bath in a beautiful rolling valley surrounded by woodland. Very often we’d finish at midnight and go out. I remember one night there was a deep frost and it was a full moon and the whole countryside was lit up, those are my memories of that record, I’ve got very few memories of actually being at the coal face doing the takes.”
He continued: “One of the things we always used to do if it was getting too heavy in the studio, which was 99% of the time, was go for a walk. The city can be great, you can get inspiration from the city, but there’s something very primal and profound [about nature], it’s almost existential. What are you doing on this planet? Those are the questions you start asking.”
Ed O’Brien’s solo album will be released in October this year.
