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Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien has revealed that the band have been having “online meetings” recently, and that fans might be in for something special to celebrate the upcoming 20th anniversaries of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’.
O’Brien was talking to NME about his upcoming debut solo album ‘Earth‘, when he said that while the bandmembers were all currently “doing their own thing”, there had been discussions about the future. Their last album was 2016’s acclaimed ‘A Moon Shaped Pool‘ .
“We’re an ongoing band and have online meetings – there was a Zoom call recently,” O’Brien told NME. “We’re talking about stuff, but for the foreseeable future everyone is doing their own thing. When it feels right to plug back into Radiohead, then we will.”
He continued: “We’ve had different chapters in Radiohead life. Up until the end of ‘OK Computer’ was one chapter; ‘Kid A’ through to ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ was another chapter. We’ve sort of drawn a line now and are wondering what the next chapter will be. That’s what we’ll figure out next.”
Following 2017’s acclaimed 20th anniversary reissue of the seminal ‘OK Computer‘, we also asked O’Brien if there were similar plans afoot to mark two decades of 2000’s ‘Kid A’ and 2001’s ‘Amnesiac’ in the coming years.
“Due to the nature of it, I can’t fully reveal anything – but there have been talks about ways of doing something,” he replied. “Everything gets thrown up in the air with coronavirus, so a lot of ideas are being mooted. It would be nice to honour it, but then there’s the struggle – how can you get that excited about an album that came out 20 years ago? I can’t. I’m thankful it was a moment and know that it means a lot to people, but it was a long time ago.”
O’Brien added: “Personally speaking, looking back is not something I ever do. The past feels like a long time ago and isn’t something that feels important. Obviously I’m thankful that there’s an appetite for it. I’m not a fan of Radiohead, I’m in Radiohead. It’s a very different experience for me.”
This comes after frontman Thom Yorke last year revealed that the band were planning to do something “really cool” with material from ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac‘.
“I recently found this box file of all the faxes I was sending and receiving from Stanley [Donwood, visual artist] about the artwork and they’re hilarious,” said Yorke. “I’ve got all this stuff, pages and pages and photocopies, that I just left strewn around the studios.
“Nigel [Godrich, producer] picked them up and thought, ‘We’d better keep these.’ I was so focused and at the same time angry, confused, paranoid. I’m looking at all these people involved, going ‘Who the fuck are these people?!’ We’re going to do something really cool with all that material.”
Radiohead excited fans about potential celebrations of the classic ‘Kid A’ when they shared a full extended version of the track ‘Treefingers’ earlier this year. There has been a great outpouring of old material from the band lately, having uploaded their entire discography to Youtube as well as sharing 18 hours of previously unreleased ‘OK Computer’ outtakes and launching a ‘Public Library’ featuring an extensive catalogue of rarities and archive footage.
The band also recently started streaming classic live shows weekly until the coronavirus lockdown ends.
Ed O’Brien releases his debut solo album ‘Earth’ as EOB on April 17.
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