Jonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood is an English musician and the lead guitarist of the rock band Radiohead. He has also composed numerous film scores. He has been named one of the greatest guitarists by publications including Rolling Stone.
Greenwood formed Radiohead at school with his elder brother, Colin. Their debut single, "Creep", featured Greenwood's aggressive guitar work. He described his role in Radiohead as an arranger, helping transform Thom Yorke's demos into finished songs. Radiohead have sold more than 30 million albums, and Greenwood was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the band in 2019.
Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist and a player of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument. He uses electronic techniques such as programming, sampling and looping, and writes music software. The only classically trained member of Radiohead, Greenwood has composed for orchestras including the London Contemporary Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and his arrangements feature on Radiohead records. He has collaborated with Middle Eastern musicians including the Israeli songwriters Shye Ben Tzur and Dudu Tassa. In 2021, Greenwood debuted a new band, the Smile, with Yorke and the drummer Tom Skinner.
Greenwood released his first solo work, the soundtrack for the film Bodysong, in 2003. In 2007, he scored There Will Be Blood, the first of several collaborations with the director Paul Thomas Anderson. In 2018, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his score for Anderson's Phantom Thread. He was nominated again for his score for The Power of the Dog, directed by Jane Campion, and his score for Anderson's One Battle After Another. Greenwood also scored the Lynne Ramsay films We Need to Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here.
Early life
Jonny Greenwood was born on 5 November 1971 in Oxford, England. His brother, the Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood, is two years older. Their father served in the British Army as a bomb disposal expert. The Greenwood family has historical ties to the Communist Party of Great Britain and the socialist Fabian Society.When he was a child, Greenwood's family would listen to a small number of cassettes in their car, including Mozart's horn concertos, the musicals Flower Drum Song and My Fair Lady, and cover versions of Simon & Garfunkel songs. When the cassettes were not playing, Greenwood would listen to the noise of the engine and try to recall every detail of the music. He credited his older siblings with exposing him to rock bands such as the Beat and New Order. The first gig Greenwood attended was the Fall on their 1988 Frenz Experiment tour, which he found "overwhelming".
The Greenwood brothers attended the private boys' school Abingdon. The Abingdon director of music, Michael Stinton, recalled Jonny as a "charming student" and "committed musician" who would spend as much time in the music department as possible. Greenwood's first instrument was a recorder given to him at age four or five. He played baroque music in recorder groups as a teenager, and continued to play into adulthood. He played the viola in the Thames Vale youth orchestra, which he described as a formative experience: "I'd been in school orchestras and never seen the point. But in Thames Vale I was suddenly with all these 18-year-olds who could actually play in tune. I remember thinking: 'Ah, that's what an orchestra is supposed to sound like! Greenwood also spent time programming, experimenting with BASIC and simple machine code to make computer games. According to Greenwood, "The closer I got to the bare bones of the computer, the more exciting I found it."
On a Friday
At Abingdon, the Greenwood brothers formed a band, On a Friday, with the singer Thom Yorke, the guitarist Ed O'Brien and the drummer Philip Selway. Jonny, the youngest, was three school years below Yorke and Colin and the last to join. He was previously in another band, Illiterate Hands, with Matt Hawksworth, Simon Newton, Ben Kendrick, Nigel Powell and Yorke's brother, Andy.Greenwood initially played harmonica and keyboards for On a Friday. As they had fired their previous keyboardist for playing too loudly, Greenwood spent his first months playing with his keyboard turned off. No one in the band realised, and Yorke told him he added an "interesting texture". According to Greenwood, "I'd go home in the evening and work out how to actually play chords, and cautiously, over the next few months, I would start turning this keyboard up." According to Selway, at On a Friday's first gig, in Oxford’s Jericho Tavern, Greenwood sat on the stage with a harmonica, "waiting for his big moment to arrive". He eventually became the lead guitarist.
Although the other members of On a Friday had left Abingdon by 1987 to attend university, they continued to rehearse on weekends and holidays. Greenwood studied music at A Level, including chorale harmonisation.
Career
1991–1992: ''Pablo Honey''
In 1991, the members of On a Friday regrouped in Oxford, sharing a house on the corner of Magdalen Road and Ridgefield Road. Greenwood played harmonica on the 1992 Blind Mr. Jones single "Crazy Jazz". He enrolled at Oxford Brookes University to study psychology and music, but left after his first term after On a Friday signed a record contract deal with EMI. Greenwood said he had been "headed for the back of the viola section at some minor orchestra".The band changed their name to Radiohead and released their first album, Pablo Honey, in 1993. Radiohead found early success with their debut single, "Creep", released in 1992. According to Rolling Stone, "It was Greenwood's gnashing noise blasts that marked Radiohead as more than just another mopey band... An early indicator of his crucial role in pushing his band forward." The Independent wrote that it was "the kind of transformative moment that has become his signature contribution to the Radiohead style".
1995–1999: ''The Bends'' and ''OK Computer''
Radiohead's second album, The Bends, brought them significant critical attention. Greenwood said it had been a "turning point" for Radiohead: "It started appearing in people's polls for the end of the year. That's when it started to feel like we made the right choice about being a band." On tour, Greenwood damaged his hearing and wore protective ear shields for some performances.File:Radiohead Matters.ogg|thumb|right|Colin Greenwood, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, and Phil Selway discussing OK Computer in 1997
Radiohead's third album, OK Computer, achieved acclaim, showcasing Greenwood's lead guitar work on songs such as "Paranoid Android". For "Climbing up the Walls", Greenwood wrote a part for 16 stringed instruments playing quarter tones apart, inspired by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
For the soundtrack of the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine, Greenwood, Yorke, Andy Mackay of Roxy Music and Bernard Butler of Suede formed a band, the Venus in Furs, and covered three Roxy Music songs. Greenwood played harmonica on "Platform Blues" and "Billie" on Pavement's final album, Terror Twilight.
2000–2003: ''Kid A, Amnesiac'' and ''Hail to the Thief''
Radiohead's albums Kid A and Amnesiac marked a dramatic change in sound, incorporating influences from electronica, classical music, jazz and krautrock. Greenwood employed a modular synthesiser to build the drum machine rhythm of "Idioteque", and played ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, on several tracks.For "How to Disappear Completely", Greenwood composed a string section by multitracking his ondes Martenot playing. According to Radiohead's producer, Nigel Godrich, when the string players saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible—or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged the musicians to experiment and work with Greenwood's "naive" ideas. Greenwood also arranged strings for the Amnesiac songs "Pyramid Song" and "Dollars and Cents".
Greenwood played guitar on Bryan Ferry's 2002 album Frantic. For Radiohead's sixth album, Hail to the Thief, Greenwood began using the music programming language Max to sample and manipulate the band's playing. After having used effects pedals heavily on previous albums, he challenged himself to create interesting guitar parts without effects.
2003–2006: ''Bodysong'' and first orchestral work
In 2003, Greenwood released his first solo work, the soundtrack for the documentary film Bodysong. It incorporates guitar, jazz, and classical music. Greenwood played instruments such as the ondes Martenot, banjo, glass harmonica and vocoder, and employed the Gerard Presencer jazz quartet. In 2004, Greenwood and Yorke contributed to the Band Aid 20 single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", produced by Godrich.Greenwood's first work for orchestra, Smear, was premiered by the London Sinfonietta in March 2004. In 2005, Greenwood curated a concert as part of the Ether festival in London at with the London Sinfonietta. It featured a new version of Smear, the new work Piano for Children, and performances of pieces by classical modernist composers. With the orchestra, Greenwood also performed two Radiohead songs with Yorke: "Where Bluebirds Fly" and "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi".
In May 2004, Greenwood was appointed composer-in-residence to the BBC Concert Orchestra. Radiohead's co-manager, Bryce Edge, said Greenwood would use the residency to learn how orchestras work. For the BBC, Greenwood wrote "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", inspired by radio static and the elaborate, dissonant tone clusters of Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima . He wrote the piece by recording individual tones on viola, then manipulating and overdubbing them in Pro Tools. For "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", Greenwood was named Composer of the Year by BBC Radio 3.
For the 2005 film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Greenwood and the Radiohead drummer, Philip Selway, appeared as the wizard rock band Weird Sisters alongside Jarvis Cocker, Steve Mackey, Steven Claydon and Jason Buckle. They recorded three songs for the soundtrack and appeared in the film. Greenwood contributed piano to "The Eraser" from Yorke's debut solo album, The Eraser.