{"id":496116,"date":"2026-05-21T17:24:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T17:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/496116\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T17:24:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T17:24:19","slug":"radioheads-ed-obrien-got-sick-of-guitars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/496116\/","title":{"rendered":"Radiohead\u2019s Ed O\u2019Brien Got Sick of Guitars"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s funny how when a band goes away for a long time and you don\u2019t hear their music, you really miss them and realize, God, that was so good.\u201d
\n Photo: Steve Gullick\n <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Follow-up\u201d is a series in which musicians walk us through the making and release of their sophomore albums. Here, Radiohead guitarist Ed O\u2019Brien explains the creative process and recording of his solo record Blue Morpho and the \u201cshit economics\u201d of trying to tour it.<\/p>\n

Ed O\u2019Brien had to have his own metamorphosis to create his hauntingly beautiful sophomore album, Blue Morpho. It took four years to write and record its seven songs, which were spurred by the Radiohead guitarist\u2019s experience of falling into a deep depression and navigating decades of emotional trauma exacerbated by the pandemic lockdowns. O\u2019Brien learned that being immersed in nature is where he felt the strongest \u2014 the title Blue Morpho refers to a rare species of butterfly he encountered with his family. \u201cPart of my healing journey was walking in the trees and in the river, feeling the light, and recalibrating there,\u201d he explains. \u201cMy cathedral is in the woods.\u201d The album contains mossy psych-folk beats, self-recorded bird chirps, perfectly tuned flutes, and jazzy string arrangements waiting to enchant your ears, not unlike another rocker\u2019s recent solo project<\/a>. \u201cI couldn\u2019t listen to any more alternative guitar music,\u201d he says. \u201cIt got to a point when I was like, I never need to hear this again. It doesn\u2019t interest me anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides a few tour dates planned overseas in October to support Blue Morpho, O\u2019Brien \u2014 despite the financial cushion from being in one of the most successful rock bands of all time \u2014 doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s feasible to bring the show over to the U.S. in the near future. \u201cIt\u2019s shit economics,\u201d he admits. \u201cIt\u2019s so expensive to tour.\u201d He\u2019s currently unsure which city or venue Radiohead will select for its 2027 slate of performances, but the Sphere doesn\u2019t interest him much. \u201cIt\u2019s funny how when a band goes away for a long time and you don\u2019t hear their music, you really miss them and realize, God, that was so good,\u201d he says with a smirk. \u201cWhen you go away, people miss you. Which is bizarre.\u201d Now, though, O\u2019Brien guides us through his personal landscape for Blue Morpho, which is out May 22.<\/p>\n

On the first album, I was hiding and used the initials \u201cEOB.\u201d There was a huge deal of uncertainty that went along with it. The whole process of making the second record is I\u2019m no longer hiding from myself or from the world. This is who I am \u2014 take it or leave it. It has been my modus operandi for a long time. The journey that I\u2019ve been through is one of truth, learning to understand what I really feel, and being honest about it. So in that sense, I couldn\u2019t be more truthful than go under my own name.<\/p>\n

The identity of the record started to form in the summer of 2022. I decided I no longer wanted to be, say, the controller that controls everything, but rather let go and see what emerges. It\u2019s really difficult because a lot of it comes from this initial \u201cdark night of the soul.\u201d It\u2019s like a death of the ego, but it\u2019s also when you descend into a dark place. When you\u2019re in that dark place and sit in it long enough, you feel there\u2019s a moment \u2014 well, certainly for me \u2014 or a sense of grace. I\u2019ve always had a spiritual connection to these kinds of feelings, particularly in nature. I taught myself meditation 20 years ago. I call myself a mongrel meditator. So I\u2019ve been seeking this connection with the divine in that period of depression. When you fall down, that\u2019s often where grace and a connection with the divine come out like a well-warn root.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been quite a hard thing for me to talk about. I\u2019ve hidden my spiritual connection in the past because I\u2019m a boy from Oxford. Oxford is a very academic and intellectual place. There isn\u2019t much room to talk about transcendent moments or the connection with the divine because it\u2019s not empirical and you can\u2019t measure it. Academia wants things to be measured. I love academia, but I also find it incredibly limiting because it can\u2019t account for what I feel. I love the writings of William Blake and a lot of these poets and sages because they managed those feelings beautifully. I\u2019m on that journey, and I don\u2019t know how I do it; it comes through me. If you ask me how these riffs came about, I\u2019ve got no idea. I get into a semi-meditative state when I play or sing. The first few times I listened to \u201cBlue Morpho,\u201d I was like, How the fuck did that track happen?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I sort of stopped listening to music in that first lockdown. I\u2019d had enough. I was suddenly aware of this extraordinary birdsong. All of the birds were so happy when our world shut down \u2014 you could hear it. They were like, Finally. The idiots have stopped running around. Nature was just delighted with what we were doing. I got the Merlin app<\/a> so I could start identifying all of the bird sounds. We had a particularly beautiful summer in Wales and had all the windows open. I had a microphone outside to record the birds, and I realized I wanted to make a track out of birdsong.<\/p>\n

I was also interested in sacred music that has a transcendence within. Jeff Buckley, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis all had that same connection with the divine. I listened to A Love Supreme a lot because I wanted to understand and feel Miles\u2019s connection and his strength. Spirit of Eden, by Talk Talk, is an amazing record and I leant into that a bit. But I was really interested in Coltrane. I was inspired by a lot of Brazilian jazz, people like Jorge Ben and Joyce Moreno. I also listened to a lot of classical music. Up until the age of about 13, I had quite a formal classical-music education. I sang in a choir before my voice broke.<\/p>\n

You get to the point where you go, Well, I\u2019m a father and a husband and that\u2019s my purpose, but what else is there? I never thought Radiohead would happen again. What do I do? I\u2019m not going to do music for the sake of it. The thing that came through was: My purpose is I have to try and put beautiful things out there in the world. That\u2019s my job. That\u2019s it. The beauty that I feel feeds into me, as do the sadness and the joy.<\/p>\n

I found a musical family through synchronistic events. I was a big Police fan and I was like, What\u2019s synchronicity? With Paul Epworth, we\u2019re both dads at the same school; he rang me up before we got into the studio, and we had this conversation for an hour. We had three days in this amazing studio of a church. I didn\u2019t want to say, \u201cOh, I\u2019d love to make a record with you,\u201d because he\u2019s Paul Epworth and he\u2019s working with big artists. And if it\u2019s not big artists, he\u2019s working with people like Arlo Parks who are on the way up. I thought someone of his stature wouldn\u2019t want to be involved with a side project of someone who had been in Radiohead. So a few weeks went by and I called him up and said, \u201cShould we go for coffee?\u201d I laid it out. \u201cPaul, I\u2019d love to work with you.\u201d And he said, \u201cI\u2019d love to do exactly the same.\u201d I couldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n

Philip Selway plays drums on \u201cSweet Spot\u201d and \u201cBlue Morpho.\u201d I just felt they needed Phil. He\u2019s such a beautiful drummer \u2014 he always brings his full heart and soul to everything he does. So I asked him, \u201cDo you fancy coming along?\u201d He came for an afternoon and absolutely nailed it. Colin Greenwood played bass on \u201cBrasil\u201d from my first record. You ask because you want them to play on it, not because it\u2019s some big deal or a marketing purpose. I love singing with Thom Yorke. I really enjoyed it on the tour we just did. It would be interesting for me to sing lead and him to sing backup on something. Maybe in the future he might be up for singing one of my songs. My bandmates are all amazing musicians, and they\u2019ve all got their own thing going. Each one of them is so unique in the way they play because they\u2019re largely self-taught.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I knew I wanted it to be a certain shade of blue, funny enough. We took a bit of time to find the shade. I was very drawn to albums from about 1969 to 1974. Obviously, there\u2019s Joni Mitchell\u2019s Blue, which is seminal. I was also thinking about Bridge Over Troubled Water. It\u2019s such a funny, grainy photo of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel walking down a busy street. It\u2019s kind of ordinary but still so powerful because of what\u2019s in that record. I don\u2019t have an artistic collaborator like Thom and Stanley Donwood \u2014 they\u2019ve done all of these amazing covers for Radiohead and Thom\u2019s stuff for the Smile. That\u2019s a very, very lengthy process, but I don\u2019t have time for that. If you get artwork for me, it needs to evolve.<\/p>\n

Steve Gullick, an amazing photographer who\u2019s done a lot of landscape art, came down to Wales. He had never done album covers or art direction, but I liked his process. We initially tried somebody, but it was too clean. I said, \u201cThis record has dirt under the fingernails. It needs mud; it needs the earth.\u201d He did that whole process where he took copies of the photo, laid them outside in the sun for three days, and then they weathered. I guess I\u2019m like a butterfly getting its wings.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to come to America, and I fully intend to bring this to America but it\u2019s not feasible at the moment. We\u2019re instead playing in very beautiful, intimate places in Europe this autumn. I don\u2019t want to come to some nasty room and play this music. It has to be in the right environment. I think we\u2019ll break even, but we won\u2019t make any money with the tour. We\u2019re lucky to just break even. If there\u2019s demand for it, if people want it, then we\u2019ll come. Of course, Radiohead is a whole other thing because the economies of scale work for the band. But smaller venues mean having a skeleton crew. We\u2019re going to be packing up our own gear \u2014 all the stuff I haven\u2019t done for years, but I\u2019m quite happy to do it in this case.<\/p>\n

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