{"id":150387,"date":"2025-06-01T21:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T21:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/150387\/"},"modified":"2025-06-01T21:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T21:02:08","slug":"mark-pritchard-on-tall-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/150387\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Pritchard on ‘Tall Tales’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRadiohead<\/a>\u2018s hiatus definitely hasn\u2019t kept Thom Yorke<\/a>\u00a0out of the studio \u2014\u00a0he\u2019s released three great albums with the Smile, and earlier this month, he dropped the excellent Tall Tales<\/a>, a long-in-the-works collaboration<\/a> with veteran electronic producer Mark Pritchard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\n\tIn the new episode of\u00a0Rolling Stone Music Now<\/a>, Pritchard breaks down the long journey of creating\u00a0Tall Tales, with Yorke which is accompanied by a dizzying \u201cvisual world<\/a>\u201d created by artist Jonathan Zawada. To hear the whole episode, go here<\/a> for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts<\/a> or Spotify<\/a>, or just press play above.\u00a0 Here are some highlights from the discussion:<\/p>\n

\n\tThe collaboration began when Radiohead played Sydney, Australia over a decade ago.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cWe went for dinner with the whole band,\u201d Pritchard says \u201cAnd in that conversation, I said, \u2018Would you be up for doing something if I sent you some music at some point?\u2019 And he just said, \u2018Yeah, yeah, just send me whatever you want. I\u2019m definitely up for doing something.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pandemic lockdown provided the perfect creative opportunity when Yorke reached out in 2020.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cA few months into the pandemic,\u201d Pritchard recalls, \u201cThom emailed me and just said, \u2018I hope you\u2019re well, it\u2019s all a bit mad, I\u2019m locked away at home. If you\u2019ve got any music, send it through, because I\u2019m just stuck at home. Can\u2019t go out.\u2019 So I sent him a folder of, like, 20 ideas. He got back to me that night and said, \u2018Can I please do this one?\u2019 Maybe a few days later, he emailed me and said, \u2018Can I just do these 14?’\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tYorke experimented with entirely new vocal approaches, including a Bob Dylan-inspired low register.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201c\u2018Men Who Dance in Stags\u2019 Heads\u2019 was one of the first demos he sent me,\u201d Pritchard says. \u201cThom went for the kind of Bob Dylan low-vocal thing, you know? I was like, \u2018Wow, I\u2019ve never heard you do that before.\u2019 And he told me that he\u2019d always wanted to do that and he never found a way of doing it. He found a little trick where he found if he vari-speeded the audio, it allowed him to get into character a bit more to deliver the vocal in that register.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYorke sent Pritchard an unexpected musical reference to capture the right feeling for \u201cThe Spirit\u201d \u2014 a 1979 reggae hit.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cHe actually sent me a song by Janet Kay called \u2018Silly Games,\u2019 which charted in the U.K.,\u201d Pritchard says. \u201cIt was on\u00a0Top of the Pops, even. It\u2019s a reggae song, beautiful vocal. And he just said, \u2018This song is nothing like this reggae song, but there\u2019s a feeling in that song and in a lot of the music from that era. There\u2019s a hopefulness and there\u2019s an optimistic feeling and we need to keep that feeling in this song.\u2019 And as soon as he sent it to me, I just went, \u2018OK, now I get it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe most challenging track was \u201cHappy Days,\u201d which features Yorke\u2019s wildest vocal experiments.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThom did the wildest vocals. I mean, when he sent me what he did, I was like, \u2018This is nuts.\u2019 We had no idea how to get that to work,\u201d Pritchard says. \u201cIt sounds like a female well-spoken English Sixties kind of announcer for the intro parts. And then it\u2019s almost a bit punky in the middle. To do those kinds of things, you need to be confident enough to do something that sounds ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPritchard used unconventional instruments, including a Seventies Mattel Bee Gees toy synthesizer on \u201cGangsters.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s got like maybe one octave and you\u2019ve got these three bass presets,\u201d Pritchard says. \u201cAnd Kraftwerk used it to do \u2018Pocket Calculator,\u2019 I think, definitely live. They put some tin foil over it so it looked cooler,\u201d he says \u201cI didn\u2019t really use the bleeps, just used the bass preset. It\u2019s just one note. So I put it into Melodyne and changed the key of it up and down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe creative process required constant negotiation and compromise between the two artists.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThere was no nonsense all the way through,\u201d Pritchard says. \u201cWe were fighting, you know, we both had different opinions. Sometimes he pushed something, sometimes he was right, sometimes I was right, but it was always very much about \u2018How are we going to get this to work and for the better good of everything?\u2019 He\u2019s a very straight-up guy and we trusted each other straight away.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tPritchard is open to performing the material live, despite his nervousness about being onstage.<\/strong>\u00a0When Yorke invited him to perform during his recent solo tour, Pritchard says, \u201cI was a bit nervous about doing it because I\u2019m not used to being onstage\u2026 After seeing how he did it and how much range of things he could do live, I told him, \u2018If you are up for doing something, I\u2019m up for doing it.\u2019 I think it can be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYorke never spilled any details about the current state of Radiohead.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cHe definitely does not talk about it to me, because I guess they have to keep it on lockdown,\u201d Pritchard says. \u201cBut I mean, they got together last year, they played together. So that\u2019s interesting. If they\u2019d all fallen out or anything, that wouldn\u2019t have happened\u2026 I kind of feel like that will happen if it happens. If they feel like it should, if it\u2019s the right thing to do in the timing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone\u2018s weekly podcast, Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, on Apple Podcasts<\/a> or Spotify<\/a> (or wherever you get your podcasts). Check out eight years\u2019 worth of episodes in the archive, including in-depth interviews with Mariah Carey, Bruce Springsteen, SZA, Questlove, Halsey, Neil Young, Snoop Dogg, Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Rick Ross, Alicia Keys, the National, Ice Cube, Taylor Hawkins, Willow, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Dua Lipa, Killer Mike, Julian Casablancas, Sheryl Crow, Johnny Marr, Scott Weiland, Kirk Hammett, Coco Jones, Liam Gallagher, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, John Legend, Donald Fagen, Charlie Puth, Phil Collins, Justin Townes Earle, Stephen Malkmus, Sebastian Bach, Tom Petty, Eddie Van Halen, Kelly Clarkson, Pete Townshend, Bob Seger, the Zombies, and Gary Clark Jr. And look for dozens of episodes featuring genre-spanning discussions, debates, and explainers with Rolling Stone\u2019s critics and reporters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Radiohead\u2018s hiatus definitely hasn\u2019t kept Thom Yorke\u00a0out of the studio \u2014\u00a0he\u2019s released three great albums with the Smile,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,4004,269,4161,64267,4005,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-150387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-mark-pritchard","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-radiohead","12":"tag-rolling-stone-music-now","13":"tag-thom-yorke","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114610133099576791","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}