Jonny Greenwood famous quotes

When people say you're doing something radical in rock or dance music, I'm not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It's like trying to do something innovative in tap-dancing.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Rocks #People #Dancing

No, I am not interested in women or sex or anything.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Sex #Not Interested

Nothing's more exciting than a day in a studio with a string section - or more ruinously expensive. So it's good to feed that habit away from the band, especially if it means more experience for the next Radiohead string day.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Mean #Band #Next

I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed to play guitar. There's something - I don't want to sound ungrateful - but there's something very old-fashioned and traditional about it. You meet kids today whose grandparents were in punk bands. It's very old and traditional, but then, so is an orchestra and so is a string section.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Kids #Guitar #Play

I think guitarists are really over-admired and over-revered.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Thinking #Guitarist

I was happy using cassettes when I was fifteen, but I'm sure they were sneered at in their day by audiophiles.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Fifteen

I'm happy to write 10 times too much music.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Writing #Too Much

I'm pampered like you wouldn't believe.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Believe #Like You

It feels like Radiohead are famous, but that no one knows who we are. Which is brilliant, really.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Who We Are #Brilliant #Radiohead

I worry about being a fogy and just writing for orchestras. Like, really, I should be doing more electronic stuff, I feel. Laptops as part of the orchestra, and installation sound, and speakers.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Writing #Worry #Sound

People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis' record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row - there's just too much to get through.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Thinking #Mp3 #People

Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Music #Important #Radio

I don't mind when people are telling me about their 1971 Firebird, but it's the same thing as people telling me about their car or something. It's fine if you have an interest. By talking with me, though, you could be interviewing a novelist about guitars. It's the same thing, except I don't write that well either.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Writing #Guitar #Talking

I suppose all of us - we have the old Protestant work ethic of feeling guilty when you're not working, and getting a buzz from feeling like you're really busy. That's the reason to sort of carry on.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Work Ethic #Feelings #Buzz

I'm quite into listening to music and not doing anything else.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Listening #Listening To Music

I was just very conscious that I could either bore people by having the music be similar for too long, or I could just wear them out and bore them in a different way by having it changing too much every minute or two minutes. So, there was that kind of balance to get right.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Two #Long #People

I think It's a bit of a disappointment that a lot of people's Golden Age of music is still the '60s.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Disappointment #Thinking #People

Right now my mind is on the people who stole our instruments, and, specifically, the person with my guitar, which will no doubt end its days having Green Day songs worked out on it. A better fate was deserved - and while the reverence given to guitars annoys me, I shall miss it.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Song #Fate #Guitar

Everything I know about pop culture I know from 'The Simpsons,' and they say the Grammys aren't very good.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Culture #Pop Culture #Pops

Everything I do feels like It's going to end up being in Radiohead.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Radiohead #Ends #Feels

I think it should be ambitious and good music does deal with life and art and all these wonderful things.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Art #Thinking #Ambitious

I suppose subconsciously I was thinking in terms of having the scale of it matching the scale of the images. Hence the sort of string quartet, jazz band and electronic stuff.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Thinking #Band #Stuff

It's like that scene from The Player when they talk about merging Star Wars and Kramer vs. Kramer, or whatever. You could do that with music and it would just be awful.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Stars #War #Player

Jamaican reggae is the style of music I always reach for when ranting to friends about how you could listen to one style of music exclusively for the rest of your life - and it would all be great and varied and worth hearing.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Style #Hearing #Reggae

But I was in the Radiohead studio today and Phil was there drumming and Thom was there playing. We feel like we've only just stopped and already people are wanting us to carry on.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#People #Drumming #Today

I can remember soundtracks that you just can't separate from the film - It's just so intertwined, so important. Like the Hitchcock ones where they kind of inform each other and become this larger thing as a result.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Important #Remember #Kind

I fell in love with electronics, which for me was the terra incognita, because I had never heard such sounds. If you'd asked me 50 years ago, I would have said the future of music is only electronic, but I would have been wrong. I learnt how to produce everything I needed with live instrumentalists, so I don't need electronics.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Years #Sound #Needs

I remember when I was in my late teens just getting rid of lots of records, realizing I only ever listened to them when I was reading, or watching TV, or doing something else.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Reading #Tvs #Watching Tv

Obviously there will be a backlash. If you believe the hype you have to believe a backlash too. Any criticism we get, is always stuff we've already criticized ourselves.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Believe #Hype #Criticism

I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Thank You #Tunes #Orchestra

I like playing the stuff where I don´t know what I´m gonna play. Like the end of Fake Plastic Trees or the end of Paranoid Android - stuff where I can do anything and no one notices or cares.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Play #Fake #Tree

But over a period of time It's the melodic things that are in my head all day.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Periods

It's what the Pixies always said about music - they were writing songs and just trying not to be boring. That was their main motivation and it worked for them. I remember reading that and thinking that was the way to do it.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Song #Motivation #Reading

Every American college student goes to college with a hard drive. They take their laptop. There's not a CD player in sight.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Player #College #Sight

Anything that has more of Graham's guitar playing, I'm bound to like.
-- Jonny Greenwood

#Guitar