Jonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood (born 5 November 1971) is an English musician. He is the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the rock band Radiohead, and has composed numerous film scores. He has been named one of the greatest guitarists by numerous publications, including Rolling Stone.
For the Australian singer, see Johnny Greenwood (singer).
Jonny Greenwood
Along with his elder brother Colin, Greenwood attended Abingdon School in Abingdon near Oxford, where he formed Radiohead. He abandoned a degree in music when the band signed to Parlophone. Their debut single, "Creep" (1992), was distinguished by Greenwood's aggressive guitar work. Radiohead have since achieved critical acclaim and sold more than 30 million albums. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Radiohead in 2019.
Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist and a prominent player of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument. He uses electronic techniques such as programming, sampling and looping, and writes music software used by Radiohead. He described his role as an arranger, helping transform Thom Yorke's demos into finished songs. Radiohead albums feature Greenwood's string and brass arrangements, and he has composed for orchestras including the London Contemporary Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra.
Greenwood's first solo work, the soundtrack for the film Bodysong, was released 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 (2021), directed by Jane Campion. Greenwood also scored the Lynne Ramsay films We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) and You Were Never Really Here (2017). He has collaborated several times with the Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur, including on the 2015 album Junun. In 2021, Greenwood debuted a new band, the Smile, with Yorke and the drummer Tom Skinner.
Career[edit]
1991–1992: Pablo Honey[edit]
In 1991, the members of On a Friday regrouped in Oxford, sharing a house on the corner of Magdalen Road and Ridgefield Road.[18] Greenwood enrolled at Oxford Brookes University to study psychology and music. He left after his first term after On a Friday signed a record contract deal with EMI.[19] They changed their name to Radiohead and released their first album, Pablo Honey, in 1993.[20]
Radiohead found early success with their debut single, "Creep".[20] 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."[21] Greenwood also played harmonica on Blind Mr. Jones's 1992 single "Crazy Jazz".[22]
1995–1999: The Bends and OK Computer[edit]
Radiohead's second album, The Bends (1995), brought them significant critical attention.[23] Greenwood said it had been a "turning point" for Radiohead: "It started appearing in people's [best of] polls for the end of the year. That's when it started to feel like we made the right choice about being a band."[24] On tour, Greenwood damaged his hearing and wore protective ear shields for some performances.[25]
Radiohead's third album, OK Computer (1997), achieved acclaim,[26][27] showcasing Greenwood's lead guitar work on songs such as "Paranoid Android".[28] For "Climbing up the Walls", Greenwood wrote a part for 16 stringed instruments playing quarter tones apart, inspired by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.[29]
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.[30] Greenwood played harmonica on "Platform Blues" and "Billie" on Pavement's final album, Terror Twilight (1999).[31]
2000–2003: Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief[edit]
Radiohead's albums Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001) marked a dramatic change in sound, incorporating influences from electronica, classical music, jazz and krautrock.[32] Greenwood employed a modular synthesiser to build the drum machine rhythm of "Idioteque",[33][34] and played ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, on several tracks.[35]
For "How to Disappear Completely", Greenwood composed a string section by multitracking his ondes Martenot playing.[33] 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".[36] The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged the musicians to experiment and work with Greenwood's "naive" ideas.[37] Greenwood also arranged strings for the Amnesiac songs "Pyramid Song" and "Dollars and Cents".[38][39]
Greenwood played guitar on Bryan Ferry's 2002 album Frantic.[40] For Radiohead's sixth album, Hail to the Thief (2003), Greenwood began using the music programming language Max to sample and manipulate the band's playing.[41] After having used effects pedals heavily on previous albums, he challenged himself to create interesting guitar parts without effects.[42]
Personal life[edit]
Greenwood is married to the Israeli visual artist Sharona Katan, whom he met in 1993 when Radiohead performed in Israel.[132] Her work (credited as Shin Katan) appears on the covers of Junun and several of Greenwood's soundtracks.[133] Katan said she considers their family Jewish: "Our kids are raised as Jews, we have a mezuzah in our house, we sometimes have Shabbos dinners, we celebrate Jewish holidays. The kids don't eat pork. It's important to me to keep this stuff."[132]
In February 2021, Greenwood appeared on the BBC Radio 4 program Saturday Live, where his selected "Inheritance Tracks" were "Sweetheart Contract" by Magazine and "Brotherhood of Man" by Oscar Peterson and Clark Terry.[134] Greenwood is red–green colour blind.[135] Since 2015, Greenwood has lived on a farm in Marche, Italy. In April 2023, he began selling his own olive oil from Radiohead's online shop.[136]
