Jonny Z Albums

[Sourn Sanneh]

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.

Along with his elder brother, Colin, Greenwood attended Abingdon School in Abingdon near Oxford, where he formed Radiohead. Their debut single, "Creep" (1992), was distinguished by Greenwood's aggressive guitar work. Radiohead have achieved 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. In 2021, Greenwood debuted a new band, the Smile, with Yorke and the drummer Tom Skinner.

Jonny Greenwood was born on 5 November 1971 in Oxford, England.[1] His brother, the Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood, is two years older. Their father served in the British Army as a bomb disposal expert.[2][3] The Greenwood family has historical ties to the Communist Party of Great Britain and the socialist Fabian Society.[4]

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.[5] He credited his older siblings with exposing him to rock bands such as the Beat and New Order.[6] The first gig Greenwood attended was the Fall on their 1988 Frenz Experiment tour, which he found "overwhelming".[6]

The Greenwood brothers attended the independent 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.[7] 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,[6] and continued to play into adulthood.[8] 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!'"[9] Greenwood also spent time programming, experimenting with BASIC and simple machine code to make computer games.[10] According to Greenwood, "The closer I got to the bare bones of the computer, the more exciting I found it."[11]

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.[12] Jonny, the youngest, was two school years below Yorke and Colin and the last to join.[13] He was previously in another band, Illiterate Hands, with Matt Hawksworth, Simon Newton, Ben Kendrick, Nigel Powell and Yorke's brother, Andy.[14][15]

Greenwood initially played harmonica and keyboards for On a Friday.[13] 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".[16] 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."[16] He eventually became the lead guitarist.[13]

Although the other members of On a Friday had left Abingdon by 1987 to attend university, they continued to rehearse on weekends and holidays.[17] Greenwood studied music at A Level, including chorale harmonisation.[9]

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]

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]

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]

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]

In 2003, Greenwood released his first solo work, the soundtrack for the documentary film Bodysong. It incorporates guitar, jazz, and classical music.[36] In 2004, Greenwood and Yorke contributed to the Band Aid 20 single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", produced by Godrich.[43]

Greenwood's first work for orchestra, Smear, was premiered by the London Sinfonietta in March 2004.[citation needed] 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.[44] With the orchestra, Greenwood also performed two Radiohead songs with Yorke: "Where Bluebirds Fly" and "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi".[45][46]

In May 2004, Greenwood was appointed composer-in-residence to the BBC Concert Orchestra.[47] Radiohead's co-manager, Bryce Edge, said Greenwood would use the residency to learn how orchestras work.[47] For the BBC, Greenwood wrote "Popcorn Superhet Receiver" (2005), inspired by radio static and the elaborate, dissonant tone clusters of Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960). He wrote the piece by recording individual tones on viola, then manipulating and overdubbing them in Pro Tools.[36] For "Popcorn Supherhet Receiver", Greenwood was named Composer of the Year by BBC Radio 3.[48]

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.[49]

Greenwood composed the score for the 2007 film There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The soundtrack won an award at the Critics' Choice Awards and the Best Film Score award in the Evening Standard British Film Awards for 2007.[50] As it contains excerpts from "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", it was ineligible for an Academy Award.[51][52] Rolling Stone named There Will Be Blood the best film of the decade and described the score as "a sonic explosion that reinvented what film music could be".[53] In 2016, the film composer Hans Zimmer said the score was the one that had most "stood out to him" in the past decade, describing it as "recklessly, crazily beautiful".[54]

Greenwood curated a compilation album of reggae tracks, Jonny Greenwood Is the Controller, released by Trojan Records in March 2007.[55] It features mostly 70s roots and dub tracks from artists including Lee "Scratch" Perry, Joe Gibbs and Linval Thompson. The title references Thompson's track "Dread Are the Controller".[56]

Radiohead released their seventh album, In Rainbows, in October 2007, in a landmark use of the pay-what-you-want model for music sales. Greenwood said Radiohead were responding to the culture of downloading free music, which he likened to the legend of King Canute: "You can't pretend the flood isn't happening."[57] Greenwood wrote the title music for Adam Buxton's 2008 sketch show Meebox,[58] and contributed to the 2009 album Basof Mitraglim Le'Hakol by the Israeli rock musician Dudu Tasaa.[59]

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