@adamgoodfellow2255

1 year ago

I’ve never seen Radiohead, but I knew Colin Greenwood, their bass player, and shared drummers with Colin’s band when I was at Cambridge in 1988-91. When our bands both played at a college ball, I remember watching Colin’s band. The other members of Radiohead weren’t at Cambridge and he was in a 3 piece with our drummer Andy, and a fantastic blues guitarist who I knew pretty well. This was Will Mazzarella (sp?) who was awesome. I’m a lead guitarist and I spent the whole time looking at Will, who sang and played like a virtuoso. I was sure if anyone I knew was going to “make it”, it’d be him. He was gorgeous, tall, charismatic, and cool as fuck. But there was a tune they did where Colin did this astonishing, really out-there bass line. Maybe a bit like the bass on the “dinosaurs roamed the earth” track. Super hook, but not what you were expecting either. Dan, my bass player, and I were slack jawed watching this. What the fuck, that isn’t a scale and I’ve no idea what he was playing. We approached him afterwards and I said, what… how do you … what was that… type of thing. Colin kind of said something, like, “I don’t know, you just find the note that is right. Play that one and then find the next note that wants to go there.” (Like that was going to help much!) Same with this pyramid song with lyrics about a dream and the piano chords from heaven and that strange paused rhythm, lilting emphasis that is so addictive and gently pulled back to the loop as you surface every few bars, but there aren’t even any bars as you drift through the pleasure of surrendering to death. And the drum beat that isn’t a beat, that restarts your own heart and brings you back to the surface of the river, with the black-eyed angel singing to me. Left university, didn’t keep in touch with Colin or Andy. (Pre social media so it wasn’t easy). For a couple of years since I’d come across them, Radiohead were this band I loved and I had completely eaten up “the bends” and “ok pc” and had no idea Colin was in the band. Then I bumped into Andy at a Neil Young gig. “Isn’t Colin doing well”, he goes… Only problem is, I am going to need about 20 of their songs to be on the playlist for my funeral. The next person’s going to have to wait a while before they get cremated.

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