Greenwood, who’s faced particular scrutiny for performing in Tel Aviv at the height of the war in 2024, said, “It’s the embodiment of the left.” He continued, “The left look for traitors, the right for converts and it’s depressing that we are the closest they can get.” Greenwood added that he’s working on a new album with Israeli and Middle Eastern musicians (something seemingly in the vein of 2023’s Jarak Qaribak) and that he feels “frightened to admit that.” But, he said, “that feels progressive to me—booing at a concert does not strike me as brave or progressive.”
Yorke, who was with Greenwood at the time of the interview, responded with a deadpan remark: “But you are whitewashing genocide, mate. And so am I, apparently, by sitting next to you on this sofa.”
Greenwood also spoke about protesting the Israeli government and many citizens’ despisal of the country’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. “Look, I have been to antigovernment protests in Israel and you cannot move for all the ‘F*** Ben-Gvir’ stickers,’” he said. “I spend a lot of time there with family and cannot just say, ‘I’m not making music with you f***ers because of the government.’ It makes no sense to me. I have no loyalty—or respect, obviously—to their government, but I have both for the artists born there.”
Philip Selway and Ed O’Brien also spoke with The Sunday Times about Israel and Palestine. O’Brien said, regarding the band’s 2017 Tel Aviv concert, “We should have played Ramallah in the West Bank as well.”
And Selway remarked, “What BDS are asking of us is impossible. They want us to distance ourselves from Jonny, but that would mean the end of the band and Jonny is coming from a very principled place. But it’s odd to be ostracised by artists we generally felt quite aligned to.”
Jonny Greenwood’s brother and bandmate, Colin Greenwood, did not address the Middle East, but he recalled a show that Radiohead played in Berlin on the night of September 11, 2001. According to the article, some Americans in the crowd shouted at Yorke to “say something,” and the singer eventually asked, “What do you want me to say?”
Radiohead’s interview with Jonathan Dean for The Sunday Times comes ahead of the band’s first tour since 2018. The tour is scheduled to begin next week, on November 4, in Madrid.
