Jonny Greenwood Quotes


"The rest of the band were basically friends, So it was me following them around and begging them to let me be in their band for two or three years. And they finally let me in on the harmonica, actually, and then the keyboards, and finally the guitar."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Friends, Guitar, Rest, Years)

"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
(Related: Age, Music, People, Disappointment)

"Presented with a song like Exit Music, It's impossible to know what to add without actually making it worse. How can you play along when It's already there?"
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Music, Play, Song)

"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
(Related: Music, Motivation, Reading, Songs, Thinking, Trying, Writing)

"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
(Related: Music, Talk)

"It's kind of not about the quality of the art, as much as this is what I love doing and I'd have a worse time doing anything else. That's kind of as far as I think in terms of philosophy."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Love, Time, Art, Quality, Philosophy)

"I'm quite into listening to music and not doing anything else."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Music, Listening)

"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
(Related: Music, People, Balance, Right)

"But over a period of time It's the melodic things that are in my head all day."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Time, Day)

"I think it should be ambitious and good music does deal with life and art and all these wonderful things."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Art, Life, Music)

"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
(Related: People, Day, Doubt, End, Fate, Guitar, Mind, Now, Right, Songs, Will)

"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
(Related: People, Today)

"Everything I do feels like It's going to end up being in Radiohead."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Being, End)

"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
(Related: Film, Result)

"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
(Related: Reading)

"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
(Related: Work, Feeling, Old, Reason, Work ethic)

"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
(Related: Jazz, Thinking)

"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
(Related: Music, Time, English)