What I Play My Kids: Radiohead's Ed O'Brien

For Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien, having children was an incendiary experience. 

“I call it the love bomb,” O’Brien says from his home in Wales. “It's like a love bomb going off in your life, everything changes.”

It’s no surprise then that since the birth of his son Salvador in January 2004, O’Brien has taken any opportunity away from his day-job in the world’s most successful art rock band to be with his family, which has since expanded to include his daughter Oona. Even uprooting the family to a remote part of Brazil in 2011 “to have an adventure.”  

The echoes of that sojourn and the consequent years with his children form the basis of much of O’Brien’s first solo album, Earth. Under the moniker EOB, the frontman offers a blissful union of Bossa nova, Welsh folk and UK post-punk psychedelia that confirms his place not only as the most “fun” member of Radiohead, but also its most outspoken on the role of family in the creative process.

O’Brien recently spoke with First Verses’ Jon Dekel about rediscovering music through his children, Brazilian road trip mixtapes, and lullaby renditions of Radiohead.  

How did having children change your creative perspective? 

It's been the greatest change. There's a huge amount of biology and nurture that kicks in: these little beings arrive and that your primary role as a human becomes wanting to look after them, watch them grow and nurture them. But also, what I found, and I think a lot of people find, is that it's also been the greatest challenge. I think I've learned more off my children than they've learned off me in many ways because you learn so much about yourself. On a very reductionist level, the sleep deprivation you experience, that's a form of torture in some places. And that will reveal all of your and your partner's idiosyncrasies -- all your good traits and all your negative traits. It’s such an emotional, fun and beautiful time, but at times really challenging. It helped me to sort my shit out. In looking at myself and going, ‘I need to sort this out within myself because, you know, this is not helping my kids grow up to be sentient, empathetic, loving, responsible and respectful human beings.’ So yes, it's massive and it should be massive. I think that the beauty of it is if you let it come into your art; come into your creativity. My album is full of my kids and my family. I'm very thankful for being able to be a father and to have this experience.

Is there an example on the album that immediately comes to mind or is an overall feeling?

It's in there as a general feeling. But there's also for instance, the song “Deep Days.” The genesis for that song comes from a book that I was reading my children: the Wind on Fire trilogy by a writer called William Nicholson. One of the joys about parenting is reading books with your kids before they go to sleep. It's just the most wonderful moment. And we're so lucky because there's so many great children's books that can also be enjoyed by adults. And this is one of them. Essentially, it's a story about a family. There's a fantastical fantasy element to it, but they’re essentially refugees, and [the trilogy is about] their journey and their commitment. I found that incredibly moving, and the lyrics of the chorus: Where you go, I go, where you stay, I stay, where you sleep, I sleep, when you rise, I rise, that's taken that's taken directly from the book, with the permission of William Nicholson who was amazing about it. That feeling of family, I really connected with that. I'm not a refugee, obviously, but in Europe there's been a massive refugee crisis and, in my writing, I was trying to get to that point: what does it feel like? What are the things you feel? You hold on to your family: We are the people on the edge of the night, holding to light… To me, that really resonated for whatever reason, and that's what I wanted to get into the music, that deep love and sense of community.

The album is produced by Flood [ U2, New Order, Sigur Ros]. I understand children were also involved there. 

Indeed, our children go to the same school. This all grew out of the school drop off, [Flood] dropping his son off, me dropping off my daughter.. I think the first words I ever said to him was, ‘I love Holy Fire by Foals! I think you've done a great job on that, cracking album.’ And that's when it all started. So yeah, again, the kids are central to all of this. Friendship at the school gates becomes a working musical friendship and a spiritual friendship, all of that.

Your children are now teenagers. Have they turned you on to any music? 

What I've loved about [my children’s listening habits] is discovering or rediscovering music because they don't have any kind of taste filters. They're not going ‘I should listen to the latest Grime release.’ When they’re younger, they're going, ‘Oh, I love this David Bowie song. And then I love this Beatles song. And then I really love that song from the Jungle Book and I love this Abba song.’ And what I've loved about is hearing these songs through their ears. For me, it's been a kind of reintroduction or reevaluation of music and the joys of great pop music. Things that I thought I'd left long behind. I'm riding this sonic highway and I'm trying to find new stuff, which I still am, but it reconnected me with this amazing pop music. It's been massive.

I hear quite a bit of bossa nova alongside references I would imagine coming from you such as The Smiths, U2 and Primal Scream. Did you come up with that mix in Brazil? 

I wasn’t really listening to the Smiths or U2 in Brazil. Primal Scream, well obviously I love them. But mostly there was a lot of Brazilian music like Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso… all the greats. There's an album that Chico Buarque did with Ennio Morricone that I loved. That was a record that I really relate to. 

We did a lot of family compilations on the iPod for long car journeys. Brazil’s a big country with long drives, like Canada. 

What was on your mix? 

Tame Impala’s “Elephant” had just come out, there was a bit of Mos Def, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. There was a great track called “Brazil” by a musician from Norfolk, which became a real theme of ours. There was a Four Tet remix of an xx song. And lots of the Brazilian artists [I mentioned].

We were putting these mixes together for the kids and, yeah, it was grand for us. It was a really musical time, we had some great great car journeys. 

I have a one-and-a-half-year-old and one of my greatest fears is playing my son something that I love, like Radiohead, and him telling me it’s trash. 

That's an inevitability, Jon. You can't fear that. It's coming.

Speaking of, have you listened to the Radiohead lullabies album?

No, who’s done that? 

It’s a compilation series, they turn songs by bands into lullabies for babies. 

That's good. I haven’t heard it, but I can kind of guess which songs might be on there.