The members of RADIOHEAD have announced they will focus on their solo projects right after their current tour that comes to an end next week in Tel Aviv, Israel. Thom Yorke will create the original score for new motion picture ‘Suspiria’, Jonny Greenwood has plans to dive deeper into his creative solo work, including a score for movies ‘Phantom Thread’ and ‘You Were Never Really Here’, while Ed O’Brien will release a solo record.
The band commented on the upcoming ‘break’:
“We’ll hang up our Radioheads. It’s time for everyone to go off and do their own thing for a bit.”
The infamous Tel Aviv show was harshly criticized by Thurston Moore, Ken Loach, Roger Waters, Maxine Peak, and loads more that have signed the open letter in relation to the band’s show on July 19th. Thom Yorke answered the criticism and called it ‘upsetting’, ‘offensive’, and ‘and extraordinary waste of time’.
“There are people I admire [who have been critical of the concert] like Ken Loach, who I would never dream of telling where to work or what to do or think,” he continued. “The kind of dialogue that they want to engage in is one that’s black or white. I have a problem with that. It’s deeply distressing that they choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public. It’s deeply disrespectful to assume that we’re either being misinformed or that we’re so retarded we can’t make these decisions ourselves. I thought it was patronising in the extreme. It’s offensive and I just can’t understand why going to play a rock show or going to lecture at a university [is a problem to them].
“The university thing is more of a head fuck for me,” Yorke said. “It’s like, really? You can’t go talk to other people who want to learn stuff in another country? Really? The one place where you need to be free to express everything you possibly can. You want to tell these people you can’t do that? And you think that’s gonna help?”
RADIOHEAD continued to battle the boycott, last Friday at the TRNSMT Festival in Glasgow, Scotland where a group of activists raised Palestinian flags and actually caused Thom Yorke to respond and flip the middle finger to the protesters.
Lastly, in other news, the band has announced 2 official guitar songbooks featuring tabulatures and notations for 40+ of their songs. See the covers of both acoustic and electric guitar versions below and go here to grab your copy.
