Radiohead bassist: Concert cancellations ‘curtail free speech’
Colin Greenwood, whose brother Jonny’s gigs with an Israeli musician were aborted over security fears, laments the loss of chances to ‘forge bonds’ with people
Radiohead’s bassist has described the cancellation of his brother’s concerts in Britain with an Israeli musician as a “curtailment of free speech”.
Colin Greenwood said the aborting of the shows featuring the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and his longtime Israeli-born collaborator Dudu Tassa had made him “very sad”.
The bassist told the Hay Festival that the decision by venues in Bristol and London to cancel the planned concerts this month over purported security fears had prevented the chance to “forge bonds” between people.
Radiohead, one of the most influential and acclaimed bands of the past 30 years, have been thrust to the centre of the debates over whether artists should be taking a stand against Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Last week, the band’s singer, Thom Yorke, broke his silence on the subject after being criticised in some quarters for not condemning the violence.
Yorke said Radiohead had played concerts in Israel for over 20 years “through a succession of governments” as well as in the United States, adding that they did not endorse the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, any more than President Trump.
Yorke, who walked off stage at a concert in Australia last year after being heckled by a protester shouting about “Israeli genocide of Gaza”, said last week that he “remained in shock that my supposed silence was somehow being taken as complicity”.
He said in a lengthy statement that his music was evidence that he “could not possibly support any form of extremism or dehumanisation of others” adding that “Netanyahu and his crew of extremists are totally out of control and need to be stopped”.
Greenwood told the Hay Festival, where he was speaking about his book, How to Disappear — A Photographic Portrait of Radiohead, that the band created with their music “a kind of empathy and share that empathy with the audience … that matters to me and that is what I take forward with music”.
He said the band’s members always tried to forge bonds between people with music and art.
Greenwood said his brother and Tassa had “made a very beautiful record of Arab love songs from Syria, Jordan, Kuwait”.
“He worked with Arab and Israeli artists, and it is very beautiful.”
He added that he had been “very sad” at the decision of Bristol Beacon’s Lantern Hall and London’s Hackney Church to cancel his brother’s planned gigs.
“I think it is a real shame. I think that it is a curtailment of free speech and the possibilities of forging bonds between people with music and art,” he added.
After the confirmation last month that the concerts were cancelled, Jonny Greenwood said, “forcing musicians not to perform and denying people who want to hear them an opportunity to do so is self-evidently a method of censorship and silencing”.
He added: “We believe art exists above and beyond politics; that art that seeks to establish the common identity of musicians across borders in the Middle East should be encouraged, not decried; and that artists should be free to express themselves regardless of their citizenship or their religion — and certainly regardless of the decisions made by their governments.”
There have been suggestions that the band, which last released new music in 2016 and last toured in 2018, have been divided over the situation in the Middle East. The guitarist Ed O’Brien has been calling for a ceasefire for over a year, as well as the release of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Greenwood told the festival that he was sure all the members “would love to do something”.
“We are all talking to each other,” he said when asked if new music could be expected. “But we are just trying to finish tying the bows on [individual projects] that got spread out with Covid and things.
“Fingers crossed that we will make a plan to do what I talked about earlier — serving songs to the fans that love our music.”