Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has addressed the calls to boycott the band’s tour last year, saying that he believes that music and art should exist above politics.
Pro-Palestinian activists, including those in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) highlighted a show Radiohead played in Israel in 2017 and argued that the band’s “complicit silence” during what an independent United Nations inquiry found to be a genocide in Gaza, which Israel has denied, should lead to a boycott.
When asked about the controversy by The Times in a new interview, guitarist Greenwood described it as “very hard to talk about,” explaining: “I think music and art should be above and beyond political concerns. You know I made an album [2023’s ‘Jarak Qaribak’] involving Israeli, Iraqi, Egyptian and Syrian musicians?
“If I’m supposed to stop working with musicians because I dislike their governments then I wouldn’t work with any of them. The fact is, what defines us as musicians isn’t our nationalities. But that point doesn’t seem to get through.”
Greenwood is married to an Israeli artist, Sharona Katan, whose nephew served in the Israeli Defence Forces and was killed while serving two years ago. He also performs with the Israeli singer Dudu Tassa and the pair were due to play in the UK last year until the concerts were pulled due to what they described as “self-evidently a method of censorship”.
During one of his shows with Tassa in Israel in 2024, which came a day after he reportedly participated in protests calling for hostages held in Gaza to be released and new elections to be held, the pair repeatedly called for peace. Tassa said: “There are musicians here, not politicians. Music has always worked wonders, may we know better days and may everyone return safely.”
In 2024, meanwhile, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke clashed with a pro-Palestinian protestor at a solo show in Melbourne. He paused the set after his rendition of Radiohead’s classic track ‘Karma Police’ was interrupted by an audience member, prompting him to say: “Come up and say that. Right here. Come up on the f****** stage and say what you want to say. But don’t stand there like a coward, come here and say it. Come on.”
Last May, he spoke out against what he described as “social media witch-hunts” and addressed the Melbourne incident, saying he “remained in shock that my supposed silence was somehow being taken as complicity.”
@jameskeaneee Thom Yorke Melbourne Show 30th October #radiohead#thomyorke
He added in October that Radiohead would “absolutely not” return to Israel and “wouldn’t want to be 5,000 miles anywhere near the [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu regime,” and that the “witch-hunt” over Radiohead’s stance “wakes me up at night”. Greenwood added, “The left look for traitors, the right for converts and it’s depressing that we are the closest they can get.”
On last year’s tour, which was Radiohead’s first in seven years, the band played 20 concerts across Madrid, Bologna, London, Berlin and Copenhagen, each city getting four shows apiece.
Reviewing the band’s first show at London’s The O2, NME’s Andrew Trendell gave the night a glowing five-star review.
“What a show: a visceral energy, a tasteful spectacle, all delivered with a generosity of spirit, Yorke in full rockstar mode as the band trade places to tend to each corner of the venue,” it read. “For a band once embarrassed by the notion of ‘arena rock’, nobody does it better. A new album and another night like this can’t come soon enough.”
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