Radiohead's Ed O'Brien has expanded on comments made by Thom Yorke recently about the band's split from EMI. As you might remember, Guy Hands suggested the deal negotiations broke down because the band wanted too much money. However, the band say this was not the case and point to Guy Hands' actions during and after the negotiations and the recently-released 'Greatest Hits' album as fuelling their ongoing anger at the label.
Speaking to Glasgow's Metro newspaper, O'Brien said: "EMI have made more than £40million from us and we still don't own that material. We weren't asking for money. Universal would have given us five times the amount. We knew that. But we weren't after the money. The thing we wanted from EMI was to retain some kind of control over our copyright and back catalogue, but EMI's chairman Guy Hands wasn't interested. Because that's what he's after - he knows that's the golden goose. If he wants to talk about any of that stuff he should talk to us face-to-face".
On the 'Greatest Hits' album, which plunders that back catalogue, he said: "The packaging is awful. There are three really bad photos. They're not going to make any money from it because they'll spend so much on TV advertising. Another thing is that greatest hits don't sell in America. I don't understand why they're doing it. And you know what it's done? It's ensured that we never, ever, ever re-sign to EMI while there's a Guy Hands involvement. Who knows what could happen in the future. We could say, 'EMI is great, we miss it and we could go back there'. But this has ensured we'll never re-sign while he's involved".
Hands previously replied to Thom Yorke's comments on the subject, saying: "We definitely are not a bull in a china shop, we do know what we are doing and we know that what we are doing is trying to build a business that gets back to its former glory, that is world class and to do that we are clearly going to upset a few people but we are not in a popularity contest".
O'Brien also spoke about Radiohead's decision not to play this year's Glastonbury Festival, despite it falling inside their UK touring schedule. He said: "Thom's spoken to Michael Eavis. The reason we didn't do it was because we did it on the 'Hail To The Thief' tour. We felt it wasn't appropriate to do it this year because we didn't want to be the Glastonbury house band. It's such a special gig, it's almost like you have to wait your turn".