1. Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood was born on 5 November 1971 and is an English musician.
94 Facts About Jonny Greenwood
1. 2.
Jonny Greenwood is the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the rock band Radiohead, and has composed numerous film scores.
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Jonny Greenwood has been named one of the greatest guitarists by numerous publications, including Rolling Stone.
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Jonny Greenwood was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Radiohead in 2019.
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Jonny Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist and a prominent player of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument.
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Jonny Greenwood uses electronic techniques such as programming, sampling and looping, and writes music software.
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Jonny Greenwood described his role in Radiohead as an arranger, helping transform Thom Yorke's demos into finished songs.
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The only classically trained member of Radiohead, Jonny Greenwood has composed for orchestras including the London Contemporary Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and his arrangements feature on Radiohead records.
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Jonny Greenwood released his first solo work, the soundtrack for the film Bodysong, in 2003.
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Jonny Greenwood was nominated again for his score for The Power of the Dog, directed by Jane Campion.
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Jonny Greenwood scored the Lynne Ramsay films We Need to Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here.
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Jonny Greenwood has collaborated with Middle Eastern musicians including the Israeli songwriters Shye Ben Tzur and Dudu Tassa.
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In 2021, Jonny Greenwood debuted a new band, the Smile, with Yorke and the drummer Tom Skinner.
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Jonny Greenwood was born on 5 November 1971 in Oxford, England.
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The Jonny Greenwood family has historical ties to the Communist Party of Great Britain and the socialist Fabian Society.
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Jonny Greenwood credited his older siblings with exposing him to rock bands such as the Beat and New Order.
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The first gig Jonny Greenwood attended was the Fall on their 1988 Frenz Experiment tour, which he found "overwhelming".
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Jonny Greenwood's first instrument was a recorder given to him at age four or five.
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Jonny Greenwood played baroque music in recorder groups as a teenager, and continued to play into adulthood.
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At Abingdon, the Jonny Greenwood brothers formed a band, On a Friday, with the singer Thom Yorke, the guitarist Ed O'Brien and the drummer Philip Selway.
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Jonny Greenwood was previously in another band, Illiterate Hands, with Matt Hawksworth, Simon Newton, Ben Kendrick, Nigel Powell and Yorke's brother, Andy.
22.
Jonny Greenwood initially played harmonica and keyboards for On a Friday.
23.
Jonny Greenwood played harmonica on the 1992 Blind Mr Jones single "Crazy Jazz".
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Jonny Greenwood enrolled at Oxford Brookes University to study psychology and music, but left after his first term after On a Friday signed a record contract deal with EMI.
25.
For "Climbing up the Walls", Jonny Greenwood wrote a part for 16 stringed instruments playing quarter tones apart, inspired by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
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Jonny Greenwood played harmonica on "Platform Blues" and "Billie" on Pavement's final album, Terror Twilight.
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Jonny Greenwood employed a modular synthesiser to build the drum machine rhythm of "Idioteque", and played ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, on several tracks.
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For "How to Disappear Completely", Jonny Greenwood composed a string section by multitracking his ondes Martenot playing.
29.
Jonny Greenwood arranged strings for the Amnesiac songs "Pyramid Song" and "Dollars and Cents".
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For Radiohead's sixth album, Hail to the Thief, Jonny Greenwood began using the music programming language Max to sample and manipulate the band's playing.
31.
In 2003, Jonny Greenwood released his first solo work, the soundtrack for the documentary film Bodysong.
32.
In 2005, Jonny Greenwood curated a concert as part of the Ether festival in London at with the London Sinfonietta.
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In May 2004, Jonny Greenwood was appointed composer-in-residence to the BBC Concert Orchestra.
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Jonny Greenwood wrote the piece by recording individual tones on viola, then manipulating and overdubbing them in Pro Tools.
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For "Popcorn Supherhet Receiver", Jonny Greenwood was named Composer of the Year by BBC Radio 3.
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Jonny Greenwood contributed piano to "The Eraser" from Yorke's debut solo album, The Eraser.
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Jonny Greenwood composed the score for the 2007 film There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
38.
Greenwood curated a compilation album of reggae tracks, Jonny Greenwood Is the Controller, released by Trojan Records in March 2007.
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In February 2010, Jonny Greenwood debuted a new composition, "Doghouse", at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios.
40.
Jonny Greenwood wrote it in hotels and dressing rooms while on tour with Radiohead.
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Jonny Greenwood expanded "Doghouse" into the score for the Japanese film Norwegian Wood, released later that year.
42.
That year, Jonny Greenwood scored We Need to Talk About Kevin, directed by Lynne Ramsay, using instruments including a wire-strung harp.
43.
In 2012, Jonny Greenwood composed the score for Anderson's film The Master.
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Jonny Greenwood composed the soundtrack for the Anderson film Inherent Vice.
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In 2014, Jonny Greenwood performed with the London Contemporary Orchestra, performing selections from his soundtracks alongside new compositions.
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Jonny Greenwood said he would play a "supportive" rather than "solistic" role.
47.
Jonny Greenwood insisted they hire only musicians from Rajasthan and only use string instruments native to the region.
48.
Ben Tzur wrote the songs, with Jonny Greenwood contributing guitar, bass, keyboards, ondes Martenot and programming.
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Whereas western music is based on harmonies and chord progressions, Jonny Greenwood used North Indian ragas.
50.
Jonny Greenwood contributed string orchestration to Frank Ocean's 2016 albums Endless and Blonde.
51.
Radiohead's ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool, was released in May 2016, featuring strings and choral vocals arranged by Jonny Greenwood and performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra.
52.
Jonny Greenwood wrote the score for Anderson's 2017 film Phantom Thread.
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Jonny Greenwood reunited with Ramsay to score her film You Were Never Really Here, released in 2017.
54.
That August, Yorke and Jonny Greenwood performed a benefit concert in the Marche, Italy, to help restoration efforts following the August 2016 Central Italy earthquake.
55.
At the 2019 BBC Proms in London, Jonny Greenwood debuted his composition "Horror Vacui" for solo violin and 68 string instruments.
56.
Jonny Greenwood was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Radiohead in March 2019.
57.
In 2024, Jonny Greenwood said he planned to revive Octatonic with a release from the cellist Oliver Coates.
58.
Jonny Greenwood contributed cues to Anderson's 2021 film Licorice Pizza.
59.
In 2021, Jonny Greenwood debuted a new band, the Smile, with Yorke and the jazz drummer Tom Skinner.
60.
Jonny Greenwood said the project was a way for him and Yorke to work together during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
61.
Jonny Greenwood composed and conducted strings for the Pretenders song "I Think About You Daily", released in June 2023.
62.
Jonny Greenwood said he and Tassa had "tried to imagine what Kraftwerk would have done if they'd been in Cairo in the 1970s".
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Jonny Greenwood described the project as a group of Middle Eastern musicians "working together across borders", and made no mention of Israel's war efforts.
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Jonny Greenwood scored his sixth film for Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another, due for release in September 2025.
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Jonny Greenwood said he dislikes the reputation of guitars as something to be "admired or worshipped", and instead sees them as a tool like a typewriter or a vacuum cleaner.
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Jonny Greenwood has long used a Fender Telecaster Plus, a model of Telecaster with Lace Sensor pickups.
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On softer tracks, such as "Street Spirit " and "Pyramid Song", Jonny Greenwood plays a Fender Starcaster, which he sometimes plays with a cello bow.
68.
For distorted tones on many 1990s Radiohead songs, Jonny Greenwood uses the Marshall ShredMaster.
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Jonny Greenwood has used a Roland RE-201 Space Echo unit on several albums.
70.
On "Identikit" and several Smile songs, Jonny Greenwood uses a delay effect to create "angular" synchronised repeats.
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Jonny Greenwood said that "treating the delay as [the guitar's] equal opened up lots of directions".
72.
Jonny Greenwood is a prominent player of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument played by moving a ring along a wire, creating sounds similar to a theremin.
73.
Jonny Greenwood became interested in the ondes Martenot at the age of 15 after hearing Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony.
74.
Jonny Greenwood plays instruments including piano, viola, cello, glockenspiel, harmonica, recorder, organ, banjo and harp.
75.
Jonny Greenwood said he enjoyed "struggling with instruments I can't really play", and that he enjoyed playing glockenspiel with Radiohead as much as he did guitar.
76.
Jonny Greenwood created the rhythm for "Idioteque" with a modular synthesiser and sampled the song's four-chord synthesiser phrase from "mild und leise", a computer music piece by Paul Lansky.
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Jonny Greenwood uses a Kaoss Pad to manipulate Yorke's vocals during performances of the Kid A song "Everything in Its Right Place".
78.
In 2014, Jonny Greenwood wrote of his fascination with Indian instruments, particularly the tanpura, which he felt created uniquely complex "walls" of sounds.
79.
Jonny Greenwood uses a "home-made sound machine" comprising small hammers striking objects including yoghurt cartons, tubs, bells, and tambourines.
80.
Jonny Greenwood has used found sounds, using a television and a transistor radio on "Climbing Up the Walls" and "The National Anthem".
81.
At the suggestion of Radiohead's producer, Nigel Godrich, Jonny Greenwood began using the music programming language Max.
82.
Jonny Greenwood found it liberating to abandon existing notions of audio effects and create his own from scratch, thinking "in terms of sound and maths".
83.
Jonny Greenwood used Max to write sampling software used to create Radiohead's eighth album, The King of Limbs.
84.
Jonny Greenwood said the guitarist that had most influenced him was John McGeoch of Magazine, whose songwriting "informs so much of what [Radiohead] do".
85.
Jonny Greenwood declined an offer to fill in for McGeoch, who died in 2004, during Magazine's 2009 reunion tour.
86.
Jonny Greenwood first heard Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony at the age of 15 and became "round-the-bend-obsessed with it".
87.
Jonny Greenwood is an admirer of the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, and cited a concert of Penderecki's music in the early 90s as a "conversion experience".
88.
Jonny Greenwood has performed Reich's 1987 guitar composition Electric Counterpoint and recorded a version for Reich's 2014 album Radio Rewrite.
89.
Jonny Greenwood cited the jazz musician Alice Coltrane as an influence.
90.
Jonny Greenwood was exposed to Middle Eastern music through his wife's family.
91.
Jonny Greenwood said he particularly admired the textures and complexity of the rhythms in songs such as those by Abdel Halim Hafez, which he tried to emulate.
92.
Jonny Greenwood said he enjoyed their rhythmic ambiguity, when it is difficult to tell where the first beat in a bar is.
93.
Jonny Greenwood is married to the Israeli visual artist Sharona Katan, whom he met in 1993 when Radiohead performed in Israel.
94.
Jonny Greenwood's work, credited as Shin Katan, appears on the covers of Junun and several of Greenwood's soundtracks.