Colin Greenwood
Template:Short description Template:For Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox musical artist
Colin Charles Greenwood (born 26 June 1969) is an English bassist and a member of the rock band Radiohead. Along with bass guitar, Greenwood plays upright bass and electronic instruments.
With his younger brother, the guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Colin attended Abingdon School in Abingdon, England, where they formed Radiohead. Radiohead have achieved acclaim and have sold more than 30 million albums. Greenwood was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Radiohead in 2019.
Greenwood has contributed to solo projects by the other members of Radiohead, and has collaborated with musicians including Tamino, Gaz Coombes, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. In 2024, he published a book of his photographs of Radiohead.
Early life
Colin Greenwood is the older brother of the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.<ref name="JABBA">Template:Cite news</ref> Their father served in the British Army as a bomb disposal expert.<ref name="Ross-2001">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Greenwood family has historical ties to the British Communist Party and the socialist Fabian Society.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Greenwood and his family lived in Germany during his youth.<ref name="ESHUN">Template:Cite news</ref>
As a teenager, Greenwood read historical works such as The Communist Manifesto and Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists and fiction by American writers including Richard Ford and John Cheever. He enjoyed films by Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jarman and Michelangelo Antonioni.<ref name="Graham-2024">Template:Cite web</ref> He credited his older sister, Susan, with introducing him and Jonny to "miserable" bands such as the Fall, Magazine and Joy Division. He said: "We were ostracised at school because everyone else was into Iron Maiden."<ref name="HENDRICKSON">Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Greenwood and his brother attended Abingdon School, a private school for boys in Oxfordshire. When he was 12, he met the future Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke.<ref name="KELLY">Template:Cite news</ref> Their future bandmates Ed O'Brien, whom Greenwood met during a school production of the opera Trial by Jury, and Philip Selway were also pupils.<ref name="MYERS">Template:Cite news</ref> Greenwood bought his first guitar when he was 15.<ref name="CLARK">Template:Cite news</ref> He and Yorke had classical guitar lessons with the Abingdon music teacher, Terence Gilmore-James, who introduced them to jazz, film scores, postwar avant-garde music, and 20th-century classical music.<ref name="Ross-2001" />
Greenwood said he began playing bass out of necessity, as O'Brien already played guitar.<ref name="Graham-2024" /> He taught himself by playing along to New Order, Joy Division and Otis Redding.<ref name="ESHUN" /> He said the band members picked their instruments "because we wanted to play music together, rather than just because we wanted to play that particular instrument. So it was more of a collective angle, and if you could contribute by having someone else play your instrument, then that was really cool."<ref name="KELLY" />
Greenwood read English at Peterhouse, Cambridge, between 1987 and 1990, and read modern American literature including Cheever, Raymond Carver and other postwar American writers.<ref name="KENT">Template:Cite news</ref> While at Peterhouse, he worked as an events and entertainments officer.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> After graduating, he took a job as a sales assistant at the record shop Our Price in Oxford.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Radiohead
In late 1991, the EMI sales representative Keith Wozencroft visited Our Price and struck up conversation with Greenwood. When Wozencroft mentioned that he was moving to a position as an A&R scout at the EMI subsidiary Parlophone, Greenwood gave him a copy of On a Friday's latest demo.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> File:Radiohead Matters.ogg On a Friday signed a six-album recording contract with EMI and changed their name to Radiohead.<ref name="ROSS">Template:Cite magazine</ref> By 2011, Radiohead had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.<ref name="BBC Worldwide takes exclusive 20112">Template:Cite web</ref> They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2019.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> On being in a band with his brother, Jonny, Colin said: "Beyond the normal brotherly thing, I respect him as a person and a musician."<ref name="CLARK" />
Greenwood mostly plays fingerstyle, and said he was unskilled with plectrums.<ref name="D'Auria-2019">Template:Cite web</ref> He mainly uses Fender basses and Ampeg and Ashdown amplifiers.<ref name="D'Auria-2019" /> He also plays double bass on tracks such as "Pyramid Song" and "You and Whose Army".<ref name="D'Auria-2019" /> While his main role is bass, Greenwood said each Radiohead member contributed to song development.<ref name="MACD">Template:Cite news</ref> He said he did not think of himself as a bass player and was "just in a band with other people".<ref name="KELLY" /> Among his influences are Booker T and the MGs, Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield, Peter Hook and J Dilla.<ref name="ESHUN" /><ref name="D'Auria-2019" />
In 2008, Mojo wrote that Greenwood and Selway were "surely the most inventive rhythm section working close to the rock mainstream".<ref name="PAYTRESS">Template:Cite news</ref> In 2014, NME readers voted Greenwood one of the 40 best bassists of all time.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Other work
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In 1997, Greenwood participated in a campaign to encourage students from state schools to apply for his alma mater, Cambridge University.<ref name="CAMBRIDGE">Template:Cite news</ref> In 2004, Greenwood participated on a panel in the annual sixth-form conference run by Radley College in collaboration with School of St Helen and St Katharine, speaking about digital rights management.<ref name="SMITH2">Template:Cite news</ref>
Greenwood contributed bass to two soundtracks by his brother Jonny, Bodysong (2003) and Inherent Vice,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and on his score for the 2008 film Woodpecker.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He played bass on the albums Amir (2018) and Sahar (2022) by the Belgian-Egyptian singer Tamino,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the album World's Strongest Man (2018) by Gaz Coombes,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and on "Brasil" from Earth (2020), the debut solo album by the Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He contributed beat programming to Yorke's song "Hearing Damage" from the soundtrack to The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and on "Guess Again!" from Yorke's album Tomorrow's Modern Boxes (2014).<ref>Tomorrow's Modern Boxes vinyl packaging</ref> In 2013, he soundtracked a Dries van Noten runway show, performing solo bass guitar.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2018, he reviewed Michael Palin's book Erebus: The Story of a Ship for the Spectator.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In late 2022, Greenwood toured Australia as part of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis's band. He appeared on their 2023 live album Australian Carnage.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Greenwood joined Cave's North American tour in September 2023,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and contributed bass to the 2024 album Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> He joined Cave and the Bad Seeds on their 2024 tour after their bassist, Martyn P. Casey, fell ill.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> That October, Greenwood published a book, How to Disappear: A Portrait of Radiohead, comprising his photographs of Radiohead taken between 2003 and 2016.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Personal life
In December 1998, Greenwood married Molly McGrann, an American literary critic and novelist.<ref name="SCOPE">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="SPIN">Template:Cite news</ref> They have three sons and live in Oxford.<ref name="GREENWOOD">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Mail&Guardian">Template:Cite news</ref> Greenwood enjoys writers such as Thomas Pynchon, V.S. Naipaul and Delmore Schwartz.<ref name="Kim">Template:Cite magazine</ref> In 2003, he discussed his favourite photographs in the Victoria and Albert Museum, choosing images by photographers including Frederick Sommer and Harold Edgerton.<ref name="COGAPP">Template:Cite news</ref> In 2014, Greenwood completed a triathlon to raise funds for cancer research.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>