Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood says music should be ‘above political concerns’
Musician and film composer says he wouldn’t be able to work with fellow artists if he made his decisions based on their governments
Jonny Greenwood has responded to the calls to boycott Radiohead’s recent tour in protest of their links with Israel, stating his belief that music should be “above” political issues.
The British rock band performed in Tel Aviv in 2017, something cited by pro-Palestine activists in their protests ahead of Radiohead’s 2025 tour – their first shows in seven years – in Europe and the UK.
Greenwood is also married to an Israeli artist, Sharona Katan, whose nephew served in the Israel Defense Forces and was killed in the Gaza war. Last year, he was due to perform with Israeli singer Dudu Tassa in the UK until the threat of protests led to the shows being cancelled.
“It’s very hard to talk about this,” Greenwood, 54, told The Times, “but 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.”
He added: “The fact is, what defines us as musicians isn’t our nationalities. But that point doesn’t seem to get through.”
Greenwood’s bandmate, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, issued an eight-page statement in May last year on the war in Gaza, in which he branded Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu an “extremist” who “needs to be stopped”.
His comments came after Yorke was heckled during a solo gig in Melbourne about the death toll in Gaza; Yorke left the stage briefly after the incident before returning to play the band’s 1997 song “Karma Police”.
Addressing being heckled in his statement, Yorke said the concert “didn’t really seem like the best moment to discuss the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.
He added that, once the show had ended, he “remained in shock that my supposed silence was somehow being taken as complicity, and I struggled to find an adequate way to respond to this and to carry on with the rest of the shows on the tour”.
In October 2025, Yorke also told The Sunday Times that he would “absolutely not” perform in Israel now, stating: “I wouldn’t want to be 5,000 miles anywhere near the Netanyahu regime”.
“Absolutely not. I wouldn’t want to be 5,000 miles anywhere near the Netanyahu regime, but Jonny (Greenwood) has roots there,” he said. “So I get it.”
In Greenwood’s interview, he said he had “no idea” if Radiohead would be working on a new album anytime soon: “I’m surprised that the tour actually happened and that we all enjoyed it so much. But venues get booked so far in advance. To do another we would have to decide now, and even then it wouldn’t happen for 18 months.”
Greenwood is nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Score at next month’s Academy Awards, for the music he composed for Paul Thomas Anderson’s film One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
The ceremony is being held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday 15 March.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments
Bookmark popover
Removed from bookmarks