Jonny Greenwood

Jonny Greenwood was born on 5 November 1971 in Oxford, England. His brother, the Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood, is two years older. Their father served in the British Army as a bomb disposal expert. The Greenwood family has historical ties to the Communist Party of Great Britain and the socialist Fabian Society. When he was a child, Greenwood's family would listen to a small number of cassettes in their car, including Mozart's horn concertos, the musicals Flower Drum Song and My Fair Lady, and cover versions of Simon & Garfunkel songs. When the cassettes were not playing, Greenwood would listen to the noise of the engine and try to recall every detail of the music. He credited his older siblings with exposing him to rock bands such as the Beat and New Order. The first gig Greenwood attended was the Fall on their 1988 Frenz Experiment tour, which he found "overwhelming". The Greenwood brothers attended the private boys' school Abingdon. The Abingdon director of music, Michael Stinton, recalled Jonny as a "charming student" and "committed musician" who would spend as much time in the music department as possible. Greenwood's first instrument was a recorder given to him at age four or five. He played baroque music in recorder groups as a teenager, and continued to play into adulthood. He played the viola in the Thames Vale youth orchestra, which he described as a formative experience: "I'd been in school orchestras and never seen the point. But in Thames Vale I was suddenly with all these 18-year-olds who could actually play in tune. I remember thinking: 'Ah, that's what an orchestra is supposed to sound like!'" Greenwood also spent time programming, experimenting with BASIC and simple machine code to make computer games. According to Greenwood, "The closer I got to the bare bones of the computer, the more exciting I found it."