“Ed said he’d had enough and was off!"

Radiohead manager Brian Message was in Dublin last week for the launch of the Music Managers Forum Ireland. Talking to Hot Press' Stuart Clark as part of the showpiece panel discussion, he had this to say about In Rainbows' troubled gestation, and how they decided to go the 'pay what you think it's worth' route.

“Having come out of contract (with EMI), the band were lost for about two years and scrambling around in the wilderness – ‘We’ve a complete choice here, Fuck, that’s pretty scary!’ In December 2006 myself and two of my partners actually tried to convince the band to split up because it had become so dark. They had the songs, but trying to get the sound they wanted was a nightmare. It became so black. Five wives, eleven kids – you’ve nothing to prove, let’s just call it a day. One of them even said they were going to leave – Ed said he’d had enough and was off. They realised they didn’t have to be in Radiohead, they could go and do their own thing.
“Through that whole process, some sort of cathartic thing kicked off. That January/February 2007, the band nailed the sound of what they were trying to do. Once that had happened, they became very courageous with regards as to what to do next. The more we got into this whole thing of, ‘How can we do this ourselves direct to fans and have nobody in the middle?’, the more interesting it became. ‘Wow, we can deliver an album to 174 countries and it’s going to cost us less than three cents a unit. We can do this!’”

We'll have more about the Music Managers Forum Ireland launch in our new issue, out on Thursday May 7.