Books of the Year 2024 - Number 5

Discover the full list on our blog.

A collection of never-before-seen photographs of RADIOHEAD by their bassist Colin Greenwood, with a ten-thousand-word essay by him about the band that has been his life since they formed at school.

‘For years now, I’ve been taking fugitive snaps of my band, Radiohead. I’ve tried to catch out my friends with my small black Yashica T4 Super. They are so lost in their own moment of performance that they don’t see me with the camera.’ Colin Greenwood

How to Disappear is bassist Colin Greenwood’s stunning portrait of Radiohead in his own photographs. Two decades in the making, he takes us on a journey into the heart of the 21st-century’s most influential band, a maverick collective who have vastly broadened our musical landscape while they dominate and distort it. On stage, backstage, in the rehearsal room, behind the scenes, on tour, at work and at play, Colin’s photographs, and the stories and memories they evoke for him in his accompanying text, form an intimate portrait of the musical and cultural iconoclasts as they travel through ‘our middle years: all the joy and doubt and confidence and uncertainty we would oscillate between’.

Colin Greenwood is from Oxford and has played bass in Radiohead since their formation in 1985. He's also recorded and toured with Tamino, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and has written for publications including the Guardian and the Spectator.