Drone yoga, bowler hats, QI repeats: which Radiohead member are you?

As three of the group explore their solo pursuits and reveal more of their personalities, take our quiz to find if you are a tempestuous Thom or a flirty Phil

Radiohead: an enigma wrapped inside a conundrum concealed within a mystery, hiding behind a bloke dancing like a deranged cockerel in heat. Who are Radiohead, and why? For decades the personalities at play within the band have remained unfathomable. But with recent years featuring a run of solo projects from Jonny Greenwood (2019’s Volume 1: Partita No 2 in D minor and Volume 2: Industry, Water); Ed O’Brien (2019’s single Santa Teresa); Phil Selway (2014’s Weatherhouse); and Colin Greenwood (nothing, actually), we’re beginning to colour in those formless blanks loitering behind Thom Yorke. Finally, we can answer the question that’s been devouring every Guardian reader’s soul since 1997. Which Radiohead solo member are you?

1. As a member of Radiohead, you are famously partial to scratchcards. Finally, one comes in! How do you spend the windfall?

a) Whack it all behind the bar at a celebratory recital of your latest masterwork Three Matching Moneybags for piano and orchestra.
b) More flotation tanks.
c) One-on-one career-development training from Phil Collins.
d) Have yourself uploaded to the mainframe of the next probe heading for the Saturnian moon of Titan. They’ll finally “get” you there.
e) Um, invest it wisely in renewable energy? To be honest, no one knows the first thing about you.

2. Your weekly clowning class is cancelled due to all the sides you split last week, leaving you in an event-filled community centre with a couple of hours to kill. Which class do you take?

a) An amateur recorder group – hope we’re learning a Telemann sonata!
b) Drone yoga.
c) Assertion therapy.
d) Voodoo Trevor’s Shake Out Your Demons primal energy dance lessons.
e) Probably something charitable, you look the type.

3. The darts has finished early. What do you watch next?

a) Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan.
b) A 10-hour YouTube compilation of the most surreal bits from In the Night Garden, then just close your eyes and have a Netflix-and-chill of the mind.
c) Inside Llewyn Davis. Chokes you up every time.
d) Inception, watched on a laptop that contracted the Storm Worm virus in 2006.
e) QI repeats on Dave like the rest of us, at a guess.

4. You are invited on to Celebrity Storage Hunters as the team partner of Rebekah Vardy. What are you most hoping to vulture-pick from the last tawdry possessions of the bankrupt and destitute?

a) An original 1928 ondes martenot you can shift on to Philip Glass for a tasty profit.
b) The world’s largest collection of magic-eye pictures.
c) A Wilco songbook.
d) A prototype Ultramagnetic Spotify Disruptor.
e) It doesn’t matter, you’ll be standing quietly at the back letting Giles and Mary from Gogglebox get on with it.

5. At the premiere of Fast & Furious 18, you run into a Marvel Studios exec who is so desperate to make use of your magnetic screen presence with a cameo in an Avengers film that they offer you the opportunity to invent your own character. What’s your superhero and special power?

a) Vibrato; exudes pristine acoustics.
b) Dr Zoneout; his snore is hypnotic.
c) The Incredible Blunt; you wouldn’t like him when he’s bored.
d) Erratic Man; able to glitch between dimensions at will.
e) Innocuoso; invisibility.

6. Renowned for your witty and ribald public speaking, you are asked by close friend Dapper Laughs to be his best man. As usual you organise the stag do for Magaluf, but the personalised mankinis for you, Terry, Calvin and Pervy Dave fail to arrive. What’s your last-minute replacement?

a) Costumes from Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. He owes you a favour.
b) Hooded robes left over from your last ominous procession.
c) The Bends T-shirts all round. Remember choruses?
d) Video-mapped body stockings displaying fractal images of the impulses in the brain that dictate marital misery. Bowler hats.
e) Whatever draws the least possible attention.

Answers

Mostly As You are classical nut and film score composer Jonny Greenwood. Bravo, maestro!
Mostly Bs You are swarthy, somnambulant dreamboat Ed O’Brien. Judging by the first track to be released from your solo album, you could ambient for England.
Mostly C You are aspiring neo-folk solo artist Philip Selway. You’d like your life to have more tunes in it, but avoid telling your friends.
Mostly Ds You are the man machine Thom Yorke 2.0. Whenever you try to warn people about the encroaching technological apocalypse, they tell you it sounds like their Skype is crashing.
Mostly Es You are Colin Greenwood. Nope, us neither.

Contributor

Mark Beaumont

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Radiohead: Kid A Mnesia review – two classic albums, plus surprises
The band’s 20th-anniversary reissue of Kid A and Amnesiac along with unreleased material makes for fascinating listening

Phil Mongredien

07, Nov, 2021 @3:00 PM

Article image
'The hardest member of Radiohead? Ed's probably tasty' – Jonny Greenwood answers readers' questions
Fresh from an Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread and with Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here in cinemas, the film composer and Radiohead guitarist discusses his two-pronged career

Guardian film

14, Mar, 2018 @4:12 PM

Article image
The Smile: A Light for Attracting Attention review – Radiohead spinoff offers no alarms, some surprises
Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood team with Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner for a debut that may not be head-spinningly different, but is still exceptional

Alexis Petridis

12, May, 2022 @10:30 AM

Article image
The Smile: Wall of Eyes review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week
Despite all the lyrical disquiet, there is a lovely sense of ease to the Smile’s second album – and some of the best music Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have put their names to in at least a decade

Alexis Petridis

18, Jan, 2024 @2:30 PM

Article image
Watching Radiohead on 9/11, 15 years apart
I saw Radiohead play in Berlin on the day the World Trade Center was attacked. On Sunday they were back in the city – and so was I

Damian Fowler

13, Sep, 2016 @3:23 PM

Article image
Quiz: can you identify these Radiohead music videos?

From surreal animations to Thom Yorke's jittering choreography, how well do you know Radiohead's videos?

Tshepo Mokoena

09, Oct, 2014 @1:59 PM

Article image
New Radiohead album currently underway, confirms Thom Yorke
Frontman says that the band are laying down overdubs in the studio and that he and long-time collaborator Stanley Donwood have going through archive images and words

Guardian music

25, Sep, 2014 @9:44 AM

Article image
Unreleased Radiohead track Spooks to appear in Inherent Vice
Jonny Greenwood scores Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, and has reportedly slipped in an instrumental Radiohead track which dates back to 2006

Guardian music

06, Oct, 2014 @8:05 AM

Article image
The Smile review – Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood give prog rock tendencies full rein
The Radiohead duo, joined by Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, pair memorable dynamics with typically uneasy lyrics in an intriguing if meandering performance

Alexis Petridis

30, Jan, 2022 @4:00 PM

Article image
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood form new project, the Smile
Group, which also includes Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, will make their debut at Live at Worthy Farm, filmed on the Glastonbury festival site

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

22, May, 2021 @11:08 AM