Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and “sixth member” Nigel Godrich
As any successful creative will tell you, the journey to the top is never without its setbacks. The early years are often rife with shitty side hustle gigs, false starts, and failed projects. There’s also plenty of criticism and rejection to contend with — even for artists as talented as producer Nigel Godrich.
It turns out that before becoming “the sixth member” of Radiohead, and working with the likes of Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, Godrich was turned down for a job at London’s famed Abbey Road Studios in 1990. He posted a picture of his rejection letter on Twitter earlier today:
The son of a BBC sound supervisor, Godrich goes on to say that he’d applied to nearly 100 studio positions in the city during that time in hopes of getting his big break. Though Abbey Road wasn’t it, the opportunity of a lifetime eventually did come knocking some four years later when he was brought on to engineer a pair of songs on Radiohead’s 1994 EP, My Iron Lung. The rest, as we know, is history.