Jonny Greenwood was the latest guest on Adam Buxton’s podcast. In conversation at London’s Royal Festival Hall, the Radiohead guitarist and British comedian spoke about the unlikelihood of Radiohead making a retrospective documentary, Greenwood’s childhood Mark E. Smith obsession, and his “slightly nauseating bromance” with Paul Thomas Anderson, whose new film Phantom Thread features a Greenwood score. He ended by performing “House of Woodcock,” a motif in the film. Listen to the conversation here—the performance begins at the 25-minute mark.

Greenwood begins the chat expressing his distaste for documentaries in which talking heads reflect on their distant musical pasts. “We often talk about doing a documentary where we’re pretending to be really angry and bitter with each other,” he says of Radiohead. “It’s something that’s nice to talk about but never do, I think.”

He goes on to say he wanted the Phantom Thread score to be easily playable live, so that cinemas could enlist small local orchestras to perform at screenings. It didn’t work out: “Paul just kept asking for bigger and bigger string section sounds. The romance, the big lush thing, and that’s not gonna fit in the Phoenix.” Of Anderson’s directions, Greenwood went on: “He basically likes to take the piss out of me, and was joking about how unromantic Radiohead is. And [he] said, ‘Come on, you must have some romance in you. Give me more strings.’ And he wanted the music to be really English and really romantic and be written by me, which feels like a big three-way contradiction now I’ve said that.”

Greenwood then hints at the possibility he’ll attend the Oscars. “My wife thinks it’s quite ridiculous,” he says. “But then I realized I was quite pleased with myself at the idea of not going, and I think it’s always good to resist that kind of urge, that sort of smirk. So maybe do the opposite to that impulse.... [But] no one wants to see sweaty version of me, shambling around, looking embarrassed. Amusing Paul, I think, is the main goal. Whatever entertains him.”

On the subject of Mark E. Smith, he says: “His voice was completely the voice of my teenage years. More than any other singer, easily. When I think of myself in my bedroom, it’s Mark E. Smith talking or ranting through something.” He goes on to describe seeing them on the Kurious Oranj tour, his first ever concert. “I couldn’t take it,” he says. “I remember walking outside of Oxford Polytechnic and standing outside. [I] could still hear all the music and the songs. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what it was. I wasn’t bored, and I wasn’t frightened. It just knocked me over; it was one of those things. And it ended up getting me addicted to what he was doing.”