AceShowbiz - Ed O'Brien recently joined a Zoom call after a quiet evening walk near his Welsh home. “It’s a very dark, still night,” he reflected, describing the fading light over the Welsh hills. Despite the muddy trails typical of the season as winter shifts to spring, he finds solace in the earthy landscape. “There’s healing in this land,” he said with a calm warmth that has long infused his musical contributions.

Ed O'Brien has been a foundational figure in the British band Radiohead for decades, shaping iconic tracks from “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” to “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.” His artistry has earned him a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and recognition on Rolling Stone’s Greatest Guitarists of All Time list, resonating deeply with millions of fans worldwide. Yet, his candidness about his newest project, the solo album Blue Morpho, reveals an intimacy and vulnerability not previously seen.

Blue Morpho, set for release on May 22, is technically O’Brien’s second solo album, following 2020’s Earth, released under the moniker EOB. However, its intensely personal tone and bold creative experimentation give it the feeling of a debut. In an extensive conversation, he shared the album’s creation story for the first time, a journey marked by profound sorrow and healing. Reflecting on the finished work, he said, “It felt honest. At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing for me.”

O’Brien dedicated over four years to Blue Morpho, beginning soon after the April 2020 release of Earth. During the early pandemic months, he and his family stayed comfortably at home in Wales. “It was spring, it was summer, it was novelty,” he recalled. But by the following year, after a second lockdown spent in London, he found himself unmoored. He described this period as both a “midlife crisis” and his “dark night of the soul,” referencing the 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross. The experience was deeply painful, a rare and difficult pause in his otherwise relentless career.

“I went into a deep depression,” O’Brien admitted. “It was the first time in my life that I had to stop. And what I realized was that I’d been keeping busy, like a lot of people do, running from these ghosts of my past, particularly from my childhood.”

As a teenager in 1985, Ed O'Brien co-founded Radiohead with four classmates at a boys’ school in Oxfordshire. By their mid-twenties, they had become one of the UK’s most celebrated bands, sustaining a rapid, nonstop ascent from 1990 or ’91 until 2018, when they paused touring. “It’s all-encompassing and it demands your full attention, and it’s addictive in that way,” he explained. “But it’s not necessarily healthy, because you just keep going, keep going, keep going. And then when you stop, suddenly the ghosts catch up.”

With newfound time on his hands during lockdown, O’Brien confronted memories from his upbringing in late-1970s Britain, a time when emotional expression was often suppressed. “There was no therapy for children. Emotions weren’t talked about,” he said. “My parents split up when I was young, and it was good that they did split up, but no one ever asked my sister and I, ‘How are you?’ No one ever said, ‘Are you OK?’”

Despite his struggles, O’Brien acknowledged his fortunate position as a member of arguably the greatest rock band of the modern era. “I know I’ve won the fucking golden ticket,” he said bluntly. “If you told my 14-year-old self, ‘You’re going to be in this band with these incredible people and you’re going to make this music’—it does not get better than that. So how come I felt like that wasn’t enough?”

A phrase from his childhood report cards, “Could do better,” haunted him. “It’s great when you’re younger because it spurs you on,” he explained. “It’s like a rocket up your arse. ‘OK, we’ve made OK Computer. What are we going to make next?’ Bang, bang. The problem is, when you get into your fifties, it’s fucking unsustainable.”

As months passed, he sank deeper into gloom. “It was really hard,” he said. “Some days you just didn’t want to get out of bed. I thought, ‘Will this be with me forever?’” Medication and traditional therapy didn’t appeal to him. Instead, he found therapy in music. “My therapy was literally locking myself in a room for three hours in the morning whilst the kids were homeschooling and my wife was working,” he said. “I was in such a dark place, but I knew that I had to get up each day, get out of bed, and do this thing.”

Another crucial element in his recovery was reconnecting with nature, which he described as “a deep spiritual awakening” rooted in the ancient landscapes of Wales. “I’d take our dog, Ziggy, and we’d go off and walk,” he said. “There are a lot of places of spiritual significance in this land, whether it’s an old monastery or abbey, or a mountain or a waterfall. I was drawn to these places, and through that, I healed.”

Those Welsh hills echoed with the influences of Led Zeppelin and The Lord of the Rings, he noted. “It’s uncanny,” he said. “When you come to this land, you can hear ‘Misty Mountain Hop.’ You can hear ‘Stairway.’” Interestingly, Robert Plant once lived on the other side of the nearest mountain, and J.R.R. Tolkien vacationed in the region. He also thought about Kate Bush. Inviting his friend Luke Mullen, a keyboardist, to join him in his music room, they would light a fire and improvise: “Me on guitar, him on Rhodes. We’d just play and jam.”

Gradually, O’Brien felt lighter and more engaged. “The most challenging bit, and the bit that I find fascinating and full of mystery, is the songwriting bit,” he explained. “You get so excited seeing this one little thing you can play on the guitar, you suddenly hear this whole piece.... Music and magic, five letters, they share the same three.”

One of the earliest songs to take shape was “Incantations,” the haunting, slow-building opener on Blue Morpho. “When I was in this dark place, I felt like I was lost in a labyrinth,” he said, evoking the Greek myth that also featured in the artwork for Radiohead’s 2001 album Amnesiac. “It’s like, ‘How the fuck do I get out of here?’ It was a bit like Theseus following Ariadne’s thread. The thread is your gut feeling; it’s small moves because you can’t see ahead of you, and you have to slay the Minotaur on the way. Maybe that’s the ego, this persona and all these fears you have. You have to slay the beast.”

On the funky, groove-driven track “Teachers,” O’Brien aimed to capture the sensations from a psilocybin trip he experienced with close friends in Dartmoor National Park. “Every year, we’ve had three days in the woods and sat around the fire and we’ve done mushrooms,” he said. “I had a very profound experience one night when I left everyone and went walking. The things I saw, it was almost like the veil was removed.”

Over bubbling basslines from Yves Fernandez, O’Brien references the opening lines of Dante’s Inferno: “Midway through life, I’ve just lost my way.” “That was exactly it,” he said. “I did…”

Blue Morpho emerges from this deeply personal and spiritual journey, blending reflection, renewal, and creative exploration. For Ed O’Brien, this album represents not only a new chapter in his solo career but also a healing process that reconnects him with his roots, his music, and his sense of self.