10 Perfect Band Members That Everyone Forgets About

10. Ed O'Brien - Radiohead

For all of the work that they have put out in the past few years, is it even worth calling Radiohead a rock band anymore? Ever since Kid A, the kind of art rock that Thom Yorke and co. have put out seems to be genre fluid at this point, going from slow ballads with acoustic guitars and then switching to the kind of ambient electronic tracks without a care in the world. The rock might be a bit muted these days, but it will always be a part of their DNA as long as Ed O'Brien is a part of the band.

Though Jonny Greenwood tends to get most of the praise for the guitar prowess in Radiohead, Ed's approach to the instrument is still indebted to the atmospheric guitar playing going on in the '80s from the likes of Andy Summers and Johnny Marr. If you go back and listen to the kind of riffs filtered throughout OK Computer, there's still that one aspect of their sound dipping ever so slightly into rockier territory, especially on songs like Electioneering.

When Radiohead made that transition to ambient music though, Ed never put the guitar down, instead trying to find different ways to make his guitar sound like other instruments, like the different feedback sounds in Treefingers. Even outside of Radiohead, there's still that rockier side of his sound waiting to be unleashed, like when he turned Paul McCartney's newer track Slidin into something a lot heavier than it would have ever been. While Radiohead might not be one of the biggest examples of traditional rock music these days, Ed O'Brien still has that same rock and roll spirit that he had in the beginning.