Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood in Brazil Awaiting Mayan Apocalypse?

Posted on Dec 13th 2012 11:40AM by Jason MacNeil
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If the apocalypse is days away, and if Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood is in Brazil, it doesn't mean he's there preparing for the end of the world.

The Daily Mail reports that representatives of the seminal British rock band were forced to deny various Brazilian media suggestions that Greenwood was actually at a rural Brazilian hotel close to Sao Luiz do Paraitinga near the city of Sao Paulo at a "self-sufficient guest house" awaiting Dec. 21, the day on the Mayan calendar known to many as the day the curtain comes down on earth.

But Courtyard management, the band's management group, said Greenwood, 41, isn't awaiting the end of the world and isn't even in Brazil to begin with.

Meanwhile, Eduardo de Oliveira Coelho, the city's tourism minister, told the Folha de Sao Paulo news outlet's website the musician arrived earlier in December and fellow Radiohead band members were slated to join him in the coming days. Coelho also added Greenwood would be providing youth free classes in the city if Dec. 21 came and went without apocalyptic results.

"The reason why he's here is to get away, because hotels like this preserve the privacy of the guests and he does not want publicity," Emmanuel Rengade, owner of the Catucaba hotel, said. Both Coelho and Rengade confirmed that Greenwood was in fact at the hotel and in the country.

Radiohead made no comment on the news regarding Greenwood either on their official site nor via Facebook. The group spent most of 2012 touring behind their 2011 album The King of Limbs. As previously reported, the group endured a tragedy this past summer when their drum technician Scott Johnson died after a stage collapse at Toronto's Downsview Park hours before the band was to perform.

Meanwhile, outside his Radiohead duties Greenwood scored the music to the 2012 Paul Thomas Anderson film The Master starring Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman.