Dhani Harrison and Nigel Godrich didn’t set out to form a new band together. In fact, neither was particularly looking for more work when the project they call Dragonflies began. Godrich was attempting to move toward retirement, and Harrison was burnt out. But then a friend hang led to their new group and a self-titled album, deepened their friendship, and reinvigorated them.
“This also happened kind of by pure providence,” Harrison says when we meet up in Los Angeles following Dragonflies’ first live shows and album listening event in late September.
Their collaboration came about fortuitously. Harrison had moved back to England in the fall of 2020 after spending 20 years in Los Angeles, where he worked with his band thenewno2, released a solo debut, and composed music for films and television alongside bandmate Paul Hicks. But Harrison was finding the work unfulfilling — spending countless hours on multiple revisions for five-minute compositions to make “music that no one’s going to hear.”
“The time was just adding up,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I was just thinking, this isn’t even the music I want to make. And so, I kind of stopped.” When Harrison turned his creative eye back toward “making the music I wanted to hear… starting with the feelings that I wanted to feel,” the result was his second solo LP, 2023’s Innerstanding. “I did a couple collaboration records with bands and world-music people that I wanted to hear — things like Bulgarian ladies’ choirs or Tuvan throat singers — it was purely selfish to try and enjoy music again, because I burnt out.”
Meanwhile, Godrich — renowned for his work with Radiohead, Beck, and Paul McCartney, along with playing in Atoms for Peace with Thom Yorke and Flea — was looking to step back a bit. “I’m not pursuing a career anymore,” he says. “So anything I’m doing is for pure enjoyment.”
He continues: “Producing is a lot of work, so it’s got to be something that I really get something from. I was more into just, like, making music. There’s no game anymore [in producing]. It used to be a lot more fun to sort of do those kind of things, and now it’s a bit like, ‘Let’s go back to what I was like when I was a teenager, just get together with my friends and make music.’”
He rediscovered that sense of youthful fun again while working on Dragonflies, and it’s evident when we meet at their old L.A. stomping grounds. Harrison and Godrich had just played two shows at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and the pair was still buzzing with how well the concerts went. The renewed excitement they found while making music together was contagious as they traded jovial banter the way old friends do.
Debi Del Grande*
While they met about 15 years ago, crossing paths at shows and around town, this project drew them closer. It started when Harrison was working on what would become Innerstanding in the fall of 2021, alone and isolated in the English countryside in Henley-on-Thames after months of Covid shutdowns. He reached out to Godrich. “It was a time when everyone was trying to reconnect because we’d all been disconnected,” Harrison adds.
Shortly after that, they hung out at Harrison’s studio, and Godrich invited him to his own Brixton studio. “We made something straight away — it was very encouraging,” says Godrich.
While they weren’t necessarily planning anything more Harrison says now that he was hoping that session would ignite the spark that it did. “When my dad was young, it was like, George Harrison would join Eric Clapton with Delaney & Bonnie,” he says. “Or, you’d get these crossovers like Derek and the Dominos, and amazing albums that would just be one-off things … People would be in each other’s bands. Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Pieces would move around, and you’d end up with these amazing collaborations … Suddenly Billy Preston would be in the Beatles or something… So I like it when that stuff happens, and I’ve always felt like that never really existed in my generation.”
He adds: “I didn’t really have my own gang in England. My gang was all in L.A. Nigel has a working hub that I kind of turned up at, and it was just like, ‘Oh, this is like having a clubhouse again. This is a really cool feeling.’”
At Godrich’s studio, they began building songs from tape loops, and it was productive and physical, as Godrich sculpted loops in real time. “It’s really fun actually,” the producer says. “It’s like a very organic way of generating stuff very quickly. It’s very fruitful.” Harrison adds that his own style of studio work is quite different: “Mine is a lot more clicky, in a room by myself.”
Godrich likens his approach to inviting friends over to come and mess around in the kitchen. “He’s the chef,” Harrison says. “We just made a lasagna,” Godrich jokes.
Harrison mentions how it sometimes felt like a hip-hop session, with loops and beats and then writing and layering lyrics on top of it. “Once everyone’s finished their lyrics, suddenly it’s linear,” he says. On the record, Godrich plays drums, bass, and keyboards, while Harrison plays guitar and sings.
Debi Del Grande*
For the live band, they recruited percussionist Joey Waronker, the Strokes guitarist Nick Valensi, and keyboardist Maurice Talbot. “Once we got a certain way forward, we’re like, ‘Oh, we should see this through,’” Godrich says. “This should be a band,” Harrison adds.
They also assembled backing singers because of all the harmonies on the album, some of which are provided by Godrich. “I would never have ever expected to be in a band that had backing singers,” he says. “But we sort of were like, ‘This could actually really work.’”
“I was always hoping that I would be in a band that had backing singers,” Harrison adds. Godrich responds, “You manifested it.”
They also recruited composer-arranger David Campbell, a longtime collaborator of Godrich’s (who is also Beck’s father). “It’s just something about his orchestration, his voicing. He’s, like, the best on the planet,” Godrich says. “If you add that element, it goes panoramic.”
Their approach in the studio was a bit daunting at first, Harrison says, but it was also energizing. And while they’re thinking about what’s next, they are focused on enjoying their newfound band and savoring the experience. They released Dragonflies this fall on Dark Horse Records, the label George Harrison launched in 1974 and Dhani resurrected in 2020. Now, their next set of shows are during Pitchfork Music Festival Paris on Nov. 3 and Pitchfork London on Nov. 8.
“I was 100 percent out of my comfort zone,” Harrison admits. But he says it was a valuable learning experience. “It’s very humbling in a good way,” he says, adding that working with Godrich gave him a new perspective. “What do I know, what makes me happy, what do I want to do in the future — how can I improve my happiness levels by changing my method?”
“But also as a friend, I want to make you happy,” Godrich says.
“Yeah, and same,” interjects Harrison.
“I’m gonna make you happy, and that makes me happy,” Godrich says. “That’s better than going to a pub.”
