Melody Maker, 31.05.1997

Interview: MARK SUTHERLAND

RETURN OF THE MAC!

Last week we coaxed most of a rather reluctant Radiohead out to talk about their astonishing new album. Now Thom Yorke joins in for an exclusive track-by-track run down of 'OK Computer'. Plug in right here...


"AIRBAG"
Originally titled "Last Night An Airbag Saved MyLife" in,a typically tongue-in-cheek tribute to lndeep's 1983 disco hit,'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life', this makes for a brooding, claustrophobic start to the album.

Colin: 'We wanted it to be like 'Planet Telex' off' The Bends' -- a start that's not really anything like the rest of the album. It's quite dancey. That's cos Phil's been attending drum'n'bass nights.' Phil: 'I told you, I thought it was a line-dancing evening! It was actually DJ Shadow who inspired it-the way he cuts up beats is amazing. The end result doesn't really sound like what we were aiming for, but that's probably a good thing.'

Ed: "It's about the wonderful, positive emotion you feel when you've just failed to have an accident; when you just miss someone and realise how close it was and stop the car and just feel this incredible elation. There's something joyous about it -- life suddenly seems more precious."

Key lyric: "In a jack-knifed juggernaut, l am bom again...

Thom: 'Airbags go off spontaneously, so researchers claim. I think that's a cool judgement, don't you? Driving along in your Mercedes.'

Colin: "They're actually quite dangerous things. They can kill."

Ed: 'What would you know about it? You can't even drive!"


"PARANOID ANDROID"
Hyper-complex vaguely prog-rock multi-mood epic, ranging from acoustic angst to pure white noise, yet perversely chosen to be the first single from 'OK Computer". Perhaps because all those clearly defined segments make it a "Bohemian Rhapsody"
for the Nineties. Allegedly.

Ed: "Well, when we wrote it, one of the references was 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. But the other was the Pixies.'

Jonny: 'It's not actually complex enough to be "Bohemian Rhapsody" -- there's only really two different bits there. Plus it's way too tense."

Ed: "It's not a "Bohemian Rhapsody" for the nineties-- it's just a handy reference point. It's like "Creep" was meant to sound like Scott Walker...it just didn't come out that way. But "Paranoid Android" is the song we play to people when they want to know what the album's like, cos it should make them think, "What the fuck is going to happen on the rest of the album?'"

Colin: "Plus it's so long, we have time to make them a cup of coffee while they listen to it."

Key Lyric: "When I am King you will be first against the wall/With your opinions which are of no consequence at all..."

Ed: "It's not about the press, if that's what you're thinking. Thom wouldn't be that specific."

Thom: "Everybody has an opinion. People make professions out of it. Most of it is white noise. It is not personal, OK? 'Opinions are like arseholes, everybody's got one'. What liberates 'Paranoid Android' is a sense of humour -- Marvin the paranoid android. The bleakest things can be said with jokes -- re, 'The Fast Show' : it's funny."


"SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK ALIEN"
Sprawling, freeform, spooked-out sounding, tale of alien abduction. Title is a homage to Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues", apparently.

Thom: "Yeah! Jonny's in the basement mixing up the medicine, I'm on the pavement thinking about the government..."

Colin: "When we were doing 'The Bends', John Leckie told us about this hollow earth theory that John Power of Cast has. Apparently, there's a sun revolving in the centre of the earth and there are holes in the north and south poles that aliens fly into. We, er, weren't completely sold on it to be honest, John."

Jonny: "Americans believe in alien abduction but that's about it. I'm a fully paid-up subscriber to Sceptical Inquirer magazine. If you go into a newsagent in America you'll find 30 mags about UFOs, aliens, the supernatural, etc and Sceptical Inquirer, which has all these scientists providing logical explanations for everything. Thanks to 'The X-Files' and everything, it's become the lazy option to believe in all this stuff, but science fascinates me far more than aliens."

Colin: "Yeah apparently there is now neurological evidence to prove the existence of a human soul. They've had big meetings about it in the Vatican, because obviously the Roman Catholic church are very keen to control it. Er, I sound like John Power now, don't I?"

Key lyric: "I'm just uptight..."

Thom: "What do I think of 'The X-Files'? And which Spice Girl do I like?"


"EXIT MUSIC (FOR A FILM)"
Brooding ballad specially composed for the movie, "Romeo & Juliet", where it appears alongside another Radiohead song "Talk Show Host". Significantly, Radiohead are first heard just as the characters are discussing Romeo's "black portentous humour".

Thom: "I like the film very much, it's just my sort of thing -- not quite as many bodies as 'Hamlet'."

Ed: "It's the only song we've ever done on demand. We were on tour with Alanis Morissette last September when we got sent through the last half hour of the film. It looked great so we did this song straight away."

Colin: "Soundtracks are a bit naff nowadays: they just stick on some contemporary music. We wanted to be a bit more intelligent than that."

Ed: "The only thing I don't like is 'Exit Music...' appears over the end credits, so it will just play to the sound of loads of chairs banging upright."

Key lyric: "Pack and get dressed before your father hears us, before all hell breaks loose..."

Ed: "Thom looked at Shakespeare's original text and tried to incorporate lines from it into the song -- but he gave up on that quickly. But I still think it fits with the film amazingly well, especially as the lyrics are actually quite personal."


"LET DOWN"
Old school Radiohead song, with Thom crooning away in Bono-esque style. Despite the title, sounds resigned, rather than angry.

Jonny: "It's like when Andy Warhol said he enjoyed being bored. It's about that feeling that you get when you're in transit but you're not in control of it -- you just go past thousands of places and thousands of people and you're completely removed from it."

Ed: "Feeling let down is just down to your insecurities and paranoia most of the time, which is why the song sounds sad rather than furious. It's about not being in control of a situation."

Thom: "I am fascinated by how insects are squashed, especially wasps -- the cracking sound and the yellow gak, just like people.'

Key lyric: "Crushed like a bug in the ground..."


"KARMA POLICE"
Ignoring the appalling track record of the word "karma" in pop music (Boy George, George Harrison, etc), Radiohead use it to project an Orwellian vision of the future and write a bonzer tune to boot.

Jonny: "It was a band catchpharse for a while on tour -- whenever someone was behaving in a particular shitty way, we'd say, 'The karma police will catch up with him sooner or later.' You have to rely on something like that, even though we're probably just kidding ourselves. But it's not a revenge thing, just about being happy with your own behaviour."

Key lyric: "This is what you get when you mess with us..."

Thom: "Karma is an important idea. I like it. It makes me nicer to people. It fills me with joy. This song makes me laugh. It was Ed's idea."


"FITTER HAPPIER"
A computer speaks a random spiel of modern-living buzzphrases to a soundtrack of tinkling piano, screeching violin and, er, that's it, actually. Weird.

Colin: "Thom didn't want to have to say it, so we were messing around with a computer voicebox. We really liked the way the emotion still comes across, so we kept it."

Thom: "The computer was the most emotional voice I had ever heard, at the time."

Colin: "It sounds like Stephen Hawking is guesting on the album. Maybe he should have been. I use to see him when I was in college, toddling around in his wheelchair."

Key lyric: "Concerned but powerless..."

Thom: "Are the lyrics a reflection of my own life? Yes."

Ed: "It's about the lack of naturalness in modern life. I'd like to see the lyrics printed as a full page advert in one of those dreadful magazines like GQ or FHM, cos some people might believe all that stuff."

Colin: "Really, it's an exercise in finding meaning in things that seem to be random and chaotic and out of your control. A bit like life, really."


"ELECTIONEERING"
Big, scary, searing rock track. Nothing to do with Tony Blair and his New Dawn for Britain, etc.

Ed: "Basically, it's about those times when you go out to a territory and have to sell yourselves and sell your record. You can meet some very cool people but, if you're pissed off or tired, it feels like a huge propaganda machine and you feel like a politician -- kissing babies, shaking hands..."

Jonny: "We're not a political band, but we are political people. One of the first things I can remember is Margaret Thatcher coming to power, so just the fact that it's changed is revelation enough. We had a hell of a party that night."

Ed: "It was weird all those people going down to Downing Street to mob Blair. He's definately the first pop star PM."

Colin: "The first New Grave PM more like. He IS the New Seriousness."

Phil: "Where does that leave us, then? Perhaps we're the Labour Party of New Grave. New Radiohead, New Danger!"

Key lyric: "When I go forwards, you go backwards, and somewhere we will meet..."

Thom: "This is about getting beyond the dirge, they are all bullshitting, but I'm already laughing. On the other side, I trust I can rely on your vote."


"CLIMBING UP THE WALLS"
Even bigger, even scarier rock track. Thom Yorke does his best to sound demented, but is out-done by the monumental chaos going on behind him.

Colin: "It's quite horrible, isn't it?"

Ed: "We always knew that song had an atmosphere and it was very easy to capture. The white noise is loads of violins."

Colin: "We recorded in in the ballroom of this old stately home. Dare we say there was something Gothic about the environment? It was certainly very New Grave of New Grave."

Key lyric: "In the crack of your waning smile/15 blows to the skull..."

Thom: "'Was it an accident that of the 10 largest mass-murderers in American History, eight have occurred since 1980, typically acts of middle-aged white men in their 30s and 40s after a prolonged period of being lonely, frustruated and full of rage and of 10 precipitated by a catastrophe in their lives such as losing their jobs or divorce?'
"New York Times October 17 1991 -- quoted by Eric Hobsbawn in 'Age of Extremes'."


"NO SURPRISES"
In contrast, the simplest, most stadium friendly song on the album. Built around the chimes from a jewellery box. Lovely.

Colin: "Scare the living daylights out of 'em, then soothe their brow: that's the Radiohead way."

Ed: "It was meant to be like a nursery rhyme. Strangely, it was the very first song we did for the album. Didn't exactly set the tone, did it? If it had been the first single it wouldn't have been a very true representation of the album. It's a bit like Louie Armstrong's 'Wonderful World'."

Colin: "We'd like it to be a single at some point we're not making any promises. We are the New Labour of Rock, after all."
Key lyric: "A heart that's full up like a landfill..."

Thom: "What is fad today is rubbish tomorrow. I am an emotional dumping ground."


"LUCKY"
Highlight of the Bosnia-aiding "Help" album, included here largely out of embarrassment at the way it fared when released as a single.

Ed: "Yeah, number 53 with a bullet or something. That was pretty bad considering it was for charity and it was the best song we'd ever done. It did seem to make a difference to how people perceived us though -the broadsheets started to get interested in us and stuff. And it was a brilliant thing to be involved in. We're very proud of it, especially as we took the hard option and recorded a brand new song. Although, admittedly, that's only because we're so bad at covers. Always have been even when we were a school band we couldn't do them.'

Key lyric: "I'm on a roll..."

Thom: "It's our song, we want it on our album and it fits exactly where it is."


"THE TOURIST"
Written by Jonny, the calm after the storm. Features minimal vocals and maximum mellow Eric Clapton-esque guitar.

Jonny. "I'm still amazed that everyone else in the band let it on the LP. It was a bit of late runner. We were packing up and leaving when we decided to do it.'

Thom: 'What do I think of Jonny's songwriting? Whenever I am tired, he is there and awake.'

Key lyric: "Hey man slow down, idiot slow down..."

Jonny "We just wanted a song where we weren't paranoid about making something happen every three seconds and where we could record it with space.'

Colin: "But not record it with Space. That would never have worked,frankly.'

top

Melody Maker, 24.05.1997

Interview: MARK SUTHERLAND

ROUNDING THE BENDS

It's been over two years since Radiohead's "The Bends" first took our breath away and hinted at the beginning of the end for Britpop. Now the frontrunners of New Grave are back with a mad, bad and dangerous new single. We chased them to Oxford, expecting a chat. Thom Yorke, however, had other ideas...

This episode of 'The Professionals' begins, as so many episodes of 'The Professionals' do, at a deserted farmhouse.

A lone journalist has been lured to Oxford on the promise of a story. He is met at the station, only to be bundled into the back of a car, driven into the surrounding countryside and dropped off in the middle of nowhere at a top secret location. Not that there would seem to be much of interest here to the outside world: some decaying farm machinary, a few containers full of potentially lethaI agricultural chemicals, some cows ... but wait, this room must be important. Why else would the sign on it read 'Danger Low Oxygen! Do not enter sealed room: you will pass out in 30 seconds and die in minutes!' Before the journalist can investigate further, however, there is a commotion outside. As the first spots of rain begin to splash on the dusty ground, five men emerge from a neighbouring outhouse, carrying themselves with the natural 'us against the world' swagger of the gang. More to the point, at least two of them look like they'd be a bit tasty in a street fight, so now seems a suitable time to make a getaway. But, as he treads gingerly down a dirttrack alleyway, there is a sudden screech of tyres and roar of accelerator pedal. A revved up Almera, driven by a slight man wearing the unmistakeable savage haircut and permanent grimace of the TV villain, rounds the corner and powers towards the hapless hack. It seems a collision is inevitable but, at the last minute, a dive-cum-forward-roll saves his skin. The Almera disappears into the distance, with only a cloud of dust and a echo of a half-remembered, in-car conversation ('Stop whispering!'. I can't!') to prove it was ever here. A further search of the farmhouse and extensive inquiries in town reveal nothing and the journalist returns to London empty-handed. Time to call in Bodie and Doyle...


RADIOFREE
OXFORD

The real Professionals are already here, of course, and operating under the code name Radiohead. But their leader is being anything but professional and, consequently, even Bodie and Doyle might find them an impossible case to crack. Because what the above, Over-dramatic and largely fictional introduction is actually trying to say is The Maker went all theway to Radiohead's Oxfordshire farmhouse studio only for singer/figurehead Thom Yorke to decline to do an interview. True, the other members of the band - guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway-remain geniality Personified and will gladly answer questions on anything and everything. True, after immense pressure, Thom will eventually share a few state-of-mind sound nibbles via the fax machine. And truer still, Thom doesn't actually try to run anyone over or, indeed, even drive an alI-action Almera (it's a knackered old Fiat Punto actually, 'Top Gear' fanatics). But this week's episode of 'The Professionals' is sorely in need of some drama...

It might not matter if there wasn't so much to talk about. But there is. Because Radiohead have just delivered the long-awaited follow-up album to 'The Bends'. You may already know the first single, a sprawling, spiralling epic called 'Paranoid Android' that has probably already blown your mind into tiny little bits via the beautiful madness of the current Radio 1 playlist. What you won't know is that, in a month or so, the aIbum, 'OK Computer', is going to come into your Iife, sweep up those tiny Iittle bits, put your mind back together and then blow it alI over again. Just for a laugh. Just because it can. It's a record that amends explanation but the one person who could explain it seems rather more interested in playing silly buggers.

In the weeks prior to this interview, The Maker was made aware that Thom was unhappy with the way he's been portrayed in the past and wouldn't do a one-to-one interview, so a happy medium of a chat with the entire band was negotiated. And certainly, as we meet at the group's office near Oxford, the vibes seem affable enough. We all drive off to the farmhouse where the band rehearse and record-that 'Danger: Low Oxygen!' sign is actually nothing more than a burglar deterrent, though it might explain the sense of claustrophobia that so often invades Radiohead recordings where Thom, resplendent in a new butcher-shop crop and with what looks like his shopping list written in Tipp-Ex on his hand, joins in an impromptu 'jam' 'session', shares a joke or two about the piles of dangerous-looking anti-oxidants lying about the place and seems perfectly happy to play the rockstar for the benefit of the cameras. lmmediately afterwards, however, Thom simply gets in his ca r and drives off at speed. He doesn't even say goodbye, let alone explain why the Maker readers, who have always loved and supported Radiohead, shouldn't have access to the thoughts he'd already shared with a couple of those clappy-happy monthly music mags who never gave a flying fuck about him or his band until the platinum disc signs appeared before their eyes. It's the weekly music press, however, who've been cast as the villains of Radiohead's public image. In championing the band, like everyone else, have inevitably concentrated on the man who writes all the lyrics, sings alI the songs, dominates the videos and stands at the centre-front of the stage when they play live. And consequently, we've got it all wrong. Radiohead, you see, are a band.

Well, hold the fucking front page. Of course Radiohead are a band. Radiohead wouldn't be Radiohead - hell, wouldn't be The Greatest Rock Band On God's Earth Right This Very Second were it not for jonny and Ed's famously fractured guitar sound, Colin's monumental bass and Phil's thunderously inventive drumming. But roll over Guitar Monthly and tell Control Zone the news: these things don't make sparkling front cover copy. Leave that stuff to The Professionals. Lyrics, being best mates with Michael Stipe, the immense Pressures of having your most intimate thoughts exposed to a worldwide audience -these things are interesting. And The Professionals, by their own admission, know very little about it.

'It's OK though,' says a hideously embarrassed-looking Ed, once it's clear Thom will not be joining us,'Thom trusts us to explain everything.'

Oh, what the hell. We have come all the way to Oxford, after all, and Colin assures us he knows what New Grave is while Jonny says there's a lovely little restaurant just down the road; we might as well give it a go. But any mention of 'paradiddles' or 'production techniques' and we're outta here.

Ed O'Brien stares long and hard into the tape recorder, takes a slug of lager and confesses: 'The Bends' completely and utterly changed my life.'

Not a bad start. Perhaps he'll make a dysfunctional figurehead for a generation yet. Tell us more, Ed.

'I don't live with my dad any more. I mean, I miss him and everything, but it seems like a major upheaval to say, Yeah, I've got my own place."

Oh dear, oh dear and, in a very reaI sense, oh dear. A record that's sold over two million copies worldwide; that's been acclaimed as one of, if not the landmark rock releases of the Nineties; seen Radiohead become pals with everyone from Michael Stipe to Mark Owen; single-handedly slain the Britpop beast and given birth to a new 'movement' to take its place ... and 'the others' in Radiohead think it hasn't changed their lives. And, in truth, it probably hasn't much, beyond an even healthier bank balance and an even greater freedom in the studio.

Thom, well, that's a different story. He's had to put up with everything from worldwide adulation to having various sections of the media speculate wildly as to the state of his mental health. Later, he will comment, 'Most of the time the attention being placed on us was really funny,then sometimes it wasn't. A lot of time and effort was spent getting to the point where this was not relevant but, in the meantime, at least Radiohead are aware of the affect that monumental album had on other people's lives.



SMASH HITS

'The weirdest people in the weirdest places are united by that record,' grins Colin, the saucer-eyed king of the rambling anecdote. 'We've heard so many stories about how its really popular with ravers, who play it during their post-rave comedown spliff. And The Daisies, who share the same management as us, got stopped in their van in London on the day of an IRA bomb. They were surrounded by armed police who wanted to know who the hell they were. Then they mentioned our name and this copper with a gun goes, 'Oh 'The Bends' is brilliant, and the mood relaxed instantly.'

It's even stranger that 'The Bends' should have such a far-reaching impact when you consider it was released at the commercial height of Britpop. As the spotlight pinned Oasis, Pulp and Blur in its harsh glare, "alternative" music became one big hedonistic knees-up in which, if Radiohead were invited at all, they were cast as the miserable gits sitting on the stairs trying to bring everyone down. It wasn't their party, but they cried anyway.

"What I really hated about Britpop," fumes Colin, "was all that tiresome irony. As if bands shouldn't be serious things."
"We don't do irony," confirms Ed. "The only times we've tried were when we were in America, where it just goes over everyone's heads, and on 'Pop Is Dead', which was rubbish. Surprisingly, those Saturday morning TV show offers didn't come pouring in."

An offer to play the 1995 Smash Hits Poll Winners Party, however, somewhat surprisingly did.

"We had to do that just because it was so bizarre," smiles Ed, whose lanky, grunge heart-throb looks aren't actually so far away from the teen lust object profile. "There was Take That, East 17, Boyzone and us, doing 'My Iron Lung' of all things. We were stood at the side of the stage for half an hour before we went on and it was bedlam -all these girls just screaming and screaming and screaming. And then we went on, there was this awkward silence and then the screaming started again -for entirely different reasons. It seemed like the entire audience suddenly burst into tears, tugged at its mum's sleeve and demanded to be taken to the toilet."

Once out of the country, however, their chosen role as Britpop refuseniks was harder to stick to.
"Abroad," sighs Colin, 'We were asked endless questions about it, as if we really fitted the Britpop blueprint. The Bends' was many things, but it wasn't really, chirpy was it? lt was more like a darkness lumbering over the horizon with gun turrets strafing the Britpop hordes with misery. Er, sorry. Got a bit carried away there."

Well, maybe. But those misery bullets clearly hit a few targets-so many, in fact, that 'OK Computer' will arrive into a world that has come around to Radiohead's way of thinking. Britpop lies buried in an appropriately shallow (new) grave- and is now being danced on by moody types in black nail varnish playing epic, wind swept rock and espousing something called The New Seriousness. Certainly,even this irony-despising band can find a little black humour in the fact that 1995 saw radiohead dubbed 'the new U2', while 1997 sees a whole crop of 'new Radioheads - (hello Mansun,Travis, Longpigs et al) and irrefutable proof that not even U2 want to be U2 any more (hello their techno-tinged 'Pop' album).

'It's just bloody weird, really, isn't it?' says Ed, toffity. 'I mean, I quite like Mansun, but I'll be a lot more interested in their second album."

So, New Grave: is it all your fault? 'No,' Says Jonny, whose black clobber and angular on the-run-from-Suede cheekbones mark him down as the group's most likely goth sympathiser. 'Definitely not. No, really. Blame the Manics, not us. We don't wear enough make-up to be truly New Grave.'

As he says this, Jonny snatches his hand away from his glass of sparkling mineral water and hides it under the table. He is wearing black nail varnish.



BENDING RULES

When Jonny Greenwood was 14, he was already a shit-hot guitarist, but he was also a bit of a worrier. One day, he was suddenly thrown into a blind panic about his ability, deciding that he couldn't possibly be a successful musician if no one in his family was musical. He scoured the family archives, but all he could find was a grandfather who briefly took up the euphonium. Even now, his confidence is regularly shaken by another who has 'absolutely no understanding' of what he does. He played her some stuff recently and she demanded to know what 'that bomtibomtibom stuff in the background- was. "That's the drums, Mum," Jonny sighed. Perhaps this is why he and the rest of the band are touchingly unsure as to whether their records are actually any cop or not. By the time 'The Bends' came out, Jonny had already decided it was rubbish.

'I remember thinking some of the songs were OK,' he smiles, 'But that was about it.'

And, even as 'OK Computer' emerges into a newly Radiohead-friendly world, to be greeted by a massive fan base champing at the bit, they are worried. Very worried.

'I hope we don't lose people who liked the Bends',' frets Colin. 'But the way I see it is, if this was the first album you ever heard by us it would be pretty difficult to get into. I don't think we'll be getting new fans in the way the Manics have.'
'Maybe we should be feeling more secure nowadays,' admits Jonny. 'But really, we've got no gauge as to how popular we are, let alone how good we are. It's one of the few arguments for rock journalism, because the people who actually make records have no idea as to whether they are any good or not.'

Nice to know we have our uses. So, just to put Jonny's mind at rest, let's reiterate that 'OK Computer' is an astounding album, at once a solid continuation of, and massive leap forward from, "The Bends". There is less of the heart-rending stadium balladry that broke the band worldwide (though "No Surprises: and "Let Down" will still see lighters hoisted aloft in ice hockey stadiums the planet over) and rather more in the way of headfuck experimentation (the DJ Shadow-inspired drum loops on 'Airbag', the constant gear changes on 'Paranoid Android'). There is less harrowing personal angst (although "Climbing Up The Walls" is the most scary thing they've ever done) and more interest in the world beyond Thom Yorke's personal diaries.
Significantly though, while it's every bit as brilliant as 'The Bends', it's nowhere near as commercial. Their record company is still, in public, talking 'OK Computer' up as the album that will make them a genuine stadium-level concern, but the harsh facts are the internal sales forecast was actually adjusted downwards once the americans had heard the record. Ironic, really, that Radiohead should respond to commercial success in exactly the same way as their nemeses Blur- by getting seriously weird on us. A reaction to the pressure (ha!) of following up 'The Bends'? 'What?' says Colin. 'Like, we either top 'The Bends' or we top ourselves?'

"People said we were under pressure after 'Creep'," points out Jonny, not entirely unreasonably.

"And we came up with 'The Bends'. But we weren't really trying to 'top' it as such. Although it did seem like we were being set up to do The Big American Crossover Album, like The Joshua Tree' or whatever, but we just, wanted to carry on where we left off.' 'Then again,' points out the thoroughly charming, if dubiously trousered Phil, 'when 'The Bends' came out everyone went on about how uncommercial that was. Twelve months later it was being hailed as a pop classic. The record company were worried there wasn't a single on it -- and we ended up with five top 30 hits from it!'

Perhaps this is why 'Paranoid Android' has been chosen as the first single from the album (assuming you don't count their 'Help' contribution, 'Lucky', that is, which is really only on the album cos of its hideous failure as a 45). Because, frankly, it sounds like nothing on earth, let alone a snappy 180-second single. Inspired in equal measure by Pixies and, um, Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody', over the course of nearly seven minutes, the song mutates from a chiming, plaintive anthem, to a spasmodic free jazz 'workout' to a white noise freakout and back again.

Apparently, when it was first played to one Radio 1 producer, he had to go and have a bit of a lie down afterwards. Which hasn't stopped the station plugging it at, every opportunity over the last few weeks and even making special trailers that go "In 93, we brought you 'Creep', in 94, 'My Iron Lung'..." etc (highly amusing, considering Radio 1's reluctance to playlist the band in the past). But even so, it's hard to imagine the band playing 'Paranoid Android' to their A&R man and instantly having him whoop, 'Now, that's the single!'

'That's precisely what he did do, actually,' smirks Colin. 'I think the record company knew we'd want that one, so they were trying to call our bluff, as it were. But it does feel like a victory to have Radio 1 hammering merry shit out of it, cos it's hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzz bin unit shifter they can have been expecting.' Well, exactly. And mostof the album follows suit. ln another hitherto frowned-upon outbreak of irony, the only track adhering to the 'new U2' blueprint is entitled 'No Surprises'. The rest of the record, meanwhile, is full of them (surprises, that is), as Yorke explores typically oblique themes of future paranoia, techno fear and the dehumanisation of society to a relentlessly challenging soundtrack. There's little danger anyone will interpret this album, as some did with 'The Bends', as a sort of pre-emptive suicide note. Although, once you throw in the album title, songs like 'Karma Police' and "Subterranean Homesick Alien' and the accompanying messily futuristic artwork, some might view it as a, er, Orwellian concept album.

"Oh God,' blanches Colin. 'What a ghastly thought. That makes it sound like Rick Wakeman and his Knights of the Roundtable On Ice or something' "

Something like "Fitter, Happier', however, where a computerised voice sifts through an oddly emotional list of modern-life-as-rubbish concerns ('Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in waII) / Concerned (but powerless') does betray a pre-occupation with precisely where the planet is heading.
'On this album, the outside world became all there was,' says Yorke, and the most irrelevant material took on stunning beauty and breathlessness. This is because I had sorted the internal stuffout. l wrote down what was around always and my singing 'identity' felt very loose. I am an airhead on this record.

"Have you ever been to the Sony Building in New york? That is the future. I'm just taking Polaroids of things around me, moving too fast. Why? How can you indulge in self-analysis when all this amazing shit's going on?' Hmm.
'I think Thom suddenly woke up to what was happening around him,' explains Ed. 'He's certainly no longer talking from just one perspective. The lyrics are a reaction to everything he had to go through last time. But you could probably tie the songs on 'The Bends' into a concept. The only real difference between 'OK Computer' and 'The Bends" is 'The Bends' felt completed and this album doesn't."

"Yeah," says Phil, suddenly awaking from soundbite slumber. "'The Bends' was like 'Star Wars' -- a neat, separate entity with lots of explosions but not much plot And 'OK Computer' is the Empire Strikes Back, more ambitious, more complex, with more loose ends, but ultimately much better.'

He pauses to admire this analogy, until spotting its fatal flaw. 'Our next album won't be 'Return Of The Jedi' though,' he adds, hastily. 'Because that was rubbish."

"And 'Pablo Honey' was actually something like 'Battlestar Galactica'," chips in Colin. 'A low-budget, poor quality version of the real thing.'

Blimey. Who needs Thom Yorke, eh? Typically though, just as The Professionals finally stumble across some award-winning dialogue, it's time to leave.

In a few minutes, Radiohead will clamber into their sensible, non-rockstar cars and prepare to go back to their sensible, non-rockstar houses, secure in the knowledge that, despite one or two minor hiccups, they have got the job done like The Professionals they are.



PARTY POOPER

In a few days, The Maker fax machine will whirr into action, finally informing us, amongst other things, of the "reason" why Thom Yorke wishes to withdraw from the media spotlight. ('If it affects my work, if it affects or represses what I want to say in the future, then it is bad, that's all.') And, in a few weeks, Radiohead will head straight back into that spotlight, off on another massive world tour that will probably keep them away from those non-rock star houses for at least a couple of years. By the time they get back, the new millennium will be just around the corner.

'All these millennarians and adventists and obscure Swiss cults who think that something amazing is going to happen on millennium night are just deluding themselves,' smiles Colin, by way of a parting shot. "I think it's just going to be one big party.' Thom Yorke, as ever, sees things rather differently.

'Britpop was a party to which we weren't invited? " he snorts, derisively. 'Well, now we're not having a party, so no one's invited. Ha ha ha ha."

As they say on those Professionals-inspired Almera ads: Tell me about it.

top

Melody Maker, 10.1995

In a Blue Yorke State of Mind
Radiohead in America


“It’s a very good idea,” nods Thom Yorke. “It’s not the idea I’m arguing with. The idea, in itself, is fine.”

Thom, sunglassed and shrouded in an enormous fake black fur coat, is sitting on a luggage trolley in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Hartford, Connecticut. He’s just stumbled off the tour bus after a long drive from Philadelphia. Behind him, a bow-tied porter hovers vaguely, as if unsure whether to heave this bedraggled apparition into the street, or ask him which room he’d liked to be wheeled to. Crouched on the floor in front of Thom, Radiohead’s bass player, Colin Greenwood, is earnestly outlining his plans.

“My question,” continues Thom, at pains to sound reasonable, “is where the fucking hell we’re going to find five hundred fucking ping-pong balls at short notice in this fucking place on a Sunday afternoon.”

A pensive silence ensues. Thom has a fair point. I’d hardly been able to find a cold beer in Hartford at eleven o’clock last night.

“We’ll just have to think of something else,” says Thom, and chews on a thumbnail.


AN hour later, with everyone washed, changed and infused with caffeine, we pile into a minibus to the venue, and Colin explains a few things. Tonight, Radiohead will play the last of their shows as the support act on R.E.M.’s “Monster” tour. They have been warned to expect some sort of practical joke by way of farewell. Clearly believing that revenge is a dish best served pre-cooked, Radiohead (Thom, Colin, drummer Phil Selway, guitarists Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood — from whom, presumably, Thom stole the “h”) have been plotting their retribution in advance.

“Mike Mills,” says Colin, “told us not to wear anything we want to wear again.”

“Paint,” speculates Thom, gloomily. “It’ll be paint. Or custard pies. Oh, God.”

“So the idea with the ping-pong balls,” continues Colin, “was that we’d get the roadies up in the lighting gantries above the stage to drop them on R.E.M. during the last song.”

A contemplative hush settles as we drive through Hartford. If you’ve never driven through Hartford, the effect can be recreated in the comfort and safety of your own home by going to sleep. I flew in from London last night with Melody Maker photographer Pat Pope and Radiohead’s press officer, Caffy St Luce. Our efforts to hit Hartford and paint the town red had come to naught; we couldn’t even claim to have painted the town beige. The first place we tried was a sports bar, decorated with fading hockey pennants and populated by four lone, middle-aged men staring morosely into their drinks. We asked the barman what people in Hartford did for fun. “They come here, sir,” he replied. We finished up in a deserted cocktail bar where the star turn was a drink called a Zombie. “Limit two per customer,” said the menu. I asked a waitress what happens if you drink three. “You can’t walk,” she replied.

“I wonder why people build cities in these places,” says Thom, balefully surveying the fist-chewingly unremarkable scenery. It’s a real graveyard with streetlights, this place, the kind of town where you could fire a Gatling gun down the main road without hitting anybody — and if you did, you’d be doing them a favour.

The venue for tonight’s show is the Meadows Music Theatre, a giant half-indoor, half-outdoor affair, something like Wembley Arena with a back yard. It’s early afternoon, hours before showtime, but we’ve arrived early so Radiohead can soundcheck and do some of the aimless milling about that constitutes the major part of any rock’n’roll tour. In Radiohead’s commodious dressing room, Thom draws a smiling face and the words “Thanks for having us, you’ve been brilliant, love Radiohead” on a scrap of paper and gives it to a roadie who will secrete it amid the sheets on Michael Stipe’s lyric stand. This gesture is at odds with the received wisdom on Thom Yorke, which is that he’s slightly less amenable than a cornered mongoose.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs. “They’ve really been brilliant to us. We’re getting a whole hour to soundcheck every night, and you know how often that happens to support bands in real life.“

Gratitude notwithstanding, the other members of Radiohead have been talking, and a Plan B prank has been hatched. R.E.M.’s stage set is an extravagant homage to Alexander Calder that includes a backdrop of enormous red lampshades, swinging from the stage roof. The idea now is that as R.E.M. close their show with “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” the lampshades will be joined in flight by all five members of Radiohead, suspended from harnesses. Colin, Jonny, Phil and Ed look well pleased with this scheme. Thom looks rather less so.

“It’ll never work,” he says. He’s Catweazle with attitude.

Radiohead go off to do their soundcheck, which I watch from the hill at the back of the empty arena. Between songs, Ed plays snatches of “Radio Free Europe”, R.E.M.’s first single. I’ve often thought that it’d be a great gag for a support act to close their set by playing the headliner’s biggest hit, but I suspect Radiohead want to be invited back one day.

Back in the dressing room, Radiohead are informed that the harness jape is off — R.E.M.’s tour manager isn’t having it. Someone else says, probably quite rightly, that Radiohead’s insurers would pop a rivet if one of their clients got injured in a mid-air collision with a giant item of lounge furniture.

Phil brings one of the big red props into the dressing room for further discussion.

“We could,” he offers, “just put them on our heads and run around the stage.”

He tries it on. He looks silly beyond description.

“I can’t see,” he announces, muffled.

“Typical,” snorts Thom, momentarily recalling, as he sometimes does, the deadpan snarl of John Lydon. “Very bloody Keith Moon, aren’t we? Other bands seem to be able to misbehave without looking like utter wankers. I wonder what our problem is.”

He clomps off to wait in silence for showtime, fidgeting with some artwork he’s got stored in his Macintosh laptop. Jonny, meanwhile, is trying to evade a phone interview with some local radio station. He asks if I fancy doing it. “They’ll never know,” he says. He explains that several Japanese and Taiwanese magazines currently trailing exclusive interviews with Radiohead’s right-angle-cheekboned guitar hero are, in fact, running with the thoughts of his mates, cousins, or anyone else who was sitting around his house in Oxford when the phone rang.

“Go on,” he goads. “It’s easy. How are you finding touring with R.E.M.? Do you feel under pressure to follow the success of ‘Creep’?”

It’s a tempting offer, and the trust Jonny is offering at such early acquaintance is touching — after all, there’s nothing to stop me saying “We’re only supporting R.E.M. for the money, all of which we plan to invest in companies which test cosmetics on baby seals and pay Malaysian children three cents an hour to drill those pointless little holes in the ends of toothbrushes, and I am sleeping with your sister’. However, I’ve done more than a few phone interviews myself, I know how prone they are to literal and metaphorical crossed wires even when you’re talking to who you think you are, and I don’t want to wind up a fellow hack unnecessarily. There is some honour among scoundrels.

“Suit yourself,” he says. “I’ll ask one of the crew.”

Jonny tells me that his driving ambition is to leave America having said “Wanker” and “Bollocks” on every radio station in the country.

Given that Hartford is what it is — the kind of place where they’ll have to close the zoo if the chicken dies — it’s not surprising that the venue looks full to its 30,000 capacity an hour before Radiohead are due on.

To get to the arena from backstage, I have to run an ideological gauntlet of stalls operated by the organisations R.E.M. have invited on tour with them: Greenpeace, Rock The Vote, the National Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty, and some people who’d like it to be more difficult for other people to buy handguns. There’s a couple of groups with more nebulous names, like People For The American Way and Common Cause, which sound excitingly like rogue shotgun-wielding militias of squirrel-eating far-right rednecks that have snuck under R.E.M.’s wire, but these also turn out to be cheerful liberals encouraging others to be cheerfully liberal. I talk to a few of them. I probably even agree with most of them. I’ve just never grown out of that shockingly juvenile reflex of rebelling against any opinion that is being thrust at me in tones of righteous certainty, even if it’s my own. By the time I get to my spot on Radiohead’s mixing desk, I’m almost goose-stepping.

Radiohead are brilliant tonight, but as they rarely display any aptitude for being anything else, it’s not surprising. As for R.E.M.’s threat of practical jokes, this pretty much turns out to have been the practical joke itself. Ed is briefly tormented by a radio-controlled car operated from the wings by Mike Mills, but no custard pies or paint bombs are deployed.

Nevertheless, Radiohead have convinced themselves of the worst: as soon as the last note of their last song (a rousing version of “Nobody Does It Better”, dedicated to R.E.M.) fades, they down tools and leg it as fast as they decently can. As Radiohead complete their flight, R.E.M. wander on stage bearing a tray of champagne glasses, seeking to toast their support act, and find nothing but 30,000 people laughing. After a couple of agonising minutes, Thom, Ed, Jonny, Colin and Phil are retrieved, and the R.E.M./Radiohead mutual admiration society drinks its health to sustained applause.

Backstage at the end of the night, every friend or relative of every member of R.E.M. and Radiohead makes both bands stand together for souvenir last-night pictures. Peter Buck gently taunts Radiohead for their eventual, agonised decision not to storm the stage during the encore. Colin brings me a beer.

So, Colin. Do you feel under pressure to follow the success of “Creep”? How are you finding touring with R.E.M.?

“I can remember listening to R.E.M.’s first couple of albums on my Walkman on the way to school,” he says. “They’re one of the reasons I wanted to be in a band. This is still really strange.”

During R.E.M.’s set, Colin had shepherded me out onto the stage, to a position just behind Peter Buck’s amplifiers, where we spent the set giggling like two starstruck teenagers who’d snuck into someone’s soundcheck.

“They’ve been so good to us, and it’s been really good for us, especially Thom. This seems to have been his year for meeting his heroes. Elvis Costello introduced himself at this thing we did in Italy. I think that kind of thing has helped Thom a lot.”

Bill Berry, R.E.M.’s drummer, comes over to say goodbye. He’s wearing a purple Radiohead t-shirt.


THE following night, in a New York City feeling the first chills of winter, Radiohead are due to play a secret show at the Mercury Lounge, a tiny venue on East Houston. The band leave Hartford by minibus while myself, Pat and Caffy get on a train, which breaks down, then a bus, which gets a flat, and then another bus, whose unspeakably sadistic driver hits upon “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” as just the video everyone is going to want to see by this stage.

When we get to the Mercury, almost hysterical with irritation, Radiohead are mid-soundcheck. I stand up the back and try to be inconspicuous, which isn’t easy in a brightly-lit venue almost too small to change your mind in.

“There you are,” grins Thom from the stage. “Any requests?”

Someone’s in a good mood, at least. I suggest “Sulk”, a deliciously bitter tune that sounds roughly the way you feel when trapped in an interminable bus journey while being subjected to a film which could have been based on your misery, except that you know Steve Martin is going to get home eventually.

“We were going to do it anyway,” says Thom, with a smirk. They play it, and things suddenly seem like they could be worse: my favourite band of the moment play a four-minute concert for an audience consisting of me and the bloke on the mixing desk.

Thom and I head for a coffee in a place up the street. The waitress is wearing a Sleeper t-shirt — evidently one of New York’s sub-species of ardent anglophile indie-rock fans. She double-takes at Thom, but obviously can’t quite place him. She carries on double-taking while we talk.

“The thing that’s really freaked me out about doing a tour with a band as big as R.E.M.,” begins Thom, “is seeing how being so famous can change the way everybody, and I mean absolutely everybody, behaves towards you.”

Someone once wrote that the curse of being Marlon Brando, I think it was, was that you’d never see people being themselves.

“Absolutely. And it is really hard to do, to be yourself in front of somebody famous.”

The waitress is beyond double-taking and is now staring. She’s worked it out.

“I find it... fuck, you know, I don’t want it to happen. But that’s presuming we’re even going to make another record that people like.”

Colin was saying last night that you’d found meeting a few people in your position helpful. What happens? Do you have those magnificent, unfathomable conversations that artists always want everyone else to believe that artists have, or do you just stand around gawping like a fan?

“No... it’s more... you’re there, and there’s millions of things you can ask, but just the fact that you’ve met them becomes enough. I mean, even someone like Elvis Costello you can still judge on first impressions to some degree, and he was really nice, really trying to be nice. He can obviously be extremely sour, just like I can be, just like a lot of people under pressure can be, but he was really nice.’

I think the reputation he’s got — rather like the reputation you’ve got — is more than anything to do with an inability to suffer fools gladly, or even at all. If you can’t cope with imbeciles, and you work in the music business, you’re going to upset people.

“You’re right, and the music business is quite bitchy and competitive, but after all that, you meet people you really admire, and suddenly that whole competitive thing is just not important. I found that helpful. Just being able to say I’ve met him. That’s enough.”

So you just talked shop, like everyone else.

“I bloody hope not. Although, to some degree, you do find yourself in the same boat, having gone through the same experiences, and they’re quite a limited set of experiences, and they can turn you into quite a limited personality. So, I think, it’s a shock when you discover that there other people who have gone through that, who are a few years ahead of you in the time machine, and have come back and said it’s okay, you know, they’re still alive.”

Since Radiohead’s debut single, “Creep”, went supernova in the States in 1994, the band as a whole, and Thom and particular, have reacted to the fame thrust upon them with the bewilderment and disgust of a Methodist who inherits a brothel. The common take on “The Bends”, the title track of the album Radiohead made against the backdrop of that success, was that it was a vicious, splenetic rail against the fact that stardom is not the liberating force that people imagine. The truth is that fame is actually incredibly limiting, and ultimately, unless you can ignore it, rise above it or find a way to have fun with it, utterly cretinising. “The Bends”, like The Byrds’ “So You Want Be A Rock’n’Roll Star”, Costello’s “Hand In Hand” and “Pump It Up”, or Nirvana’s “Serve The Servants” and “Pennyroyal Tea”, sounded like one of those records often made by newly successful bands — they’ve got what they always wanted, and discovered that they don’t want it.

“Well, no...,” says Thom, sounding almost apologetic for tearing down this hastily-constructed theory. “That song was really just a collection of phrases going round in my head one day. The crazy thing about that song is that there was no calculation or thought involved — it was just whatever sounded good after the previous line. It was written way before we’d ever been to America, even, but yeah, it’s always interpreted as this strong reaction against the place and everything that went with it for us.”

Understandable, though. The lyric is loaded with sleepy-eyed views from aeroplane windows, an alcohol drip-feed, the fear that the surface everyone sees is all you’ve got left.

“Oh, absolutely, but that hadn’t started at all. I wrote it before we recorded the first album. We hadn’t been anywhere. Is that the time?”

I imagine so.

“Shit, we’re on in half an hour.”

I pay for the coffees while Thom waits outside, polishing his sunglasses on the hem of his baggy jumper.

“Is that the guy who sang ‘Creep’?” asks the waitress.


STREWN around the Mercury after another typically incendiary show are record company flyers plugging “The Bends”. These trumpet excerpts of the blanket critical praise “The Bends” has attracted. Radiohead have predictable difficulty taking any of it seriously.

“Radiohead toss and turn like the best Pearl Jam and U2 anthems,” recites Jonny, from one leaflet.

“With the emphasis on toss, presumably,” adds Ed.

“Thom Yorke’s voice,” reads Thom Yorke’s voice, “is as enigmatic as Billy Corgan’s.”

Thom blinks a few times.

“Thanks a fucking bunch,” he splutters, less than enigmatically.

Colin, meanwhile, is perturbed by the critical line taken by Rolling Stone. “It’s four stars in quotation marks,” he grins. “Does that mean they just swore at it?”

Outside on the pavement, a few dozen people have waited for Radiohead to emerge so they can tell them that they’re, like, rilly rilly awesome. One woman apologises to Thom for her boyfriend, who’d been making a nuisance of himself down the front during the gig, and had come very close, at one point, to having Thom’s guitar shoved down his throat. Sideways on, to judge by Thom’s expression.

There’s a record company meet-and-greet bunfight we’re supposed to be at, though nobody is keen on the idea. Thom and I get in the last of the fleet of taxis that Caffy has flagged down.

“Right,” he says. “Here’s the plan. We hit the room, we charge around it as fast as possible, we shake hands with and smile at as many people as we can, whether we know them or not, and then we get out and go back to the hotel. I hate these things.”

Right.

“If it doesn’t kill us,” says Thom, “it makes us stronger.”

It turns out to be fairly low-key and relaxed, and everyone eventually stays for more than a few drinks. Even Thom could be mistaken for a man who’vs not having all that terrible a time. When we get back to our lodgings at the Paramount Hotel near Times Square, it’s long past midnight, so we stage a chaotic photo shoot in Pat’s tiny room — to allow all of Radiohead to get in front of the camera, I have to sit in the bath. Pat’s efforts to encourage Radiohead to look like stern, seen-it-all road warriors are not aided by Jonny who, as Pat loads new film, reads choice titles from the catalogue of the hotel’s in-house video library. “I will give anyone in this room five dollars in cash,” he announces, ”if they will ring downstairs and ask for ‘Honey, I Blew Everybody’.”

When Pat finally despairs of getting any sense out of them, Thom and I head downstairs to a table overlooking the lobby. The Philip Starck-designed Paramount is a triumph of style over substance. Everything in the hotel has been built or chosen to look good, regardless of whether it’s any use — this creed applies equally to the furniture, the staff and most of the guests. If everything written about Thom Yorke was true, there’s no way he’d come in here except with by a beltful of grenades and a flamethrower, but he seems to find the place amusing. We order a tablefull of beers, though we’re both well on our way already. Thom peers over the glass balcony at a tottering catwalk mannequin loitering in the lobby below, bulging out of a dress that could scarcely be less comfortable if it was made of barbed wire and nettles.

“Fashion victim,” says Thom, pointing unabashedly. “Dear oh dear. Though what I really like is those Versace jeans that cost £300 and still look like jeans.”

I’ve never seen the point of spending that much money on something you’re only going to spill coffee on.

“Makes you feel good.”

This from a man who is still wearing a fake fur coat that looks like it was assembled from the pelts of a dozen bathmats.

“Colin spent £900 on a suit, but he only wears it now and again. Doesn’t want to get it dirty. I did have a lovely pair of £100 sunglasses, but they got nicked.”

My point exactly. So. Have you made a load of money, then?

“Ed’s the person to ask, because I find it all ultra-confusing. One minute we’ll have half a million in the bank, the next minute we’ll have nothing. Ed keeps saying ‘It’s okay, it’s all about cash flow, it’ll all come through in the next six months’.”

You might want to keep an eye on him. It won’t seem so funny when you’re back busking outside Oxford station and Ed is sipping julep on the verandah of a plantation homestead with commanding views of Lake Tanganyika.

“Yeah... bloody hell.”

Thom’s squinting over the balcony again, this time at one of the under-dressed, alabaster-skinned goddesses that the Paramount seems to pay to saunter languidly about the building. We play a short game of she’s-looking-at-me-no-she’s-looking-at-me-no-she’s-looking-me-
yeah-right-I’m-the-pop-star-and-she’s-looking-at-you-fat-chance.

“It’s when they start coming up to you and saying hello that you get completely freaked out.”

Happen often?

“No. I mean, yes, Andrew, it happens all the fucking time. I mean, no. The crew cop off a lot more than we do.”

Always the way. Though that can be kind of funny. Other peoples’ sex lives usually are.

“That borderline,” says Thom, “is interesting, that duplicity between extremely cheap and extremely beautiful. But someone coming up to you after a show and invading your body space ridiculously, or... or being in a lift! I was in the lift earlier on, with my fur coat on, and this woman — she’s obviously into teddy bears or something — got in the lift, and she was, like stroking me, and her opening line was ‘Hey, we’re in the green lift’.”

Classy.

“Mmm. Maybe I should wear it more often.”

Thom smiles, which he does more than he’s given credit for. If he’s relaxed into his role over the last year, he still seems unduly spooked by the way other people react to his work. He has bridled at several interviewers who’ve accused him of relentless miserabilism, of preaching to a constituency of adolescent misanthropes who regard his lyrics less as songs and more as pre-packaged suicide notes.

“There’s a few key words that keep coming up. . . I mean, you’re asking for my hard disk, and it’s really only the RAM working at the moment. Um, what people actually usually say is that the songs are beautiful, and they say nice stuff about the way I sing and the atmospheres and things, and the lyrics. Which I find quite weird. I was trying to get away from that on ‘The Bends’ by printing them on the sleeve. I was trying to burst the bubble, saying they’re just words, it’s...”

They’re important, though. You wouldn’t bother writing them otherwise.

“The problem is having to deliver that sense of importance all the time. That’s where the problem lies, because then you get into that Morrissey territory of contriving situations simply to perpetuate the way that you think people think you are.”

How do you rate yourself as a lyricist?

“Inconsistent. Definitely inconsistent.”

What’s the best one you’ve written?

“Um...”

There’s a very, very long pause. It’s hard to say whether Thom is indecisive or embarassed.

“Suck your teenage thumb,” he decides. “Toilet trained and dumb. When the power runs out, we’ll just hum. This is our new song. Just like the last one. Total waste of time. My iron lung.”

He rattles it out in an everyday, conversational tone.

“Some woman gave me Dylan’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ the other day,” he continues. “She said, ‘Thom, you’re a poet, listen to this,’ so I listened to it, and then I read the sleevenotes and just burst out laughing. I mean, hang on a fucking minute...”

That was Dylan’s act, though. Impenetrable, spurious nonsense that, for some reason, sounds like it explains everything. Michael Stipe does a fair bit of it as well.

“Well, I’m coming to the conclusion that your brain functions more honestly in spurious crap like that than it does in... things like ‘My Iron Lung’ happen every Saturday, say. The rest of the week it’s just that spurious crap. When I was much younger, I did this four-track demo, and this girl, a really close friend of mine, listened to it and said, ‘Your lyrics are crap, they’re too honest, too direct and too personal, and there’s nothing left to the listener’s imagination,’ and I’ve had that somewhere in the back of my head ever since. So now I want to write that spurious stuff that’s coming straight out of my head. There’s a song on ‘Blood & Chocolate’, by Elvis Costello, the one that goes on and on for yonks...”

“Tokyo Storm Warning”.

“Yeah. Gibberish! Complete fucking gibberish! And it’s just wondrous. Because you open yourself up to that, because that’s the way human brains think. I just think Radiohead are in a really dangerous position at the moment, where we could end up supplying that pathos and angst all the fucking time, and I think there’s a bit more to it than that.”

A closing line, if ever I’ve heard one.

“Mmm. I’m dying for a piss, as well.”


THE interior of the urinal in the Paramount’s lobby is covered — ceilings, walls and floors — in gleaming, mercilessly reflective, polished steel. There is nowhere you can look without seeing everything else that’s going on while you’re in there, and from an alarming variety of angles. Thom and I pause, aghast, just inside the door.

“You go first,” says Thom. “I’ll wait outside. I’m still too British for this.”

top

Melody Maker, 06.1995

Headcases

Radiohead’s The Bends is one of the albums of the year. We already know this. We also know that Thom Yorke is the next richeykurt rock’n’roll martyr. But what we don’t know is that the ’head are all mad bastard jokers obsessed with trousers, booze and shagging! Or are they?

Caitlin Moran meets the men behind the myths.


“Oh, for Christ’s sake, I did not write this album for people to slash their fucking wrists to”. But they are Thom, they are. Whether Thom Yorke likes it or not, “The Bends” is now an integral part of this end of the century/culture of despair thing we keep hearing so much about on the “6 o’clock news” and in The Guardian and in The Mirror and in The Sun and in The Times, and every hour on the hour on the radio.

“In Utero”, “The Holy Bible”, “The Bends”. This is your library as you go under for the third and final time. “In Utero”, “The Holy Bible”, “The Bends”. (Now I can’t climb the stairs/ Pieces missing everywhere/ Prozac/ Painkillers/ Crawling on all fours... Drying up in conversation... all your insides fall to pieces/ You just sit there wishing you could still make love... you will be the one screaming out... I try to behave but it eats me everything is broken) — this is your diary for the last year. This is your day-to-day.

“It’s not my fucking day to day. It’s not my life. These lyrics aren’t self-fulfilling. The Bends isn’t my confessional. And I don’t want it used as and aid to stupidity and fucking wittery. It’s not an excuse to wallow. I don’t want to know about your depression-if you write to me, I will write back angrily telling you not to give into all that shit”. Thom taps his knife briskly on his wine glass. He takes a deep breath. He is clearly very annoyed. He spits: “Shut up, fuck off, and go and buy The Smiths’ back catalogue instead. Our music is of no use to you”.


Beating Yourself Up From The Inside

So, if “The Bends” is not the final sigh of a man in a warm bath with razor blade on hand to cure those itchy wrists, where does the weight, the steam-roller head-fuck of “The Bends” come from?

Repulsion. Internalised repulsion. This is, in essence, what one is dealing with when writing about Radiohead. Thom Yorke isn’t another desperate, depressive Kurt or Richey-style rock’n’roll martyr — the truth spins along the lines of: Thom has tantrums which he turns in on himself, and burn him up from the inside, hence the fall-out of sparks and friction. Thom’s disgust with the world is large and the “job” he holds down forces him to do things that make him shudder — the slime-fed corporate lunches; the meet and greets; the re-recorded radio-jingle whoring; the desperate insincerity — this isn’t why he’s spent a decade in a band. This isn’t why he hauls himself out of bed and writes down the music that drifts in with sleep; this isn’t why he embarked on the American tour with “Creep” that nearly finished off the band. Thom feels the “business end” of the music industry holds him back from the music and the adrenaline gut-kick that comes with something as simple as playing a great live set. He worries that meeting too many gits in suits will take the “sturm und drang” from his storm-symphonies; that knowing what “units” are will take the poetry from his soul and sully his friendship with the rest of the band.

Now, worry coupled with impotence makes panic, and long-stewed panic leads to anger. And as you can’t slap the hand that holds the paycheck, all you can do is beat yourself up from the inside. For caving in and letting slide your morals. Internalised repulsion. Couple this with the enormous pressure of writing a follow-up to the million-plus selling “Pablo Honey” and you have the twisted emotions that ribbon “The Bends”. Despite the heavy strobing, future-machine roll of “Planet Telex”; Thom’s rasping voice as he confesses he “used to fly like Peter Pan”; the vertiginous waltz of “Nice Dream”; the broken-backed lament of “Black Star”; the whole air of triumphalist misery...despite all of this, and unlike “The Holy Bible” and “In Utero”, “The Bends” is not a diary album. These are half-remembered traumas, not current ones; nightmare-songs on behalf of the scared and the scarred and the shattered. Empathy for the bedevilled. That’s what we are dealing with, in a very real sense, when we talk about Radiohead. And yet, on the other hand, we’re dealing with Colin’s trousers. This job never gets any easier. Radiohead aren’t too happy about their recent press — more specifically they aren’t too happy with The Stud Brother’s bleak front-cover story detailing the raw emotions that produced “The Bends”. So unhappy in fact, the Melody Maker photographers were told to fuck off at the recent Bristol Sound City bash. Coupled with even the most cursory glance at “The Bends” frustration-laden lyric-sheet, and varied reports that Thom is “moody” and “troubled”, and the rest of the band not far behind in the angst-ridden stakes, you half expect to see a hyperactive semi-circle of ambulances around the hotel door, bearing worryingly heavy stretchers.

“Oooooh, it is hot. I feel I’m melting just like a runny ice-cream. Mmmmmmm, ice-cream. I just fancy one, don’t you? My favourite’s choc chips. How about you ? You can’t really beat rum ’n raisin, can you ? I think I got squiffy on rum ’n raisin once. Oh, I did feel peculiar”.

On stage, Johnny Greenwood is a blur of glossily tossed hair, coat-hanger hips and shiny, squalling guitar. His brother, Colin, looks impassive — sharp-suited, concentrating on his bass. Maybe thinking about art, or fine china. Offstage, they are Viz’s “Pathetic Sharks”. We are in Rome, on a day so hot the walls have heat-rash and the Coliseum is wearing shorts. Johnny, on the other hand is wearing a 100 per cent wool T-shirt, having mislead the rest of his clothes is Paris, and Colin is fretting about his suit. “It’s smart. But is it too smart?” he worries. “I don’t want to look desperate”, “But you are desperate” his brother quietly reminds him. “We call him Shabba”, guitarist Ed O’Brien chips in, “you know, Shabba Ranks, Mr Loverman. He likes the ladeez”.

Ed is tall, dark, handsome and wise and polite. He is very much like Frasier, the moral Mountie from BBC’s Due South. He is so polite in fact, that one imagines he says ma’am after every utterance. “OK Rome are you ready to fucking rock’n’roll? Ma’am” Like that. It’s because of his politeness that one assumes Ed purposely hasn’t pointed out the more usual cockney rhyming slang connotations of his new nickname. Welcome to the bleak, miserable, polite world of Radiohead.

Case in point: the band’s entrance to tonight’s gig.


The Gig

Colin strides onto the stage. This is a proud moment for Radiohead — nay, Britain — as the band are the first non-Italian band to play the prestigious slot on Cornetto FM. Four million people are listening. All of EMI Italia are watching from seats ringed high around the stage, executive jewellery shimmering in the light. The “vibe” all day has been that “The Bends” will be one of those Huge International Crossover Albums, and will continue selling for the next 15 to 20 years, thus enabling Radiohead, as greying forty-something’s to buy large Angst Farms in Scotland and retire.

But this is all in the future. The present is still fresh and contains Colin shining sweaty as the lights dim and he breaches the further reaches of the stage. Perhaps his Angst Farm future is weighing on his shoulders and ruining the line of his suit- for lo! Suddenly a cog in Colin’s brain clicks into the place and he wheels around, only to realise...that he is alone! Yup, tonight, Radiohead are represented by Colin and no one else but Colin. He spins on his heel, and looks desperately for his bandmates. Thom, Jonny, Ed and drummer Phil Selway can be seen through a small window at the back of the stage, pointing at Colin and laughing. Ed is pulling what can only be described as “Nyuuuur” faces. Thom is doubled over, and you can almost hear his wheezy laughter from a hundred yards away. This is what Radiohead are like. There is no accident waiting to happen here. No obituaries due for the next 40 years. Move along, please.


Thom

We don’t see much of Thom Yorke for the first 10 hours in Rome. The first time we do see him close up is in the tour van, driving from the gig to a restaurant. Thom’s face is creased up in a Muttley out of “Dastardly and Muttery” cackle as Colin asks, with increasing Pathetic Sharkness, “Are we there yet?” Thom has been absent the rest of the day — hidden in his hotel room when we arrived, lost inside himself the rest of the time. At 2 a.m., around a drunken and riotous restaurant table, the summons finally comes. “Thom is ready to see you now”. Thom is sick of interviews. You feel it seeping from every pore as you approach his chair. You can tell from the resigned slump in his back as you sit down. This is a man who doesn’t want to be asked what his influences are. He will punch anyone who want to know about Creep. We decide to approach this one sideways, all crab-like and sneaky.

What’s the best party you’ve ever been to then?

“Eh?”

Best party — which one?

“Hmmmmmmm”

Thom thoughtfully pours a small vineyard into his glass, then drinks it. All of it.

“There was a summons”, he begins, “it felt like that. I was at university. You have been chosen to attend The Greatest Party Ever, held by, erm, this guy. All meet at such and such a place. Bring a sleeping bag. So I toddled along, breathlessly, anticipation building, and met a fair-sized crowd. The agenda was carefully set. We all had to get in this car, and let it roll down a hill with the lights on. I think there were a few crashes. Then we built huge fires to see by, as it was right at this point, and starting taking the car apart, and made musical instruments out of the various components. With what was left of the car, we made a huge Chinese dragon, which we danced around in. These shamanic drumbeats started up from somewhere, and we all started twitching and gyrating until daybreak. It was pretty pagan. Then we crashed out in the open in our sleeping bags, and I was awoken at 7 am by the smell of bacon and some loon with a megaphone shouting ‘Wake up! Time to die!’. That was pretty cool”.

Yeah, that is pretty cool. I was expecting the usual, “Well, me and a couple of mates and a couple of birds and a sick-pack...”. “Well, I was special and artistic even at that age”, Thom says, heavy on the irony. Rock’n’roll is all about gangs, packs — were you ever in a gang? Thom hoots. “Heh, heh, heh, Nah, the only gang I was ever in kicked me out!” Why so ? “I had Velcro buckles on my trainers instead of laces. They thought I was letting their cool down. Bastards”.

Thom relaxes in his chair, and picking up his glass, savours the bouquet of his very good red wine. Then he belts it down in one. I figure I can slip in a music question. Thom, did you or did you not, as the intro to “Planet Telex”, nick the middle eight to Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die”? “Whaaaaaat?”. “Live and Let Die”. You did, didn’t you? “No, let’s be very clear where we nicked things from”, Thom says, bristling. “We nicked “Planet Telex” from “Tago Mago” by Can. So fuck off, we are arty us”. Thom grins. It’s a beautiful thing. He drinks more wine. He seems at peace with the world. Right ...


Big Important “Newsnight” Questions

So, Thom, you are rock martyr up-in-flames, fame-as-your-crucifix, black hole sun bloke, no?

“Smack addict”, adds Thom, now heavy on the sarcasm. “Don’t forget smack addict. I like a big bowl of smack for breakfast. Big crack pies too”. He sighs, and starts reeling off a list: “I like morphine, I like David Lynch, I like graveyards, I like defacing dolls, I like wearing ripped dresses and make-up, I love turning crosses upside down and setting fire to them — and I’m gonna top myself any day now”. He raises his eyebrows and stares intensely. Then he giggles.

“Let’s get one thing clear — I didn’t write this album for people to slash their fucking wrists to. That last feature the Melody Maker did was so, so fucking strange. I can’t really complain about it, because every single word on those pages I said — but the conclusions they drew! And that whole debate on depression the Melody Maker held (where “The Bends”, and Thom in particular, were cited as party of “The Holy Bible”/“In Utero”/rickykurt triangle)...in a music paper? Excuse me?”

Thom giggles again, in disbelief. “The whole thing was qualified by saying, ‘Oh, I had a mate who chucked himself off a bridge or something’”. Thom rolls his eyes, “‘and therefore I know all about this, I have something valid to say about it’. It all just seemed reminiscent of the time Pepsi discovered Generation X, and it’s answer for Generation X, this whole demographic, this whole cultural trend was to come up with Pepsi Maw. Y’know like, ‘We know you’re all feeling bad and nihilistic and suicidal, so...here’s Russell Senior from Pulp to say ‘Stuff and nonsense!’’ Jesus, I found it all really offensive. The ultimate insult”.

Why ? You seem really het up.

“Because...because...” Thom falters for a minute, and stutters. “Because I’ve felt like that, I’ve known how it feels to...well! And to have it written about in the music papers seems like depression has become the property of music hacks”.

Have you ever met Taylor Parkes?

Depression is property. He drives around in a big Depression van, handing out angst to the poor. But anyway, vulture-eyed-depression-watchers will have noticed the past tense in Thom’s outburst. “Known how it feels”. There’s no gaping wound here — just a few, silvery thin scars. The past. The past.


Another Big, Important “Newsnight” Question

So, Thom, do you think “The Bends” is a depressive album?

“I’ve got a theory”, he says, tipping back in his chair. “I have a theory that all good music is uplifting, whether it be chirpy acoustic guitars and stuff about ‘taking the weather with you’, or whether it sounds like Joy Division with lyrics about your dog dying in a well”. Bizarrely enough, Jim Shaw from the ever-cheery Cranes has an identical theory. Maybe something to do with making beautiful music. But you figure it’s sad because beauty is terrifying, and always doomed? Whatever.

“And it’s incredibly annoying that no one’s noticed the giggles in that album”, Thom continues.

Hello?

“The song “The Bends” is completely jokey, completely taking the piss. None of that stuff had ever happened to us when we wrote it”.

What, the “They brought in the CIA/The tanks and the Marines/To blow me away/To blow me sky high” bit? Are going do all that stuff on your American tour?

“No, all that stuff about aeroplanes and not knowing who your real friends are. That was our Bowie pastiche! Our joke song!”. Thom laughs. “And really do wish I’d never written that fucking song — it’s become the bane of my life. Hunddreds of journalists asking — every single fucking interview: ‘Do you wish it was the sixties?’ No, I don’t wish it was the fucking sixties — Levis jeans wish it was the sixties — I certainly fucking don’t.”

Why did you make the album?

“I can’t remember”. Thom stirs the ash in the ashtray with a matchstick. “I really can’t remember what emotions I took into “The Bends” — which I think is the mark of a good album. I know I never thought songs like Bulletproof would work — it was too slow and soppy. But even though I find it uncomfortable to listen to the album. I still think it blows the opposition away. Fucking Bush — urgh. Spit. People in Calvin Klein underpants desperate to prove they have an affinity with... “The Bends” is miles ahead of every other fucking band, miles...”

Thom stops suddenly and looks uncomfortable. He has been boastful. This is not polite, and therefore against the Radiohead Rules of Conduct. He says six “I dunnos” as penance and has another drink.


Colin’s Trousers

This is Colin at 4 a.m.: “I mean”, he says, slumping in his chair “I’m in a band, we’re reasonably successful, I’ve got a very nice suit — I’m not even a bad person — so why can’t I get a shag?” He pulls a face, slurps morosely at his wine, and gestures for a light. Someone holds a candle across the table, and drips molten wax on his trousers, in one action cutting his chances of getting laid by a quarter. “Oh! My trousers! Fuck!”. This is how you should think of Radiohead.


Product

“The single? Oh, it’s a big moving broken-hearted ballad, innit?” Thom grins, wickedly. “I almost killed myself writing it”. He grins again.

top

Melody Maker, 23.10.1993

Radiohead, By Paul Lester

I’ve heard screaming before, but nothing quite like that. At once exhilarated and anguished, it is the scream of a girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “I love you, Thom!” The scream is four syllables long, very sharp and extraordinarily loud, somehow managing to pierce the commotion of the Providence, Rhode Island crowd and the noise blasting out of Radiohead’s enormous PA.

“I love you, Thom!” There it goes again, sharper and louder now, a terrifying mix of frightened child, ecstatic weenie, and wailing banshee. Of course, I have no trouble hearing the scream — everyone in Club Lupo’s, Jesus, everyone in Providence can hear the yell-from-hell; it’s just that I don’t seem to be able to work out where the fuck it’s coming from. “I love you Thom!” That does it, I’ve got to find out who on earth is responsible for this orgiastic moan-cum-death rattle. So, as Radiohead build towards the climax of their finale, “Pop Is Dead”, I wade into the fray, a claustrophobic crush of pretty preppies, frat-house freaks, cropped jocks, sweaty crowd-surfers and all-round psychos. And there she is again, squashed between the Beavis and Buttheads, the tiny kid with the giant voice. “Hey! Look at this!” the drenched (new) waif calls out, instantly recognising me from the hotel where Radiohead and The Maker have been staying and on whose doorstep she has been camping out over the last few days in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of her heroes. The girl, Sharon Bouchard, 21, from Massachusetts — is shivering, not from cold, but like she’s just seen a ghost, or Christ, or the ghost of Christ. “Oh my God”, she sighs, “that was the best thing I’ve ever seen. They are just awesome”. Suddenly, Sharon starts pulling up her sweatshirt to reveal her midriff. It is purple. So determined was she to get close to Thom E Yorke — Radiohead’s singer, guitarist and reluctant messiah — that she braves the melee, risking, in the process, such irrelevancies as life and limb. I guess that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re in love. “He is sooo gorgeous”, swoons Sharon, prodding at her equally bruised thighs and grinning, oblivious to the gawping hordes, oblivious to the pain. Clearly she can’t feel a thing. Obviously, she would do it all again. “Course I would!” she beams. “Anyway, it doesn’t hurt a bit”. Brett who?

I’ve seen bigger bands. I’ve seen better bands. I’ve seen U2 in Germany, New Order at Reading, Public Enemy at Wembley and Barry White in Manchester, so, no, you can’t possibly blame me for assuming I’d seen it all. And I have, in a sense. But I’ve never seen five undernourished ex-college boys from the Home Counties inspire such reckless enthusiasm, such devotion, such love. I’ve never seen a fan letter for an “indie” band from a man in Death Row before. I’ve never seen a bunch tagged “ugly losers” by hacks in their home country make so many luscious teenies (male and female) on the other side of the Atlantic quiver and shake. I see all of this and more in America with Radiohead. Yeah, that Radiohead. The Radiohead we all used to studiously ignore when they were called On A Friday. The Radiohead we sort of began to notice when their monument of misery, “Creep”, crawled out of Parlophone last September. The Radiohead we begrudgingly gave press space when their next slabs of caustic plastic, “Anyone Can Play Guitar” and “Pop Is Dead”, scraped the charts (respectively numbers 32 and 42) and their debut album, Pablo Honey, reached the Top 30. The very same Radiohead we pushed aside in our rush to sanctify Suede and who we're now being forced to (re-)assess in the light of the “Creep” re-issue (Number seven with loads of bullets) and the band’s impressive Stateside success — the LP has shifted upwards of half a million units, while estimates suggest it will have sold a cool million by the end of the year. Yes, indeed. That Radiohead. Embarrassed? Nous?

No. Not us. Never. We know no shame and have even less pride. Besides, Radiohead, we now realise, are worth every cringing second of the shameless volte-face it takes to be granted an audience with them. Certainly Thom E Yorke — a man who seems to have taken Elvis Costello’s early “Revenge And Guilt” persona and multiplied it severalfold — is becoming a fascinating figure at the centre of British pop. If the sensitivity, irritability, suspicion, rage and anxiety displayed in Yorke’s words are anything to go by, he should be a chap with a chip the size of a small banana republic on his shoulder. And if the savage riffing and thrillingly conventional “Music For Lapsed Rock Fans” is how I describe Radiohead later, to the band’s assent attack of the players is any measure, then Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar), Ed O'Brien (rhythm guitar), Colin Greenwood (bass) and Phil Selway (drums) will be bullish and brash, defensive and aggressive, in the mould of the young Joe Strummer and Paul Weller. Wrong! Radiohead are disarmingly charming, articulate on every subject from representative democracy to fin de siecle Muggletonian ascetism, erudite from morning till night and educated to the max. Their received pronunciation has more in common with royalty than rockers. And they could probably knock out the odd authoritative political column for The Guardian in their spare time. And I can’t help wondering, as I watch Thom leave the Providence gig, head towards the tour bus and reduce a startled female to a trembling wreck (Sharon Bouchard!), and the Greenwood brothers get swamped by autograph hunters, whether these strange (banal?) pop rituals are beneath them. And I can’t help wondering just who are these pale young men whose songs and sounds, eyes and skin are exciting thousands of music lovers thousands of miles from home.

“He’s great, but what is his problem?” asked Steve Mack of That Petrol Emotion when he first saw Thom E Yorke at a Radiohead gig last year. The crusty kitten-hunk had a point. Yorke may well be as much of a gentleman as the others in the band; it’s just that he’s rather more prone to bouts of moodiness. And don’t forget that the enigmatic singer is the man responsible for this little litany of lacerating self-loathing: “I’m better off dead” (“Prove Yourself”); “I failed in life” (“Stupid Car”); “What do you care when all the other men are far, far better?” (“Thinking About You”); “All my friends said bye-bye” (“Faithless The Wonder Boy”); and of course “I wish I was special” (“Creep”). Back in the Providence hotel bar, and bearing in mind his reputation for sporadic fits of pique, even black periods of nihilistic despair, I approach Thom cautiously and repeat that Petrol enquiry: what is his problem?

Nursing a bootle of Beck’s in the corner, he reasons, “I'm a lot of different people when I write”.

I hear you’ve been in a steady, happy relationship for three years. How come you sound so haunted and hurt, fierce and fucked off/up in your songs?

“You can feel those things in any relationship”, he explains, eyeing me from beneath his Cobain-ish blonde fringe, apparently unaware of the fact that Sharon Bouchard (again!) is spying on him, a la Fatal Attraction, from a nearby table. “Am I for real?” he repeats. “Good question. I am sincere about what I do”.

How about that line from Faithless: “I can’t put the needle in” — have you ever been tempted in one of your more downer moments, to try hard drugs? Or were you just flirting with heroin imagery?

“I wouldn’t be that pretentious to play the Kurt Cobain”, he winces. “That phrase is more about trying to get back at people, get nasty”.

Tonight, you introduced “Yes I Am” (the b-side of “Creep”) by saying, “this is for all the people who shat on us”. What made you say that?

“That was just... I wrote that song about the sensation of being the underdog for so long, and how suddenly everyone’s nice to you. And it’s like, ‘Fuck you,’” he snarls, offering a glimpse of the human behind the hysteria.

More glimpses: Thom was born in Scotland [sic] 25 years ago (it’s his birthday on the day of this bar confessional. Ed and Colin present him with a book by the lading dissident intellectual, Noam Chomsky), moving to Oxford when he was seven. His childhood was all right, but he hated his public school (“It was purgatory”, he says. “It nurtured all the worst aspects of the British middle-class: snobbery, lack of tolerance and right-wing stupidity.”) After a tortuous gailed romance (“Have you ever seen ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?’ It was like that for a year and a half, lots of fighting in public”), Thom went to Exeter University where he studied English and Fine Art, shaved his head, started DJing and discovered he had a dangerous taste for drink (“I almost died from alcohol poisoning once”, he shudders at the memory. “I lost it for a bit.”). Thom doesn’t say whether or not things got so bad he ever thought about ending it all (“Might have done, might not have done,” he half laughs), but he does agree with my theory that “Creep” is the exact inverse of The Stone Roses’ “I Wanna Be Adored”: the former is fuelled by self-pity, the latter by arrogance — both by egocentricism bordering on narcissism. “Creep” is saying “I Wanna Be Abhorred”, isn’t it?

“Yeah, definitely” Thom is quick to agree but slow to disclose any more. “It’s about [pause]... It’s about sympathy [longer pause]... This is all very hard. If, erm... Yeah I s’pose. Mmmm [very long pause]... As soon as I say this, everyone will take the piss. It’s just, I think [pause for several centuries]... Part of me is always looking for someone to turn around, buy me a drink, give me a hug and say it’s all right”, he says at last, breaking the painful silence. “Because I just go off on one. For days I can’t talk to people. And it shocks me because I’m still doing it. I want to be alone and I want people to notice me — both at the same time. I can’t help it. There’s this book, Famished Road, where the main character has these forces following him around and pulling him about — I feel like that”, Thom continues to bare his soul and disprove the idea that commercial reward + public acclaim = emotional stability. “It sounds really tossy, this. If I was a painter, it would be like, ‘Wow! That’s wonderful!’ But this is pop and in pop you’re not meant to say things like this”.

You are if you’re Radiohead. You are if you’re Thom E Yorke. And you are if you’re one of the dandy Greenwood duo. Jonny is 21, Colin is 25. Their father died when they were young, leaving their mother to worry about her two wayward sons. “She thought Jonny was being dragged away by the forces of evil”, confides Colin the day after the Rhode Island gig, chainsmoking Camel cigarettes inside the tour bus now parked outside the Avalon — the venue for tonight’s Boston show. “She got a bit better when she saw us on Top Of The Pops. Mind you, she thinks everyone on that programme’s a drug-taking lunatic. Actually, she’s not happy unless she’s worrying. Very Radiohead, that. We’re all worriers, you know. Even when there’s nothing left to worry about”. Jonny, who left Oxford Polytechnic after one term to concentrate on the band, is Radiohead’s resident musical genius, the Bernard Butler to Thom’s Brett Anderson. Something of a prodigy at school, he played viola for the Thames Valley orchestra, then began hanging around with Colin and Co as soon as the group started. Pretty soon, all five members were sharing a house in Oxford, just like the Monkees. “No, Banana Splits“, corrects Jonny, joining me in the scorching Indian summer heat on the pavement — sorry, sidewalk — outside the Avalon. “Which of us was the father figure? No patriarchs! We were all mothers”. I ask Jonny whether he thinks Radiohead have achieved success in the States rather quicker than Suede because the latter are more of a tease and Americans mistrust any ambiguity of any kind. “Are we more boyish? Ooh no”, he grimaces, genuinely peeved at my proposal. Jonny later admits to being more than slightly repulsed by a nipple ring given to him by a female fan who appeared stark naked at his hotel door a few nights ago, and asks me, at the end of our chat, not to mention the gender of his partner back home. Meanwhile, Jonny’s staring at the sun, telling me this: “We get fans of both sexes. Groupies? That’s a terrible word. How Seventies. No, we don’t get offers. We’re not the Manic Street Preachers. We’re a testosterone-free band. We didn’t form this group to unleash our libidos on the general public”. Colin, who has a degree in English from Cambridge University, spent his formative years in the kitchen at parties with Thom, wearing black bodystockings and garish mauve and green shirts and generally, as you do, trying to halt the hegemony of goth. Another one of Colin’s favourite pastimes was outraging the boys at school (Radiohead attended the same school, although, apart from Colin and Thom, they were all in different years) by getting off with their male friends. Then he went to college and really let his hair down. “We all pretty much shot our load at college in terms of drinking and drugs”, admits the most candid member of the band, squinting at the sun coming through the bus window and closing the blinds as scores of Radiohead’s new American fans mill about on the street below, waiting for their bass-playing idol to emerge. “It was nothing extreme”, he adds, sounding for all the world like an Oxbridge don with an epicurean bent. “Nothing more than speed or dope. Smack? No! People can’t afford that indulgence in terms of time and money these days. I remember at college”, he goes on, furiously inhaling and exhaling, “there was this chemist on the corner — it was the local methadone dispensing clinic. I used to walk past and see all these junkies queuing up. Then I’d walk round the corner and they’d be shooting up, which wasn’t very nice...” Colin has already informed me that Brett Anderson’s celebrated remark — “I’m a bisexual who’s yet to have a homosexual experience” — was lifted from the notorious slacker manual, Generation X. What about those early gay encounters of yours, Colin?

“Yeah, well. Yeah, well. Yeah!” he laughs, momentarily embarrassed before divulging: “Well, yeah, I had a couple of flings at college with some guys. But my girlfriend knows about them, so it’s all right. She doesn’t like me hanging out with her gay friends in London too much, just in case I get tempted! I’ll show you a photo of her if you want. She’s a biker. She’s more rock ’n’ roll than me. She’s a biker woman. She got three bikes on our holiday in Greece. You know, I was the only guy in Greece on the back of a bike with a woman on the front!” he chuckles, leaping up to dig a photograph of Madeleine, his crazy biker chick girlfriend, out of his travel bag.

Ed is the only member of Radiohead who doesn’t have a partner back home. There are advantages to this. For one, he has more money than the others (a homesick, lovestruck Colin has spent about 600 pounds ringing Madeleine every night. Drummer Phil doesn’t disclose a precise amount for his nocturnal calls to girlfriend Kate [sic], but he does tell me that he wishes he’d bought shares in British Telecom). For another, he gets to flirt with women on the road. Like Tanya Donnelly of Belly, for example, who — take note, “True Stories” fans — has just broken off her engagement with her US rocker boyfriend.

Even as we speak, Radiohead’s playmate, Tanya, is jumping down the steps of Belly’s astrodome of a tour bus and interrupting my chat with Ed as we sit in the shade outside the Avalon. “Sorry!” Tanya squeals in my general direction after bounding towards Ed to plant a big kiss on his cheek, that legendary “shark with lipstick” smile forming on her face. “I thought you were just some college geek doing an interview”. (Memo to 4AD: you can forget about any more Belly front covers.) Ed’s parents split up when he was 10, although he moved back in with his father in Oxford five years ago — he’s 26 now, but his dad, a Happy Mondays fan, is pretty cool. After a regular adolescence (“I used to think girls hated me”, he says. “I couldn't speak to girls till I was 17”), Ed went to Manchester University, then did his “Jack Kerouac” bit, taking a greyhound bus around America, exorcising most of his bacchanalian tendencies.

“Someone held a party for us the other night and none of us went,” he laughs. “Drinking just depresses me nowadays. Until recently I was drinking very heavily and I loved it. But then it started to act as a depressant. I like to smoke dope a lot, but that’s about it. Crack and coke? We’ve been offered it. I am intrigued, but... The same goes for girls — there’s a hidden rule that no one goes with groupies. I hate that side of things, it’s so dirty and seedy. It might be all right in a Guns N’ Roses video, but it’s not for us. We’re quite a moral band, you know”.

I don’t speak to Phil Selway — who only last night was stopped outside the band’s tour bus by a girl and asked whether he was “the roadie or just a hanger on? Oh, and can you get me Thom’s autograph?” — until after Radiohead’s storming appearance in front of 3,000 devotees at New York’s Roseland theatre. I know it was storming because Thom’s skinny-rib black jumper is hanging over a heater pipe in the band’s dressing-room after the gig and it is dripping with sweat. Really. Drip, drip, drip. I also know it was storming because all sorts of record company and MTV types are schmoozing and salivating and generally declaring Radiohead to be the best new band since whoever, the cure to all known diseases, etc, etc. You wouldn’t know it was storming to look at Ed, who, after a puff or 27 of, well, puff, has got what he calls “the fear”. And you definitely wouldn’t know it to look at Thom E Yorke. Evidently, schmoozing with record company and MTV types comes just below verruca removal on his list of likes.

Fearing the onset of one of Thom’s “moods”, I drag Phil into a corridor and ask him why he thinks Radiohead have Made It Big in the United States, as opposed to, just to pick a name at random, Suede (interesting fact: Suede immediately faxed their congratulations on hearing that Pablo Honey had gone gold). “Americans like our Englishness”, says the drummer, Liverpool Poly graduate and former Nightline counsellor (true!), leaning against a drab, grey wall. “It’s a far more abrupt kind of Englishness than Suede’s, more energetic, more frenetic and direct”. Just as Phil is starting to get into his stride, a rude American strides over to where we’re standing and starts listening to our conversation. Surreally enough, it turns out to be Michael O’Neil, production assistant on MTV, better known as the voice behind America’s latest lobotomised cartoon cult, Beavis, of Beavis and Butthead infamy. “Radiohead rock, man!”, O’Neil/Beavis announces, unprompted, as Phil and I exchange looks of the “An Uzi, an Uzi, my kingdom for an Uzi” variety. “Are they gonna be big? Let’s quote-unquote: ‘Bigger Than U2’! Definitely. They know how to write songs, they know how to sing and they know how to play. They’re cred. They’ve got attitude. They’re alternative crossover! They’re like Jim-Morrison-meets-Jimi-Hendrix. MTV love them. They’re rockin’ the country!” Huh-huh, huh-huh. Only this time, the joker’s not joking. Radiohead’s acid anthems and simply twisted pop is just what Europe, America, the world ordered. One million people can’t be wrong. Can they?

top