Spin Magazine, 5.98

THE SPIN TOP 40 VITAL ARTISTS IN ROCK
#2 - RADIOHEAD

Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood, international man of mystery

Spin: Mr. Bloke? Do you always take calls at hotels under an alias?

Colin Greenwood: It's even more necessary when we're in Japan-fans are always calling up.

Right now, to a lot of people, Radiohead seem the sovereign artistic operation in rock'n'roll. What, if anything, connects "Creep," The Bends, and OK Computer?

When we rehearse, we're always trying to aim for something else. But we never quite succeed in getting there. For example, we used to call "Creep" the "Scott Walker song." Of course, it doesn't sound at all like him. We wanted it to-we're enormous fans-but it fell short.

But many of your fans have this romantic notion of your music as being somehow sourceless-especially OK Computer.

Completely the opposite. To us, it's rooted in obvious things-what we've listened to, that is. At the same time, the ways in which our music is rehearsed and played and recorded are, if not sourceless, placeless. We are kind of one step removed, not really in the center of things. Well, Oxford is in the center of England, but it's not really a rock'n'roll town, and we don't record in a rock'n'roll place. We rehearse at an old fruit farm-an apple shed, really. I suppose that's where the Pink Floyd comparisons come in. They were from Cambridge. It's that whole middle-class thing.

Class, that little-discussed rock'nroll issue.

There's no point apologizing about where you come from. The thing about rock is that people are not just interested in bands because of where they want to go. It's where they want to escape from that matters. Sometimes the actual places they're escaping from don't really exist.

When you're onstage, audiences often get blown away by that famed Radiohead presence. Maybe that's why rock stars drop your name as often as Prada's these days.

[German film director] Wim Wenders came to a show in Cologne last year with his son, who is a Radiohead fan. Wenders had listened to OK Computer because he was going to the concert. He liked it, but he didn't think there was a way it could be replicated live. He was amazed that it was.

Your studiocraft does tend toward the ambitious.

We always talk about doing simple pop records, then end up doing some silly long things-no, I didn't say that.

Well, ambitiousness hasn't stranded you.

I was having drinks yesterday in Sydney at the top of the ANA Hotel, on the 36th floor, looking down on this neon cityscape of bridges and rivers. In ten days, I'll be in Tokyo.

So do Radiohead enjoy being rock stars?

Enjoy? You can never say that. It'd be a guilty pleasure, like saying one would enjoy 18 chocolates.

1997 ranking: -

James Hunter

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Guitar World, 04.1998

The Golden Age of Radiohead
by Mac Randall


With their Grammy nominations, hit singles and critical raves, Radiohead look like rock's next big thing. But who are they?
Flip through the end-of-the-year critics' polls of just about any music publication in the world, and see a stunning consensus: 1997's top band was Radiohead, and their album OK Computer (Capitol) was this year's masterpiece.

But don't think for a second that this British quintet's ambitious, expansive rock is just the sort of stuff only music scribes drool over. OK Computer, Radiohead's third full length release, has also caught the fancy of plenty of average listeners. It's the band's fastest-selling and highest-charting album to date, and in January of this year it received high honors from U.S. industry types with a pair of Grammy nominations, including one for Album of the Year. Not bad for a collection of 12 sonically and emotionally uncompromising tracks, of which the first single was a six-and-a-half minute, four-part mini-suite called "Paranoid Android." All this adulation comes as a bit of a surprise to Ed O'Brien, who along with Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood make up Radiohead's formidable three-guitar contingent.

"When we were cocooned in the studio making OK Computer, we were immensely proud of it," says O'Brien. "But the longer the recording process went on, the less sure we became-it's very difficult to be objective, anyway. When the tapes went off to record company people alI over the world, the marketing people were not exactly optimistic about how it would sell, apart from the U.K., which unanimously thought it was fantastic. So we were a little nervous, because we want people to hear our music. There's a lesson to be learned from the album's success. It underlines the fact that radio and record companies underestimate what the general public are capable of listening to. This is not above people's heads. We're people, and we're making it; other people can get it too."

Over the years, comparisons of Radiohead to the likes of Pink Floyd and U2 have become more and more frequent, and the band's visionary studio work and transcendent live shows suggest that these comparisons may be justified. In a relatively short time, Radiohead has turned from pop flavor of the month to one of the most acclaimed rock bands working today.

The Radiohead story began in the mid Eighties at Abingdon School, a "public," boys-only grammar school located just outside the city of Oxford. Drummer Phil Selway was a year above Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood a year below them, and Colin's multi-instrumentalist brother Jonny a year below him.

Though the five didn't know each other that well, they began meeting up in the school's music department, which Yorke describes as "great-no one came down there, and there were these tiny rooms with soundproofed cubicles." Colin remembers Abingdon's music school as a place "where we would all run and hide away from the tedious conformity of timetables and uniforms."

It wasn't long before the boys formed a more or less permanent band, playing music heavily influenced by acts like Joy Division, Magazine, U2, R.E.M., Elvis Costello and the Smiths. After trying and ditching a series of names, they finally settled on the rather uninspired On A Friday in honor of the day they regularly rehearsed. The band played their first gig in 1987, at Oxford's Jericho Tavern. Jonny, who hadn't yet officially been asked to join up, sat onstage with a harmonica, "waiting for his big moment to arrive," as Selway recalls.

Even though the band were already fairly certain that they wanted to keep playing together, when it came time for college, all chose to bow to parental pressure and continue their education, putting music on the back burner. For almost four years On A Friday didn't play a single gig, and they rehearsed only during holiday breaks. (The only member of Radiohead without a college degree is Jonny, the youngest, who abandoned his course in psychology at Oxford Polytechnic when the band got signed.)

On A Friday relaunched itself in the summer and autumn of 1991, playing a series of gigs at Oxford's Jericho Tavern and circulating its first real demo tape (which was officially released the following year as the Drill EP and featured three songs -"You," "Thinking About You," and "Prove Yourself "- that later appeared on Pablo Honey).

The band quickly attracted attention; within a few months, they acquired both management-Chris Hufford and Bryce Edge, who remain their managers to this day-and a record label-EMI, to which they signed on March 2, 1992. Neither the label nor the band, as it turned out, cared much for the name On A Friday, and so it was changed to Radiohead (taken from the title of a song on Talking Heads' True Stories album).

The release of the Drill EP in May 1992 didn't exactly set off any whoops of joy in the sales department (it reached Number 101 on the U.K. charts), so the band went looking for new producers. They chose the Boston-based team of Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade, who'd previously worked with artists like Buffalo Tom and Juliana Hatfield.

The first two songs they'd planned to record as the next single, "Inside My Head" and "Lurgee," didn't turn out so well, but another song carelessly tossed off during e sessions proved far superior. "Creep" was recorded in one take, and the story goes that the band wasn't even aware that Kolderie and Slade were rolling tape. Kolderie remembered the session in an interview for the British music magazine Mojo: "At the end, everyone in the place was silent for a moment and then they burst into applause. I'd never had that happen before."

Once again, that reaction wasn't matched by U.K. sales figures. "Creep" only crept up to Number 78, and got hardly a notice in the press. But the situation changed radically once the song reached America where "Creep," like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Beck's "Loser," crystallized the attitude of a generation uncomfortable in its own skin. With the release of Pablo Honey in February 1993, MTV latched onto "Creep" with a vengeance, making Yorke's lazy-eyed, Johnny Rotten-meets-Martin Short visage a familiar sight. U.S. rock radio quickly followed suit, rocketing the single to Number 34 in Billboard and causing the album to go Gold in the States. (It has since gone Platinum, the only Radiohead album so far to sell over a million copies in America.)

As the year continued, the song became a worldwide hit, even re-entering the British charts, this time reaching Number 7. Radiohead commenced a rigorous touring schedule, visiting the U.S. twice and playing a total of 130 gigs in 1993.

The big problem with this success was that the band were never entirely keen on Pablo Honey. It had been recorded (with Kolderie and Slade) in only three weeks and featured six previously released songs, including their third single, the roaring anthem "Anyone Can Play Guitar." Jonny feels the album "lacks freedom. On the first record, we were so frightened. It's a lot more regimented, I think, due to our own fear and inexperience." O'Brien agrees: "We'd never been in a studio before, we were not very cohesive as a band and we were totally insecure." With all the touring, the band quickly tired of playing the same old songs, but their attempt at a new single, "Pop Is Dead," was poorly received in Britain and never released in America. "Thank God," O'Brien says now. "It was rubbish."

It's fashionable these days for enthusiasts of Radiohead's more recent work to put down Pablo Honey and the early singles, but listening to that music, traces of what was to come can be heard. Sure, the influence of bands like the Pixies- whom Yorke has repeatedly called "the greatest band ever" may be worn a Iittle too obviously, but tracks like the dramatic "Stop Whispering" and the album's climactic closer "Blow Out" are still impressive. "There are lots of mistakes on it," O'Brien says, "but you learn from your mistakes. I still think it's a valid album. It's very up, quite hedonistic-'Let's put on eight guitar overdubs and turn them all up!' I think it's one of those albums you might put on in an open-top car on a Saturday night going to a party, but I could be wrong."

More touring followed in 1994, plus rehearsals and recording for what was to become Radiohead's second album, The Bends, which, although without a defining single like "Creep," sold steadily and was hailed by critics. Perhaps more importantly, it laid the groundwork for OK Computer. The band's pick for producer this time was John Leckie, whose previous work included albums by XTC, Magazine and the Stone Roses. (Kolderie and Slade still mixed the album.) "The best part about working with John Leckie," Jonny recalls, "was that he didn't dictate anything to us. He allowed us to figure out what we wanted to do ourselves."

Even so, the early Bends sessions proved exceedingly difficult, as the pressure to make a follow-up that would build on the success of Pablo Honey created high levels of tension within the band. The solution: taking the show on the road. Radiohead took a break from recording and toured Australia, Southeast Asia and the Far East, during which time they continued to break in the new songs. The album was completed in about two weeks after they returned to England. "When we finished The Bends," Yorke says, "it felt like going back and doing four tracks again. That's what was so exciting that we were in control of it, that it was our thing. We were simply satisfying ourselves."

The one single released by the band during 1994, "My Iron Lung," was greeted with puzzlement at the time, but in retrospect its jangly, ring-modulated opening hook, smooth McCartney-esque vocal verse melody and pulverizing guitar explosions in the bridge sections mark it as a prime example of the new Radiohead style. But "My Iron Lung" fits in perfectly with the rest of the material on The Bends, and it has since become a concert highlight. (Interestingly, "My Iron Lung" is actually a live recording, taken from a show at London's Astoria in May, 1994. Only the vocals were replaced; there are no other overdubs.)

The Bends was released in March 1995, and right from the opening, heavily echoed chords of "Planet Telex" (a sound produced by running a piano through three vintage Roland Space Echo units in series) it was clear that Radiohead had taken a stunning leap forward. This was powerful music of the arena-rock variety, no doubt, but with an intelligence and sensitivity that indicated something special. Arrangements had become more intricate; for the first time, the band was making creative use of its three-guitar lineup.

Ironically, O'Brien says this came about as the result of playing less: "We were very aware of something on The Bends that we weren't aware of on Pablo Honey. There was a need to put more and more guitar tracks on Pablo Honey, and you had to play all the time. Whereas the approach to The Bends was, if it sounded really great with Thom playing acoustic with Phil and Coz [Colin], what was the point in trying to a something more?" As Yorke jokes, "Sometimes the nicest thing to do with a guitar is just look at it."

In general, it could be said that the division of guitar labor in Radiohead is that Thom Yorke plays rhythm, Jonny Greenwood plays lead and Ed O'Brien makes weird noises. But that's an oversimplification, as any of the three are capable of doing anything at any time. Yorke downgrades his guitar skills, saying, "I just keep time, really," while Greenwood bristles at being called a lead guitarist: "You could describe it like that, I suppose, but it's not really like that." But Yorke quickly comes to Greenwood's defense: "When I run out of melodies, there's usually something on Jonny's guitar that's a melody, like Mr. [George] Harrison used to do. You know, pick a melody up here [fingers upper reaches of imaginary fretboard], and so on, because it gets a bit boring listening to one voice all the time."

Two other prominent differences on The Bends are the expanded use of keyboards (mainly played by Jonny), and the amount of group contribution in the songwriting. Though all Radiohead's songs from the start have been credited to the group, most of the early ones were mainly by Yorke (he still writes nearly all the band's lyrics, though he says "the others help me with spelling, stationery and basic grammar.") This changed during The Bends. "Nice Dream," for example, was originally a simple four-chord Yorke composition, but Greenwood and O'Brien added more parts, including the intro, while the music to the propulsive "Just" was largely written by Greenwood, who Yorke says "was trying to get as many chords as he could into a song. It was like writing a medley."

Probably the best-known song on The Bends is the slow-building "Fake Plastic Trees," which it would be tempting to call a "power ballad" if the band weren't so diametrically opposed to the kind of histrionic show of (usually false) emotion that normally characterizes such songs. Yorke remembers the recording of "Fake Plastic Trees" as "a fucking nightmare." O'Brien says, "There was one stage at the first session when it sounded like Guns N' Roses' 'November Rain.' It was so pompous and bombastic, just the worst." Yorke explains that the song was saved through a mixing error: "Paul [Kolderie} missed a cue, so the electric guitars don't come in at the right place. It was a mistake, but we kept it."

Radiohead supported The Bends with more rigorous touring, including five U.S. visits. New songs soon began appearing in the set lists, several of which would appear on the band's next album: "Subterranean Homesick Alien," "No Surprises," "Let Down," the raucous "Electioneering" and the rather Floydian "Lucky," the first of OK Computers songs to be recorded (originally for a 1995 benefit album for Bosnian war relief), which opens with the sound of O'Brien strumming his guitar's strings above the nut with a nail file. lt was also during this time that Jonny's aggressive, arm-snapping playing style began giving him serious pain. A doctor diagnosed a repetitive stress injury and advised Jonny to wear a brace on his right arm, which has since become something of a trademark. "I enjoy putting it on before I play," he confesses. "It's like taping up your fingers before a boxing match."

In a March 1996 interview, Yorke said that he felt The Bends succeeded because "we had to put ourselves into an environment where we felt free to work. And that's why we want to produce the next one ourselves, because the times we most got off on making the last record were when we were just completely communicating with ourselves, and John Leckie wasn't really saying much, and it was just all happening. I don't know if it'll work again, but I hope it does."

With the assistance of engineer Nigel Godrich, Radiohead did produce their next album themselves. They bought their own recording gear and went to work, first in their own rehearsal studio, then in actress Jane Seymour's 15th-century mansion near Bath. Their plan was to stay away from traditional recording studios and the bad vibes they'd previously set off in the band. But the same tension present during the Bends sessions appeared once again during the tracking for OK Computer.

"We thought we could get the same relaxed atmosphere recording the album as we'd gotten recording B-sides in our rehearsal studio," O'Brien laughs. "But that idea was quickly scrapped." Yet the band eventually realized that creative tension wasn't necessarily bad. "Part of it came from the fact that we'd never produced ourselves before," says Selway, "and there was a lot that we had to learn in a short time. But we know now that there are always going to be clashing moods whenever we make anything worthwhile. We've developed our coping mechanisms."

Everyone in the band seemed pleased with the results. Yorke calls the epic "Exit Music (For a Film)" "the first performance that we recorded where every note of it makes me really happy." As on The Bends, much of OK Computer's music was contributed by members of the band besides Yorke, especially Jonny Greenwood, who wrote the slow "rain down" section of "Paranoid Android" and all the music to the album-closing "The Tourist." Also like The Bends, many of the more interesting sounds, like those at the end of "Karma Police," which features O'Brien's AMS digital delay unit feeding back on itself, were recorded with a sense of abandon. "We said, 'Put down the headphones and just go,' " says Yorke, "and so he made weird noises, and we taped that a few times. Sometimes the best stuff happens when you're not even Iistening at all. Once we get to a studio, we either do it together live at the same time, so we can hear what we're doing, or we do the exact opposite, so we don't know what's going on at all. A lot of the time you have to either make it really random or really calculated. There's no middle ground."

Among the more random moments on OK Computer are, the use of transistor radio noise and tape loops on "Climbing Up the Walls." (Yorke: "Whenever there was tape all over the studio floor, I knew things were going well.") Among the more calculated: The drum track to "Airbag," which was recorded, sampled with an Akai S3000 sampler and then laboriously edited and manipulated over two days on the band's Macintosh. Yorke admits this technique was inspired by the work of DJ Shadow [a sample/turntable artist from the San Francisco Bay Area who has released two acclaimed albums on the London/Mo' Wax label- GW Ed.], and the result has led many to argue that Radiohead are, in fact, creating a sort of new rock/techno hybrid. O'Brien downplays this idea, though.

"I think that's more a critics' interpretation. We do try to be diverse. The guitar sound on 'No Surprises' was supposed to harken back to [the Beach Boys'] Pet Sounds, 'Let Down' was a nod to Phil Spector, 'Exit Music' had a [composer Ennio} Morricone atmosphere, 'Airbag' was an attempt to do something like DJ Shadow-but because, we haven't paid the dues, if you like, to play those types of music, we fail to get what we hope to achieve. But by going down that route, we find our own thing."

Other notable albums that influenced OK Computer included Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (as demonstrated by the presence of so much Fender Rhodes electric piano on the album) and the Beatles' White Album" (the tripartite nature of 'Paranoid Android" was inspired by "Happiness is a Warm Gun," while the chorus of "Karma Police" owes an undeniable debt to "Sexy Sadie"). Of course, it's the way Radiohead absorbs these infIuences and turns them into something very different that's most interesting. They may be shooting for a certain familiar sound at first, but what they come up with is invariably new and quite their own. As Yorke says, "Aiming and missing is the whole point, really."

Radiohead followed up the release of OK Computer with their most rigorous touring schedule yet. One of their most notable shows of 1997 took place at New York's Irving Plaza, where the guest list included members of U2, R.E.M., Oasis, Blur, Marilyn Manson, Courtney Love, Madonna and many other notables- including Ed O'Brien's mother. "It was the first time she'd seen us in four years," O'Brien says. "Before the doors opened, I went round looking at the V.I.P. section, and I saw that Madonna had the best table in the house and my mum's table was way in the back. I thought, 'I'm not having this,' so I swapped the signs on the tables around. So," he continues with a giggle, "Madonna was at the back, and my mum had the best table in the house, between U2 and R.E.M. And that's exactly how it should be."

After the accolades of 1997, what's next for Radiohead? Word has it that their touring will continue, and they're traveling with a mobile recording setup, taking down ideas for new tunes.,O'Brien confirms this, but doubts most of the tracks recorded on the road will be used on an album. How and when the follow-up to OK Computer will be recorded is still anyone's guess, but if Thom Yorke's comments are anything to go by, it'lI be done as naturally as possible. "I just read in a magazine in L.A. that [writer Charles] Bukowski was once asked, 'What's your philosophy of life?' And he said, 'Don't try.' And that's right. You can't try. If you try, you're fucked 'cause then you're like everybody else."

***


Computer Hardware: The Guitars and gadgets that make Radiohead hum.


THOM YORKE AND Jonny Greenwood don't much care to discuss the equipment they use. That's partly because they've learned not to get too attached to what are in the end just tools-the fact that all the band's old touring gear was stolen after a 1995 New York gig and never recovered may have something to do with this-and partly because they don't want to sound like they totally endorse anything. "That's why we put on the album 'all instruments at retail price says Yorke. Nonetheless, with the 'help of one Of the band's guitar techs, Peter Clemens (a. k. a. Plank) we've managed to compile a basic roundup of Radiohead's live guitar arsenal. Yorke is a Fender man all the way, using a Seventies Telecaster Deluxe and Jazzmaster, a recent Japanese reissue Tele with stacked humbuckers and a customized Tele with a Strat neck, one humbucker and an active preamp control. "That last one started life as an American Standard, but now it's all bits and pieces that have been set fire to," Plank says. Yorke's main live acoustic is an Alvarez-Yairi DY-88, his main amp's a '95 Fender Twin Reverb, and his effects include a ProCo Turbo Rat and Boss digital delay. Jonny Greenwood's usual axe is a slightly rewired Tele Plus with Lace Sensor pickups, though Plank won't divulge the extent of the rewiring; a mid-Seventies Fender Starcaster also appers on a few numbers. His effects include a Marshall Shredmaster, DigiTech Whammy, Electro-Harmonix Small Stone phase shifter, Roland Space Echo and a few homemade pedals, including a tremolo. It all goes through a Fender Deluxe 85 and a Vox AC30. Ed O'Brien's guitar setup includes a '67 Gibson ES-355, two recent-model Fender Strats, two Nineties Rickenbacker 360's (one six-string and one 12-string) and a guitar handmade by Plank. Ed runs a pile of effects, including a Lovetone Meatball, DigiTech Whammy, MXR Phase 90, Korg A2, Dunlop Tremolo, three half-rack Boss delays and an AMS digital delay into a Mesa/Boogie Tremoverb and a Vox AC30. All three Radiohead guitarists use .010-gauge Elite strings.

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MTV Australia, 04.02.98

Radiohead
MTV grilled Radiohead's bassplayer, Colin Greenwood about all things musical.


MTV: Your last tour was a while after 'Creep' and a while before The Bends, it must be better for you to be here this time?

Colin: Yeah, I mean the record was only released in Europe and America on June 16th, so about 8 months ago. It's not such a bad cycle. We've been very busy since we released the album. I'm glad to come down here and play, to play in this part of the world and also Auckland and Wellington, for the first time.

MTV: I hear you love New Zealand?

Colin: Yes. My brother in-law is from Christchurch. After we finished OK Computer, we finished mixing it in March and I actually escaped from England for about 3 weeks and spent time on this lovely little island. It was wonderful. But you know, the quality of life here seems wonderful as well. As you get older one appreciates more and more what somewhere like Australia and New Zealand has to offer.

MTV: If you don't live here...

Colin: Yeah, it's easy for me to say that. But then I also say that from the standpoint of being an army brat - hence the vaguely military clothes - and really not feeling rooted to anywhere in particular in England, and not particularly loving or hating where I come from.

MTV: So you've been touring flat out since June?

Colin: We've been touring on and off since 1992.

MTV: So has it taken it's toll?

Colin: I think it's starting to lose a bit of its freshness, and I think we need to take some time away from it and get hungry for it again, and try and come up with something new and different. I think with this record in particular the music is quite intense, and the way that we approached launching this record is very intense. We played to basically nearly 90,000 people in the space of a week. We played to nearly 40,000 in Dublin at our own show, and then a week later we played Glastonbury to around the same number. It was a very stressful and high risk way of introducing new songs and performance to the public.

MTV: So Glastonbury was a huge gig for you career wise?

Colin: In some ways I'd say Dublin the week before was a huge gig for us, because that was 38,500 people who'd bought tickets just to see us basically. Although Massive Attack and Teenage Fanclub, both wonderful, were also on the bill. Glastonbury is one of those kids-own dreams things you know, to close Glastonbury on the Saturday night. Unfortunately it's not something we'll have particularly fond memories of in some ways, because we had lots of technical problems; the monitors broke, the lighting computer broke, and it was quite stressful.

MTV: Was Dublin and Glastonbury the first time you played new tracks from the album?

Colin: No, we'd launched the album about a month before in Lisbon, and played a couple of shows to warm up before Barcelona, which I thought was wonderful. It was the same kind of weather as the finest Australian weather. So all the journalists and press were predisposed already, and Barcelona is a wonderful cosmopolitan city. We did like seven weeks touring around Europe and built up a good following in Spain and France. I think it's very exciting to be in Europe at the moment, to be European. It was an experience that we adored.

MTV: Were you surprised by the enormous success of OK Computer?

Colin: Well for a record with no singles on it, it's apparently gone on to sell over 3 million copies. It's going back up the charts in America at the moment...

MTV: You've got two Grammy nominations?

Colin: Mr. Dylan will get one of them, and for the other we're way down the bottom of the heap. I don't think any of us are going to the Grammys.

MTV: How do you feel about comments like 'OK Computer is the best album of all time' or that it's 'the past, present and future of rock'?

Colin: It's kind of flattering, but they're made in the context of 1997, not within the last 50 years of recorded music. I think 'Revolver' will be already as one of the greatest records ever, still.

MTV: Do you think time will be kind to you?

Colin: Well you hope, but you don't know. Time was very kind to The Bends. It wasn't overlooked, but wasn't anticipated, because everyone thought we'd shot our bolt with 'Creep', and there was nothing more to be heard from Radiohead, so The Bends crept up on people, took them surprise - given the benefit of the doubt and a few listens it became a very popular record for a lot of people.

MTV: Was it hard to follow up from The Bends, because it proved to everyone that you could do it?

Colin: Well this is the thing, was it hard to follow up from the success of 'Creep' and the idea that Radiohead don't have another song, and then we did The Bends, and it was like 'How can they follow an album like that?' - but I'd much rather be in a situation like that than the situation we were in with 'Creep' and Pablo Honey, our first album. I think Thom felt the pressure quite keenly when we were recording OK Computer, and he felt sometimes paralysed creatively because he was aware of the expectation of the album after The Bends. But you just can't work like that. You have to find a way of ignoring it.

MTV: How does the songwriting process work with Radiohead?

Colin: It varies a lot. A lot of the songs, the melodies and vocal are obviously written by Thom, and then the arrangements and music, we just play a lot of it live in the room looking at each other, in an old apple farm near Oxford. And it's very important. My brother Jonathan writes a lot of the music as well. There's a song called 'The Tourist' at the end of OK Computer that we recorded the music and Thom doesn't actually play on it, he just came in and sang the vocal on top.

MTV: Thom's lyrics mean a lot to a lot of people...

Colin: He's constantly working on his lyrics. Sometimes what we do when we're working on a song is ask for lyric sheets, get a bit of gaffer tape and slap it to the wall and I look at the words and he'll play around with the sounds of the words. Sometimes the meaning comes later. Sometimes it's not good to be overly didactic and write something explicit because it can be two dimensional and flat, and we've definitely done that before. I think Michael Stipe's very good, his ability to suggest and imply rather than state you know? It's a fine line, you want to hold their interest...

MTV: Is that why the band is working on Velvet Goldmine with Michael Stipe?

Colin: Yeah that was Thom and Johnny. They were doing some covers of Roxy Music songs - that was over a year ago actually. It's incredible how slow moving film productions are.

MTV: What's the story with Massive Attack remixing OK Computer?

Colin: Massive Attack. Well they're really nice people and we really like where they come from, which is Bristol, not like London. It's West Country, left of centre, like being from Oxford. And the same goes for Portishead. Massive Attack got really excited, and they really want to remix the record, and they really wanted to do it over a short period of time. They wanted to go into a studio and just do it over a week or whatever. But we kind of said no, because we were really busy and we wanted to hang out with them. We're such huge Massive Attack fans, and they're really slow workers, so we really wanted them to finish their album first. They're on tour in March and their record should be coming out early springtime, so we really can't wait.

MTV: It will be really interesting to see what they do.

Colin: It will be. I find it really interesting that a whole lot of dance people and people who programme music are fans of our music, considering that we don't have a clue. We bought this technology for OK Computer and went in on a wing and a prayer. We bluffed our way through it.

MTV: But you still keep it quite organic...

Colin: Exactly. The first track on the album, Thom and Phil sat down and Phil did loads of drumming, recorded the drumming, stuck it on a Apple Mac and looped it all together... the musical arrangement of that track is basically the rhythm track. And then everybody just overdubbed, which is quite rare for us because usually we play it all live.

MTV: I hear you record all your live performances - where is all that going?

Colin: We were. We've slowed down on that for the moment though. After this tour of Australia we go back to England and on the 26th April we fly out to Houston and we do an American tour for four weeks, culminating with a number of shows with Bjork in New York. We've also invited Spiritualized to join us on these US shows. After that we take 4 or 5 months off, we won't really start work until September. So because of that we're keeping a lot of our songs as fresh as possible by not thrashing them to death live at the moment.

MTV: Can we expect a live album?

Colin: No, but what I would be nice, what I'd like to do after the next album is a B sides and remix compilation which I think would open a lot of people's eyes to some incredible music which has quite possibly escaped them. You know, were it not for people like Nellee Hooper and Baz Lurhmann people would not know a song like 'Talk Show Host', which is a very dramatic, powerful piece of music.

MTV: How did that come about, did Baz approach you?

Colin: I think it was Nellee Hooper. You have to be very careful with film soundtracks, they asked us to contribute to some later ones, but we didn't accept, because we didn't have the time or the energy to make it work. We'd be wasting our time. But it's probably been one of the best things we've been involved with, working with Baz. But you do have to be very careful about it, you learn as you go along. Because you can be offered silly money to slap a song onto a cheesy film now, after the success of the 'Romeo and Juliet' soundtrack. That soundtrack was so massive. A lot of film companies see it as a way of tying their music company offshoots, and making some money on the album sales and it really sucks.

MTV: The clip for 'No Surprises', do you like it?

Colin: I do. I find it very disturbing, and I find it very gripping. It's very powerful.

MTV: Your songs are all very similar, but also quite different.

Colin: They're all kind of similar in tempo, they're all mid-tempo but a lot of that is that when we worked out our songs we play them mid-tempo, or very slowly because we're not sure of what we're doing basically.

MTV: How did you work out the songs, was it quite difficult to work out how to get them across live?

Colin: A very important time for us was when we were on tour with Alanis Morissette in the autumn of 1996, in America. She invited us out, wanted us to do the whole tour, but we said we'd only do two and a half weeks... we weren't really into what she was doing musically, but as people they were wonderful.

MTV: Hasn't she just covered a song of yours?

Colin: Yeah she used to play 'Fake Plastic Trees'. Her old drummer Taylor, who now plays drums in the Foo Fighters - who are coming through Australia next week I think - he's a friend of ours. It was cool you know, because she had some good musicians in her band. They loved Supergrass as well. You used to hear Alanis Morissette's band doing covers of 'Lenny' from the first Supergrass album.

MTV: What music coming out of the UK do you really admire?

Colin: At the moment, the Propellerheads. I dunno, dance music is kind of funny. You have to see if it stays with you. Um, what are we into at the moment? Oh God, what a nightmare question! I like the Dirty Three album, I thought they were from America. Because last year I bought a Scud Mountain Boys album and a Dirty Three album, because someone recommended them to me, so I went to a mall and bought it. So that's cool. And I want to get Let Love In again, because that's such a great record, a very great record.

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The Guardian, 20.12.1997

The Making of OK Computer

TONY WADSWORTH (MD of Parlophone records)
I've learned not to expect anything with RH, and that way you are constantly surprised. They had been playing a lot of the songs live over the previous year, so we were starting to get an idea of the sort of album it could be, but a lot of the songs they played live they didn't put on the album. So we left them to it, and checked in now and again to make sure they were going the right way.

JONNY:
We wanted to make OKC by ourselves. We did Lucky as a try-out, we used this engineer Nigel Godrich and got on great with him.

THOM:
Nigel is a very positive and emotionally engaging person, and thats what we needed. We needed someone who was passionate and shared our taste in music. He also works incredibly fast and is our best mate; it's that simple. We rang him and said, "We want to build a studio so write a wish list", so he went away and bought all this dream gear he would want to record with.

NIGEL GODRICH:
They hadn't really enjoyed recording previously, so they figured if we could make an environment where everybody feels comfortable, it would be a real bonus. I had a free rein in what equipment I wanted to buy, and apparently I was imposing more spending limits than I had to. They have a rehearsal space in the countryside in Oxfordshire, and we set it up there and did about half the album. Thom is always writing; he's very prolific. He has countless little bit and bobs up his sleeve. Then we felt we deserved a treat and should go somewhere nice, so we went to Jane Seymour's house near Bath, which was an amazing experience.

PHIL
For us to work on our own in these various locations was like coming full circle, back to before we signed a deal and we were just making demos. It would just be the five of us and a little recorder, and it was a very unselfconscious way of working. There's a lot of direct emotion in OKC which maybe we haven't captured before. I feel far more comfortable listening to this album than I do to Pablo Honey or the Bends. For me they sound quite wooden; quite emotionless.

ED
When we go into the studio it's about finding a soundscape for the song. When you rehearse you think it sounds great but when you consign it to tape it's like "Oh God this sounds awful". So we spent quite a lot of time trying to find the right sounds. On Pablo Honey and the Bends we ummed and ahhed: it was a lot more vague. This time we knew fairly early wheter it was right or not. The stuff we were vague about didn't make it onto the album. We're coming up to our 12th year together as a band, and we're playing much better.

CHRIS HUFFORD (RH's manager)
There's a strange kind of emotional honesty which is always there in their shows. Thom cannot stand going through the motions, and when he catches himself doing it he gets furious with himself. Thom is a highly strung, emotional person. He's also incredibly shy, and he can go off one when he feels something's been put the wrong way, so people immediately say he's a manic depressive. That's understandable because they only see him in his public role when he's highly stressed, but he's not like that at all.

THOM
I spent a lot of time trying not to do voices like mine. The voices on Karma Police, Paranoid Android and Climbing up the Walls are all different personas. I think Lucky, the lyric and the way it's sung, is really positive, really exciting. No Surprises is someone who's trying hard to keep it together but can't. Electioneering is a preacher ranting in front of a bank of microphones.

ED
The vocal is the most important thing. It's more important than any guitar textures or rhythms or anything. The vocal is the thing that pulls you into the song...

JONNY
I did the string parts for this album. I got very excited at the prospect of doing string parts that didn't sound like Eleanor Rigby, which is what all string parts have sounded like for the past 30 years. We stole a lot of ideas from film music, and composers like Penderecki, and some of them worked and some of them didn't. We used violins to make frightening white noise stuff, like the last chord of climbing up the walls.

NIGEL
They are well educated boys and they know about classical music. The way they do it, the classical undertones are probably very attractive to people who probably wouldn't like classical music. You have to sit through the whole album because it's a whole piece.

JONNY
We did use a mellotron (steam age sampler/synthesiser much used in the 70's) quite a lot, but the others won't let me take it on tour because it's too fragile. When it was used in the 70's people used to find dead mice inside it and it would stop working, it's that kind of level of technology, so when we went on the road we have to reproduce it with a sampler..

ED
We spent two weeks track-listing the album. The context of each song is really important. There was a time when Let Down wasn't going to make the album, but it really fitted in well after Exit Music. Paranoid Android is an entity in itself, but the other tracks are very much part of the whole thing. It's not a concept album (argue amongst yourselves !!) but there is a continuity there. We learned the importance of track-sequencing from Pablo Honey, because that's one of the most dreadfully sequenced records ever.

KEITH WOZENCROFT (Parlophone AR man who signed them)
People say RH are just a prog-rock band like Genesis or Pink Floyd, but both those bands were amazing in their time (Hmmm...Genesis ?!?). I feel RH draw on more influences than they ever did, and I feel that they have songs that the Floyd certainly didn't in the same way, although I love Pink Floyd. If people say RH play prog-rock thats good because it means they're moving forward.

NIGEL
All the bands RH liked when they were kids were like Joy Division, and people who couldn't necessarily play their instruments very well. I've learned that you don't have to be a good player to be a musical person, and some of the most musical people I know have been crap at their instruments, but they've always produced something really good. Then you have someone who's a shit-hot session musician but is soulless and boring to listen to.

ED
I don't think we're individually amazing musicians, but what we do collectively is pretty good.

THOM
I think we're much better at shouting at each other now, which is good. There used to be a lot of serious infighting under the guise of reasonable discussion, and now it's lots of shouting and eventually we decide, so that's kind of cool. It's sort of like a marriage where you learn to shout at somebody and that's a good thing.

And the inevitable quote from Colin at the end...

COLIN
If you thought there were no singles on The Bends, you should hear this one !!

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Rolling Stone, 16.10.97

Dream Weavers
by Matt Hendrickson

On their fantastic voyage, OK Computer, Radiohead blast off into uncharted territories - and take a new generation of fans along for the ride.



EL CHOLO, a popular Mexican restaurant located smack in the middle of Los Angeles' Koreatown, has the sort of kitchy decor that's part Southwestern stucco and part basement rec room: cheesy wall ornaments, table-top video games, worn couches. The din is intense tonight: Amid a symphony of clinging glasses, one group is screeching "Happy Birthday to You", while the women at a nearby table are hooting and hollering, and various drunken professional types are sitting at the long wooden bar, turning happy hour into a liquid dinner.

Radiohead guitarists Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood survey the pandemonium with bemused looks. "This is insane", says O'Brien, who, at 6 feet 4 inches tall, towers above the rest of his band. "I'm going to the bar". Margaritas are ordered for everyone except Greenwood, who requests an espresso. Just as O'Brien returns with drinks in hand, singer and guitarist Thom Yorke arrives at the restaurant and, with a look of mock horror on his face, quickly finds a seat in the adjacent lounge as far away from the fracas as possible. His band mates follow close behind him. As he takes his seat, Yorke grabs a friend's jet-fuelled margarita and exclaims "What...is...this?" He takes a sip. "Yeow", the scrawny singer yells, shaking his head. "I think I'll be having one of those".

Radiohead have chosen El Cholo as the place for an impromptu kickoff dinner for their North American tour. Given the downpour of accolades for their latest album, OK Computer, and the sold-out performances, it would be understandable if the band's mood was fraught with nervous excitement. In fact, the complete opposite is true. Despite serious jet lag, the group's members - all but drummer Phil Selway, Radiohead's eldest member at 30, who rarely ventures out after dark - are in a jovial mood, making jokes about the Spice Girls and devouring enchiladas and burritos. Sold-out tour? Rising superstars? Shut up and pass the guacamole.

Chalk up Radiohead's laissez-faire attitude to experience. This is one of the few bands in recent years to surf a brief wave of post-Nirvana success, watch it die and then paddle out again in search of the big one. Until now, Radiohead were best known for their 1993 hit, "Creep" (the sarcastic, self-deprecating baby brother to Nirvana's "Negative Creep"), which helped their first album, Pablo Honey, to sell nearly 800,000 copies. Subsequent singles from that release were given scant attention, and the band was relegated to the one-hit-wonder bin by the time of its second album, The Bends, in 1995.

The Bends was more expansive and intricate, both sonically and lyrically, than Pablo Honey, but it sold only half as well. Then, due in large part to Radiohead's relentless touring, (they crisscrossed America five times), a burgeoning reputation for electrifying live shows and the moderately successful single "Fake Plastic Trees", the band crept toward renewed popularity by the end of the record's run, headlining theaters and large clubs. Capping off the hard-earned comeback was a string of dates opening for Alanis Morissette, during which Radiohead tested new material - including a 10-minute, hair-raising version of their current magnum opus, "Paranoid Android".

The stage was thereby set for OK Computer to be Radiohead's breakthrough. And while it still may be - the record debuted at No. 21 on the Biillboard chart but fell somewhat in subsequent weeks - the album is certainly not what people expected. OK Computer is a glorious piece of moody, spaced-out art-rock madness that alternates between compassionate, twisted tracks like "Climbing Up The Walls" and "Exit Music (For A Film)" and prickly, aural thorns such as "Airbag", which require numerous listens. "Women have told me they think the record is romantic", says gregarious bassist Colin Greenwood, Jonny's older brother. "I think that's pretty cool". Despite its popularity, OK Computer's sense of adventure was actually Radiohead's big "fuck you", a piss into the wind of success. "Everyone said, 'You'll sell 6 or 7 million if you bring out The Bends, Part 2'", O'Brien says. "And we're like, 'Yeah, right.' But we're not going to do that. The one thing you don't want to say to us is what we should do, because we'll kick against that and do exactly the opposite".

RADIOHEAD have been going against the tide from the beginning. Thom Yorke, who was born in 1968, moved with his family from Scotland to Oxford, England, when he was 8 years old. At the age of 10, he formed his first band, an unintentionally arty pop duo: Yorke played guitar while a friend smashed televisions. Yorke's aggression would play out in more constructive ways after his difficult stint at a boarding school in nearby Abingdon, where he was picked on and frequently engaged in fistfights, which he usually lost. Yorke spent ever-increasing amounts of time in the school's sound-proofed rehearsal rooms, teaching himself to sing. He soon joined a punk band, TNT, which featured one of his schoolmates, Colin Greenwood, on bass. After leaving that band, Yorke formed his own group with O'Brien, invited Greenwood to join them, christened the band On a Friday and added drummer Selway to the fold. Jonny was reluctantly made a full-time member after he waited patiently at the lip of the stage, harmonica in hand, during On a Friday's first gig, in 1987.

Soon after, the band was put on hold as each member went off to a different university. Yorke enrolled at Exeter, where he studied English literature and fine arts - and resumed his fighting career. "I was going out to a club one night, and these blokes just descended on me", he says, "just because I blew them a kiss". While at Exeter, Yorke played guitar in a techno outfit called Flickernoise and joined the university's anti-fascism club, which would hold demonstrations outside the town's European-football stadium. Unbeknown to his club's member's, the supporters of the local football team - who also happened to be members of the racist National Front organization - would take pictures of Yorke and his cohorts, from which they could later be identified. "We'd be sitting in the pub, and these skinheads would come up and start fucking with us", Yorke recalls. "It wasn't a pleasant experience".

After college, the members of On a Friday regrouped, in 1991, and renamed themselves Radiohead (the band name comes from a song on Talking Heads' True Stories). Following a few gigs in Oxford, they landed a record deal with Parlophone. The rage that had been seething within Yorke since childhood found its way into his tortured lyrics on Pablo Honey. With songs that were more musically focused and cohesive, Yorke's anger and disgust only intensified on The Bends.

In 1995, Yorke said in an interview in ROLLING STONE, "People ask me if I'm happy, and I tell them to fuck off". The singer was promptly anointed in the U.K. press as the Next Artist Most Likely to Put a Bullet in His Head. Now, he is more reflective. "The downside [about The Bends] was that everything I wrote had this significance to it", he says. On OK Computer, Yorke has replaced his earlier raw, confessional lyrics with a more oblique, universal discomfort; the songs seem to come from the perspectives of different characters, who comment on society. "I'm not trying to fight people in the same way [that I used to]", he says. "A lot of that was misplaced anger directed in the wrong way - toward myself. You say all these things, and you realize that you're revealing things that you really shouldn't be saying to anybody, except the people you really, really love".

Yorke's band mates defend him, saying that his misery has been overemphasized. "People try to pin this persona on him that has nothing to do with him", says Colin Greenwood.

A self-described perfectionist and control freak, Yorke is also a moody codger. In a matter of minutes, his demeanor can run from caustic crankiness (often displayed by burying his head in his hands) to unexpectedly charming. It is this unpredictability that drives his band mates, who feed off the singer's mania and channel it into an explosive, complex and melodic mix of guitar rock and electronica.

Yorke's control is not lost on the rest of the group. "Thom uses a great analogy", O'Brien says. "We're like the U.N. and he's like the U.S. He is the communicator, and the pressure on him is enormous".

The members of some bands might be resentful about such behavior, but Yorke's mates tend to stand by their man. They are a tightknit lot who all live within minutes of one another in Oxford. Yorke is also supported by a group of close friends from college, including his girlfriend of more than six years. "She's doing her doctorate in Dante's illustrations to The Inferno", he says proudly. He recently bought a house in Cornwall, England, that he uses as a sort of club-house. It has plenty of beds to accommodate his friends, who are not overly affected by his stardom. "When I go home, we talk about what's going on for five minutes, then everything's back to normal", he says. "It's as exciting for them as it is for me. They see me as happy, and that's cool".

UNDER a hot sun in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, the members of Radiohead are sitting in the production lot of Burbank's NBC Studios, waiting to perform on The Tonight Show. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. "I am so fucking bored", announces O'Brien, thumbing through the New York Times. The only member who is not going out of his mind is Colin Greenwood, who plops down on the curb and rummages for a cigarette. "I'm quite enjoying not thinking about anything at the moment", he says. Colin is two years older than Jonny, and the two couldn't be more different. With his big brown eyes, pouty lips and flailing, chain-saw-starting guitar moves, Jonny exudes the most onstage rock-star charisma, while Colin prefers to anchor himself by Selway's drum kit, delicately chugging to the beat. Offstage, the roles reverse. Colin is open, friendly and chatty, the one most likely to go out on a bender, while Jonny is quiet, self-absorbed and often at bed by 11. Despite their opposite personalities, Colin and Jonny remain close. Colin recalls only one fight in their relationship. "Jonny is colorblind", he begins, "and when we were young, I gave him a red crayon to use for the grass he was drawing. It was a blood bath". Their father died when Colin was 7, leaving Jonny and him to look to their older sister, Susan, as a role model. "she's responsible for our precocious love of miserable music", Colin says. "The Fall, Magazine, Joy Division. We were ostracized at school because everyone else was into Iron Maiden".

Colin is nonchalant about Radiohead's success. "Enjoy it while it lasts", he says as he spots a giant limo carrying another one of Jay Leno's guests, Evander Holyfield. "The record company always wants to send us limos", he continues. "I hate them. It's much better to have a van. There's no cachet anymore with limos. What's the point?"

The band's tour manager hands Colin an itinerary for his girlfriend, who will visit him in two days. "One of the benefits of being successful", he says with a crooked grin, "is flying someone you care about across the country. That's nice".
After the band's abrasive performance of "Electioneering" on The Tonight Show, the hallway of the NBC studio degenerates into a hellish fun house of celebrities. The group retreats to its dressing room, dodging Ed McMahon, Arsenio Hall and Magic Johnson. The Arsenio sighting brings up a discussion about which talk-show host gives the better gifts. "Arsenio gave us great bathrobes", says Colin. "We get food baskets from Jay".

All the band members leave the dressing room except for Selway, who stands and looks at the baskets. "I suppose it would be rather rude to leave them", he says. The comment underscores Radiohead's greatest collective character traits. They're polite, thoughtful and charmingly down-to-earth - the exact opposite of fellow Brits Oasis, whose bratty, headline-making antics far overshadow Radiohead's in the U.K. Thus, Selway gathers up the baskets, heads outside to the parking lot and gives them to the limo drivers.

In the lot, things get off to a strange start. Kato Kaelin - remember him? - is milling around the parking lot with a woman at his side. "Oh, yes, that guy", exclaims O'Brien rather loudly. "Should I go get his autograph?" Kaelin shoots a glare in the band's direction. Everyone stares in silence. After a few tense moments, Jonny mutters, "Nice hair, though".

Alarmingly, Yorke once had hair similar to Kaelin's. Around the time of "Creep", Yorke's gaudy blond tresses were a frightening collision of English mod meets L.A. glam. These days, Yorke has settled on a buzzed, spiky look, which today is dyed black.

After the band's performance at L.A.'s Wiltern Theater the following evening, Yorke jumps into a car and crawls into the back, slouching down low. "You're probably going to be followed", he informs the driver. "You know how to lose people, don't you?"

Yorke is on the way to a private after-show party, at a restaurant in West Hollywood, that was organized by R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe. Since Radiohead opened for R.E.M.'s 1995 Monster tour, Stipe and the rest of the band have become big brothers to Yorke and Co., offering advice on how to navigate the potholes on the road to fame."We were a different band after we toured with R.E.M.", O'Brien says. "They did it their own way, and we spoke about that as the way that we wanted to do it; go out there and gig, and win a few more people over on each album. Then when we met them, they really seemed to enjoy the position they were in, and they were being creative. It was really important for us to see that." Yorke and Stipe have since formed a tight bond. Before this evening's show, they even went shopping together, which nearly caused Yorke to be late for Radiohead's gig. "He's a good friend", says Yorke of Stipe. "He's been very helpful".

Yorke arrives at the open-air restaurant and shuffles in with his hands stuffed into his pockets, a sheepish grin on his face. Seated at the long table is a motley collection of rockers (Stipe, Mike D of the Beastie Boys, Hole's Eric Erlandson) and actors (Liv Tyler joined by three of the Phoenix siblings: Joaquin, Summer and Rain). Yorke settles into a chair, accepts a glass of champagne and orders french fries and a salad.

Yorke receives congratulations with a smile and a nod, and instead of working the room, chitchatting with the celebs, he stays in his chair, quietly eating his midnight meal and politely answering questions ("I'm running out of people to get star struck over", he will say later). Only after the plates are cleared does Yorke excuse himself to huddle one-on-one with Stipe. After an hour, the tour bus arrives to pick up Yorke for Radiohead's overnight trip to San Francisco. He says goodnight to Stipe, turns and gives a wave to the rest of the party, and saunters off, half-drunk and smiling.

A MONTH after the tour began in California, the Radiohead juggernaut has made its way to Philadelphia. By all accounts, it has been a success, and, according to O'Brien, last night's Boston show was the best gig they've played yet ("Aerosnith, eat your hearts out", he boasts jokingly). Joined on their tour bus by openers Teenage Fanclub for the drive to Philly, the bands tie one on until 5a.m.

Understandably, there's a feeling of lethargy hanging in the Electric Factory, a blade Runner-like venue just north of Philadelphia's Independence Hall. The band plays an average gig by its standards, but it does nothing to tarnish its reputation as one of the best live rock acts. Yorke's voice is still in unbelievable shape, even after four weeks on the road, and the crowd is spellbound by tense versions of "Exit Music" and "Karma Police", as well as a gripping "Paranoid Android".
It's a little odd, however, when "Creep" is played and Yorke, who has preened and posed his way through the song, lets the crowd sing the second verse. The song isn't a favourite of Jonny's, and when the time comes for his guttural belch of a guitar part, he rips into it with added vengeance. Yorke introduces the number - as he does most of the time - by sayinng "We play this because it's still a good song", an unnecessary apology for their biggest hit.

Sometimes I do have to justify it", he says. "Sometimes it's karaoke, and I enjoy hamming it up, but some other days it really means something to me". It is the crowd's response to the new songs that means the most to Yorke. "I've been amazed that people know the new material so well", he says. "Sometimes we play 'Creep', and halfway through we stop and say 'Sorry, that's boring'. If people don't want to hear it, you can tell".

After the show, the band piles onto the bus, eager to get to New York for the tour's finale, two days later. The bus is held up momentarily while Yorke signs autographs. "Whew, I almost didn't get out of there", he says as he sinks into the couch at the front of the bus. It's been a recurring event throughout the tour and has given Yorke a whiff of the idolatry that is simmering in America. But instead of running to the solitude of the tour bus as he might have done four years ago, Yorke has mellowed and accepted, albeit reluctantly, his public stature. "When we first came here, it was baptism by fire, and it was really freaking me out", he says. "I'm used to it now, and I have developed a leave-me-alone face".

Despite punishing fatigue, the guys are in good spirits. O'Brien and Colin attempt to roll a couple of spliffs. "Five weeks in America, and I still can't roll one", displaying something that looks more like a soggy noodle. After the joints are passed around, the band pops in a video of Kiss' infamous 1976 interview with Tom Snyder. The segment is sidesplittingly funny, with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley playing it straight while Peter Criss and Ace Frehley are bombed out of their minds.

"What a wanker", says Yorke as Simmons talks like a cocky businessman. "I'm sure there's a lesson for us somewhere in this interview".

When the tape ends, Jonny moves to the front of the bus to watch the looming New York skyline. "Oh, my God, look at that", says the driver. He's not referring to the World Trade Center; he's pointing to a toll-booth collector who is holding cassettes of OK Computer and Pablo Honey, shaking them vigorously. "He wants autographs!" the driver says. Jonny sits frozen in amazement, staring at the zealous fan. But the bus accelerates, leaving the fan empty-handed. Jonny turns around, looks at Yorke and deadpans: "Apparently we've made it".

"Yes", Yorke agrees. "We've made it".

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Circus Magazine, 8.1997

Radiohead - Getting More Respect
by Adrian Gregory Glover

On paper it seems that Radiohead have always been about taking chances. They appeared in 1992 with the year's most powerful ode to mopedom, "Creep". The sudden Chinese-style guitar work provided by Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien set up the vulnerable musings of vocalist Thom Yorke with a refrain that brought them into the spotlight ("I'm a creep/I'm a weirdo/what the hell am I doing here?/I don't belong here"). The momentum of "Creep" was so overwhelming that it became a curse and a blessing for the five Oxford, England natives. The blessing was that the song pushed the band's debut full lenth record Pablo Honey to gold record status (500,000 copies). The curse was that the song became the band's identity. The song had such a long run in the public eye that even the follow-up videos and singles from Pablo Honey were overshadowed by its counterpart's staying power.

In '95 Radiohead popped up again with its second effort The Bends, a collection of well-executed songs that for the most part avoids the slash of the wrist mentality that the band was tagged with. It proved to be the tim to Pablo Honey's yang. The songs on The Bends were optimistic in ways that left anyone expecting a "Creep" rehash out in the cold. "Fake Plastic Trees" one of the video/singles from The Bends, gave the culture a taste of the band's ability to create moody music that can mean everything and nothing in the same breath.

"Just" and 'Black Star" also proved to be two other incredible songs that created a mood of their own while staying true to the sound of the overall record. The band was taking chances with their sound and they all paid off.

The music tested well on the road as well. High profile tours with the likes of R.E.M. and Alanis Morissette gave them the opportunity once again to be seen and heard. The passionate and physical delivery of Radiohead, the live band was quickly becoming a trademark -- so much that Jonny Greenwood took to wearing an arm brace onstage to protect himself from finger lacerations and chronic strain injuries and Thom Yorke completely blacked out during a gig.

Physical casualties aside, the second record and tour campaign was not met with the same commercial force that greeted the band the first time around. The songs were great and the live show was compelling but the general public was busy snatching for Alanis Morissette who was busy covering "Fake Plastic Trees."

The band regrouped in their rehearsal studio in January last year to compose tracks for their next album, OK Computer. Released on July 1, OK Computer is a dramatic affair with a very extreme sound, from the heartfelt ballad and second single, "Let Down" to the bouncy "Karma Police." To achieve such extremism the band self-produced the album. Self production is always a hit-or-miss affair, but in this case the vision of the band is all that was needed.

They have been laying to waste the competition at festival sized events this summer as they gear up for a bonafide tour that will commence later in the year. The macabre animated video for "Paranoid Android" has been added to MTV's Buzz Bin and just about the entire music industry is talking about nothing but Radiohead. At their pre-album release gig in New York's Irving Plaza, members of the audience who went to see the band ran the gamut of today's popular music, including Marilyn Manson, Madonna, Courtney Love, U2, R.E.M., Oasis and Blur.

Their worldwide popularity didn't happen overnight. The five began rehearsing together in the mid-80's as a school band in their hometown as On A Friday, and incorporated influences like The Smiths, The Waterboys and The Fall into their performances and songs. Since their first gig in 1987, the band continued to play together and would do so into their colleg careers. Their first demo, the Drill EP, was circulated in 1991 and after the record big-wigs gained interest, they eventually were signed to Parlophone, and changed their name to the present moniker.

The band filled out by bassist Colin Greenwood (yes they are brothers), and drummer Phil Selway are poised to do it all over again. Let's find out if Colin Greenwood thinks it's worth it.

Circus: Over the past few years you've started to get a lot of respect from people in the industry. Other musicians and critics love Radiohead.

Greenwood: God knows why...(laughs) Cool well thank you... you are very kind.

I heard many celebrities attended the Irving Plaza show on June 9. Were you nervous playing in front of so many of your peers?

CG: To be honest with you, no. I think we were more nervous about playing The Troubadour in L.A. I mean them (famous musicians) showing up has got nothing to do with us. It's not real and it's not the real world. All of those famous people just happened to be there and were in town. There was a spotlight you know but next week they will be there checking out somebody else. There is just nothing particularly real about that. It's great that they all turned out and it was such a treat to see R.E.M. again.

From what I hear, Blur went on the Rockline National Radio Show later that night and raved about the show.

CG: That's right they didn't see the whole show. They had to go and do that radio interview. Aaah you see it's really cool to see English bands that enjoy being over here and doing well. God knows that happens over in the U.K. with your American groups. I look at it the way that English and American music ebbs and flows from one direction to another. At the moment there is a lot of cool English stuff happening in America.

With so many electronic bands coming down the pike, do you think that people are correct in saying that rock 'n' roll is dead?

CG: I think rock music or whatever you want to call it goes through periodic like almost revolutionary cycles. I think that's very important and in fact that I think that it is very much alive. It is just constantly in a state of flux. The elements that were around us in the times of The Stones and The Beatles are still around now. Things just keep changing and different flavors are added to the mix.

When self producing OK Computer, did you consider drama one of those flavors?

CG: Yeah! I think the overall mood on the record is starker than The Bends. I think that there is a consistent sound to 80 percent of the new album. I think we made things a little bit more extreme on this record. The important thing for us on this record was that we produce it ourselves. We had to learn how to make decisions amongst the six of us. There was the five people in the band and the engineer/mixer Nigel Godrich. We learned a lot from doing it on our own and in retrospect, we are very proud of this record.

You built your own studio, Canned Applause, for this one.

CG: We bought $140,000 dollars worth of studio gear to record the album with. We had this mobile studio type of thing going where we could take it all into studios to capture those environments. We recorded about 35 percent of the album in our rehearsal space. Which is built like a storage shed. You had to piss around the corner because there were no toilets or no running water. It was in the middle of the countryside. You had to drive to town to find something to eat. In a reaction to that stark, dreary place we recorded the other two-thirds of the record in this opulent country house.

Are you really going to a video for every song on the record?

CG: Well that's more of a goal than a definite thing. It's something that we would like to do. It's kind of like a journey and it's a journey that we hope to get to the end of. It's so expensive so we are not saying that they [the videos] are definitely going to arrive. We've got two being finished and one is done at the moment. We just found out that "Paranoid Android" has been added to MTV's Buzz Bin and that we are all very excited about.

I've seen it, it's a really cool video and the animation is incredible.

CG: Yeah, I think it's great! There was no way that we could appear in it to perform in it because that would be so Spinal Tap. This way we got to keep it twisted and colorful which is how the song is anyway. Every time that you make a video you realize that it's all a crap shoot anyway. You nver know how it's going to turn out until it's done. The only thing that you can do is put total creative trust to the artist that is directing it for you. We decide what happens [in the video] obviously but after that we don't interfere with the artistic process.

With the goal being to complete a video for very song on the record, does that mean there is a concept to this record?

CG: The only concept that we had for this album was that we wanted to record it away from the city and that we wanted to record it ourselves. You couldn't like put on "The Wizard Of Oz" and turn the sound down and find that Judy Garland is speaking the lyrics to "Subterranean Homesick Alien". There is obviously a certain continuity to the record. We try to stay away from all of that especially after the last album. He [Thom Yorke] wants to do something that is more like a collection of snapshots of images and impressions that he has had from the external world. That's where little phrases like "jack knife jeggernaut" [from the lead off track "Airbag"] come from. It's very much a record that encourages you to try to find a space, your own space mentally in the comtemporary world. Just trying to get away from some of the obsessive internalizations that were on The Bends. That record was very inward looking. This is more about engaging things in the outside world.

There were some health issues on the last tour. How are you gearing up for that?

CG: I don't think that we are that unhealthy, to be honest with you. We are not really a party group. We don't do any drugs or drink heavily at all. We don't really even stay out late. It's more like when you start off you don't know how much your body will or will not tolerate. So you try everything as far as doing shows and your body draws a line in the sand. From there you have a point to work from. We know when to say no and turn things down. I wouldn't say that we are a collection of invalids or anything. We are no sicker and probably much healthier than a lot of other groups. This is probably very un rock'n'roll to say but our biggest concern is the amount of flying that we do. Jet lag and the poor circulation in the cabins of these planes is hard on the larynx.

Ever get sick of playing the old stuff from Pablo honey since you have grown so much musically?

CG: On Pablo Honey we play "Creep", and "Thinking About You". The rest of the stuff is... well we only recorded that record in two and a half weeks. It was our first time really in the studio. I don't think it's a bad effort at all. I [think] that it's a seven and a half out of ten record. Well actually six....but then you put "Creep" on it so you have to say seven. It's cool really to have three, well, two real records to pick from. I think OK Computer is the best to choose from.

For those who have not seen the live show yet, what's that like?

CG: It's enjoyable to play material from The Bends in a relaxed way. It's a record that people really like, but it's not the record that is happening now. We are playing The Bends in its entirety, well except for "Sulk". I think it's really nice how it works with the material from OK Computer. We are going to be on tour in America starting in August.

We are going to be using the dates in August as a way of testing out some production ideas. After that in August we are going to be playing 3,500 to 5,000 seat places in England. We will be working with the best sound and lighting people in the business the best as far as originality and so forth. live is the one thing that we really are proud about and we want to get that right. We want to convince people about us and the new record, especially in America.

(Photo of Thom from High and Dry live package CD) Born on Oct. 7, 1968 Thom Yorke once wore clothes most associated with elderly people in college. He was operated on five times in his childhood for a paralyzed eyelid."

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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.

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MTV online, 07.97

Thom Yorke grabs the mike and peers over the sea of fans and celebrities gathered at New York's Irving Plaza the day after this year's Tibetan Freedom concert. Radiohead's frontman pauses for a moment, perhaps staring at Madonna, Bono, or his pal Michael Stipe, then says, "We're going to do this next song because we still like it. We've never had a problem with it. Sing along if you like." Radiohead begin the hushed opening of "Creep," the anguished 1993 tune that plugged the band into the mainstream in an era of grunge-inspired self-deprecation. In truth, it's kind of surprising to hear Yorke say he doesn't regret penning the ditty. Sure, it set the radio dials in motion, but it also gave critics a proverbial noose with which to hang the band neatly in the "I-hate-myself-and-want-to-die" category, along with dozens of other trendy, sometimes one-hit alterna-guitar outfits.

Radiohead's follow up record, The Bends, helped break the band from the noise-pop mold by offering a dozen warped, dynamic songs that ranged from the woebegone ballad, "Fake Plastic Trees," to the skittering, anxious "Planet Telex." But if the album was a musical breakthrough, its introspective, pain-stricken lyrics only reconfirmed the public's notion of Yorke and his mates as doomed tragic heroes.

Radiohead's latest release is a logical development up the ladder of experimentation. But if the group reached the second rung of weirdness on The Bends, they've suddenly scurried a dozen levels higher with Ok Computer. "If you're expecting a record full of "High and Dry," agrees guitarist Jonny Greenwood, "you might find yourself the least bit disappointed."

Yes, as Bob Dylan once mumbled, the times, they are a changin' These days, self-loathing in music is as tired and irksome as a Bon Jovi chorus. As a nation of twenty-somethings watches the job market improve and the economy pick up, a growing number are turning their attention away from angst-rock, and towards more celebratory forms of music. Radiohead may be turning the corner with them: The biggest difference between The Bends and Ok Computer is Yorke's lyrics. Instead of dwelling on his fragile, insecure psyche, Yorke has addressed a dizzying array of subjects including car crashes, politics, and urban claustrophobia, all from a variety of perspectives.

"I came to the realization I was being selfish in the past, and that was a good thing," Yorke says candidly. "It happened after 'The Bends.' A drunk bloke comes up in the bar or a girl comes up in the street and says, 'Thank you, that record helped me through a difficult time.' And you stop being the selfish wanker you've always been."

In addition to opening himself up to enlightenment by other people, Yorke was prompted to change his lyrical style by the disgust he felt for popular bands that he felt were using vulnerability, self-doubt and self-immolation as vehicles to move heaps of records. "Far be it for me to throw stones, but I started to find that whole self-loathing thing pretty offensive pretty quickly," says Yorke. "I think there was a genuine point where it really was important for me to say things on a personal level to get these things sorted out for myself. But once it was out, it was done. With this album, I am moving on."

Still, if Ok Computer is any indication, Yorke's idea of optimism is expecting it to pour and only having it rain. Whether wobbling in front of a mike or walking across the street, Yorke, who is cynical even when things are going well, seems to feel unsettled unless he's in a state of flux. That condition permeates Ok Computer. Stormy and schizophrenic at times, spacious and rambling at others, the record opens with "Airbag," a lush, ethereal number that echoes with diaphanous guitars, sharp, sparse bass punctuations, head-spinning effects, and nervous beats reminiscent of DJ Shadow. It follows with the skewed, chaotic seven-minute single, "Paranoid Android," which ebbs and flows from featherweight fragility to stealthy jazz to caustic noise. Elsewhere, there's the quiet desperation of "Exit Music," the harrowing violence of "Climbing up the Walls," and the poisonous lullaby, "No Surprises."

"I think we all got really worried at first when people said this record was commercial suicide, because that wasn't the intention," says rhythm guitarist Ed O'Brien. "Maybe the record sounds really different from everything else because we weren't listening to everything else. Before we went to record, we were listening to stuff like DJ Shadow, Underworld, Ennio Morricone, Marvin Gaye, and early Pink Floyd. Then when we were in the studio, there was a conscious decision to shut ourselves off from music because you can get panic attacks. I've done that before. I once put on London Calling, by the Clash, and I thought, 'God, how can anybody beat this album. We might as well just give up now.' So we don't do that anymore because it's bad for morale."

On Ok Computer, Yorke set out to examine the busy world of shopping malls, mass transit, yuppies, adolescence, and even psychosis. But he found that years of self-obsession made it difficult to concentrate on external stimuli. "I felt like I had the attention span of a gnat on speed," he says, which helps explain lines like "Karma police, arrest this man/He talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge, he's a detuned radio," from the song "Karma Police."

"It was like running around and opening all the blinds after I had been in the dark for so long," he gestures with exaggerated motions, then runs a hand through his short, scraggly hair. "I was constantly trying to find positive things to write about because generally we felt quite positive as a band. But I just kept getting unstuck all the time. Things kept going wrong, and that's why this record is sometimes incredibly uneasy."

The Ok Computer song perhaps most emblematic of Yorke's inability to concentrate and his futile search for stability is the cryptic "Fitter Happier," an experimental Eno-esque soundscape in which a talking computer runs through a checklist of self improvement methods ("not drinking too much/regular exercise at the gym, three days a week/...no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants"). Yorke wrote the piece out of desperation following six weeks of serious writer's block. "I had gone through such a long, frustrated time of not being able to get anything done, and then this just poured out of me," he says. "I was trying to just get on with my life, so I made this list, but I never expected it to be used for anything. Then we ran it through the computer, and that brought it to life in a really weird way. It was a total accident, but it helped me get back in gear and start writing again."

The microchip may have been the catalyst that reopened Yorke's creative floodgates, but the title "OK COMPUTER" was conceived as a satire, not a gesture of satisfaction. The singer remains ambivalent about the computer revolution, and eyes the Internet with wary fascination. "A lot of people think the title is a really positive statement," says Yorke with a frown. "The thing that worries me about the computer age is the fact that people know so much about you. It's an incredible invasion of privacy. And no matter where you are in the world people can monitor you if you're using your credit card. I heard this weird rumor on the Internet about how the military are funding this great big research project, and basically they believe that in the future, the balance of power won't be determined by who has the most nuclear weapons, but by who has all the information. I'm not afraid of being taken over by computers though, because the thing is, computers cannot resist. You can always smash 'em up, and they're totally defenseless. All we need are more people with hammers."

On first or second listen, Ok Computer sounds just that: busted up, fragmented, somewhat inaccessible. Since the songs don't use standard verse/chorus constructs, the hooks get buried under the many layers of atmosphere and impulse. But once those levels are penetrated and the nebulous structures start to gel, the melodies separate from the dissonance and the songs become truly memorable. "We weren't operating on any desire to be subversive," declares Jonny Greenwood. "It was more like we were bored with the past stuff we'd done, and we wanted to do something different. If we'd wanted to be willfully perverse, we could have done a much better job."

Radiohead began writing Ok Computer in early 1996 at their rehearsal studio, Canned Applause, a converted apple shed near their homes in Oxford, England. By July they had recorded four songs with producer Nigel Godrich. The next month, the band returned to America to open for Alanis Morissette. While on the road, they sampled some of their new material live, including an epic, expansive version of "Paranoid Android."

"If you think it's a long song now, you should have heard it then," boasts O'Brien. "It was eight to ten minutes longer, and when we started playing it live, it was completely hilarious. There was a rave down section and a Hammond organ outro, and we'd be pissing ourselves while we played. We'd bring out the glockenspiel and it would be really, really funny." "A lot of people just seem to think we're this serious, humorless band, but a lot of things we do are really funny," adds Yorke. "On "Airbag" we had a great time. There was a party going on for like three days in a row. By the end of it the studio was just a fucking pit of all sorts of disgusting things -- half-finished bottles of wine and beeer spilled on the desk and ashtrays everywhere. It was great. We do play cards and bridge and shit like everybody says we do all the time. But then," Yorke jokes, "we go smoke crack in the bathroom afterwards."

Last September, Radiohead moved their equipment from Canned Applause to St. Catherine's Court, a mansion in Bath once owned by the actress Jane Seymour. There, they recorded the rest of Ok Computer away from the pressures and distractions of the big city. "We set up in the ballroom," remembers bassist Colin Greenwood, "and the control room was set up in the library, which had these amazing views over the gardens. There were some magical evenings as we sat down with pieces of music with the windows open."

"Obviously there was still pressure, but it was in an environment where we could cope with it," says Yorke.

"The biggest pressure was actually completing it," adds O'Brien. "We weren't given any deadlines and we had complete freedom to do what we wanted. We were delaying it because we were a bit frightened of actually finishing stuff."

In music, fear, like any intense emotion, can be a powerful creative tool. Radiohead not only harnessed their fear, they converted it into artistic genius. Ok Computer shudders with anxiety and insecurity, as pensive, vulnerable vocals and ricocheting guitars struggle to make sense out of chaos. In part, the volatile tone of the record was accomplished through many hours of experimentation and improvisation. "For me, the most exciting part comes when a song is just starting to come together, and we're sort of arguing and experimenting, and everything is still fresh," says Greenwood. "Lots of the parts and melodies this time were either improvised while we were recording, or written five minutes before recording it."

There's no question that much of the music on Ok Computer is unsettling, but it's Yorke's pointed lyrics that really make the songs squirm. Lines like, "A handshake, some carbon monoxide.../This is my final fit, my final bellyache," from "No Surprises," are sobering and disconcerting. But the most arresting penmanship comes in "Climbing Up The Walls," in which Yorke examines the mind of a killer: "We are friends till we die/Either way you turn I'll be there/ Open up your skull, I'll be there climbing the walls."

"The thing is, everyone's capable of murder," Yorke says, then reaches into a knapsack. For a second, it seems like he might pull out a revolver to illustrate his point. But fortunately, his arm withdraws holding a black journal. He leafs through the pages, then finds the desired entry. "This is from a "New York Times" article dated 19 October, 1991," he says, then quotes the piece: "Was it any accident that of the ten largest mass-murders in America, eight have occurred since 1980, typically acts of middle aged white men in their 30s and 40s after long periods of being lonely, frustrated and full of rage, and often precipitated by a catastrophe in their lives, such as losing their jobs or divorce."

Yorke's interest in gruesome subject matter surfaces on other songs on the record as well, but the references are rarely gratuitous. "I've been in two accidents myself. One was serious, and I could have died. I was really young, and I had just got a car and spun it off the road, and was very near to being hit by two other cars coming the other way. I missed them by inches. Then you have that thing where you walk away from the car and you just ask yourself, 'Well, why am I lucky? Why am I allowed to walk away from this?' when you constantly hear of friends who die in car accidents for no reason. It fucks with my head completely. The day we have to stop getting in cars will be a very good day."

Whether he's talking about accidents, religion, or politics, Yorke's wisdom is generally unconventional. He seems to believe that the world is populated primarily by deaf, dumb, and blind sheep who lack the willpower to decide anything for themselves, and eagerly lop up the useless absurdity fed to them by the powers that be. "So much of the public's perception revolves around illusion," he says. "That's what 'Airbag' is about, the illusion of safety. In reality, airbags don't really work and they go off at random." Yorke straightens up in his seat and becomes progressively more emotional. "It's exactly the same as when you're on a plane. Everyone should really sit backwards. It's the safest way possible to face the back of the plane as you take of. But because people don't like the idea, and they feel a bit sick, airplanes have always been done the other way around, which is fucked. Anyway, if you're plummeting down to earth at 1,000 miles per hour, there's no way you're going to stand a hope if you sit there with your head between your legs with your seatbelt on. In the end, we're all just fucking bits of meat."

He stops, chuckles softly to himself, and shakes his head. "I need to get a laugh, I think. Let's talk about something funny."

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