The five members of Radiohead first met at a private boys school in Abingdon, a small, picturesque town on the
outskirts of Oxford. Thom Yorke (vocals/guitar) had been given his first instrument, a Spanish guitar, at the
age of eight by his mother. He formed his first band two years later, then joined an existing school punk band, TNT.
Singing for the first time, he realized he would require more sympathetic band members and formed what would become
Radiohead with school friends Ed O'Brien (guitar), "who looked cool", and Colin Greenwood (bass) "because he was in
my year and we always ended up at the same parties". They shared an interest in Joy Division and the Smiths and Greenwood
earned Yorke's sympathy for joining TNT after him. Mild-mannered drummer Phil Selway (drums) bound the new band,
titled On A Friday, together. The addition of Colin's brother and jazz fanatic, Jonny Greenwood (guitar/keyboards)
completed the line-up, originally on harmonica, after he pestered his elder brother and friends continually to let him join.
In 1987, a week after his first rehearsal with the band, On A Friday played their debut gig at the now defunct Jericho Tavern
in Oxford. With a musical canon resembling a youthful Talking Heads, they added two saxophone-playing sisters to fill out the
line-up. However, the band were then put on hold while the members pursued their academic careers, in an effort to appease
already frantic parents (Jonny finished his schooling). Colin became entertainments officer at Peterhouse College, Cambridge
University, and helped get his friends together for occasional gigs there. At Exeter University, Yorke played guitar in a techno
band, Flickernoise, while Selway drummed for various theatrical productions (Blood Brothers, Return To The Forbidden Planet)
while studying at Liverpool Polytechnic. The band finally regrouped in Oxford in the summer of 1991, but without the brass section.
They recorded two demos and gained a deal with EMI Records before changing their name to Radiohead (after a Talking Heads song).
Their first commercial broadcast followed when "Prove Yourself", from the
Drill EP,
was voted 'Track Of The Week' on BBC Radio 1 in May 1992. The next release was "
Creep"
(for the first time), it was followed by "
Anyone Can Play Guitar" and
"
Pop Is Dead". Then thanks to a US Radio station "
Creep",
began to build interest again.
Ignored when it was first released in September 1992, "Creep's" re-issue saw it become the alternative rock song of 1993. With a self-loathing lyric ("I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, I don't belong here") stretched over driven
guitars that at one point simply explode. The 'crunch' guitars have been linked to Jonny's initial dislike of the song, he may have been 'ruining' it!
The interest grew as the band toured with
Kingmaker
and
James. Taking the band into the UK Top 10 and the US Top 40, it also took
Pablo Honey into the Top 30.
Unlike other celebrated UK indie hopefuls such as Suede, Radiohead also translated well to international tastes, from the USA to Egypt.
Two years of promotional activity followed, during which time the "
My Iron Lung EP" was released.
With the pressure on following the plaudits, the recording process for
The Bends was not easy. With hardly a note recorded over two months,
producer John Leckie ordered all bar Yorke out of the studio and told the singer to "just fucking play it". The songs came, and he and the
rest of the band relocated to Abbey Road Studios to finish off the album in a mere three weeks. "The Bends", out in March 1995, did not disappoint,
with a vibrant mood range encouraging Yorke's prosaic yet affecting lyrics: "When your insides fall to pieces, You just sit there wishing
you could still make love". Notable tracks included the hypnotic "
High And Dry", "
Just"
and "
Fake Plastic Trees", and the UK Top 5 single "
Street Spirit (Fade Out)".
By the end of 1995 "The Bends" had been universally acclaimed, enough to win them a BRIT Awards nomination as the best band of the year.
Two years later, they unveiled the follow-up,
OK Computer,
which received the most spectacular reviews of any rock album in recent memory, and won the band a Grammy Award in 1998 for Best
Alternative Rock Performance. In polls (notably the All-Time Top 1000 Albums book) the band received massive press exposure when they
became the first and only band in recent history to really threaten the Beatles' domination. It's three singles -
Paranoid Android,
Karma Police and
No Surprises - all
went Top 10 in the UK. The track "
Lucky" was used promotionally around the time of OK Computer too. It had originally been released as the lead
track on an EP for the Warchild charity album, "Help" in 1996.
Their next album took a long time to record, and the huge anticipation surrounding
Kid A
was matched by the shock it caused when made available to the public. Instead of taking a safe route and building on the style of their
last two albums, the band delivered a challenging electronic set, almost free of guitars and closer to the space age progressive rock of
Pink Floyd,
Kraftwerk and
Tangerine Dream. Reviews were initially mixed, but the fact that it entered both the UK chart and the Billboard
200 at number 1 cannot be ignored. No commercial singles were released for "Kid A" but
Optimistic,
National Anthem,
Idioteque and
How To Disappear were featured as promos for radio and press.
In June of 2001, bareley eight months later, they quickly released "Amnesiac" which consisted of material that was recorded during the "Kid A" sessions.
The band made it very clear though that it was not to be considered an out takes album; Rather, they insisted that the two albums were of clear and separate concept.
Amnesiac debuted at number one in the U. K. and number two on the U.S. chart while outselling "Kid A" in week one by 25,000 copies.
The singles "
Pyramid Song" and "
Knives Out" were culled from "Amnesiac" with a subsequent world tour.
While planning "
I Might Be Wrong" for a third single,
the idea expanded into a live "mini-album" that was released in November of 2001. Making for their third release in thirteen months, the tracks were collected from four different shows in Europe and included an unreleased song, "True Love Waits".
In 2003 rumours began of new material, the band had teased the public while on tour in 2002 with a few new songs. Internet postings from the band hinted at song-titles and musical direction. It was mid-2003 that the first new material was
released. The single "
There There" followed by the album "
Hail To The Thief".
The path which Radiohead have found themselves in the new millennium has leveled out after the initial up hill of their early career. They tour and record when they are ready, they have devoted and demanding fans.
Radiohead must be applauded for pushing forward with their music and refusing to release the type of material populist supporters demand of them.
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Copyright Muze UK Ltd. 1989 - 2002
And me.
