Radiohead

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RADIOHEAD

Formed: 1987, Oxford, England

Members: Colin Greenwood, bass (born Oxford, England, 26 June 1969); Jonny Greenwood, guitar (born Oxford, England, 5 November 1971); Ed O'Brien, guitar, vocals (born Oxford, England, 15 April 1968); Phil Selway, drums (born Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire, England, 23 May 1967); Thom Yorke, vocals, guitar (born Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England, 7 October 1968).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Kid A (2000)

Hit songs since 1990: "Creep," "Paranoid Android," "Karma Police"

Following the Britpop boom of the mid-1990s, when bands like Oasis and Blur threatened to leave a sizable mark on the United States, a group that actually fulfilled the promise emerged in their wake. Radiohead escaped the ghetto of cultdom to become one of the most important new rock acts to emerge from the British Isles since Ireland's U2 in the 1980s. In a series of ever-developing albums, Radiohead revived memories of the progressive rock experimentalists of the late 1960s, winning comparisons to early innovators such as Pink Floyd. But they have managed to avoid the confining straitjacket that such associations could have created for them. Instead, in a decade of fervent and sometimes challenging invention, they established their own unique place in the contemporary rock firmament.

Beginnings

Formed initially as On a Friday in the late 1980s, Radiohead are a rare British band because their members have benefited from university education. Only Jonny Greenwood, younger brother of Colin, lacks a degree—he dropped out of Oxford University after three months to pursue the group's possibilities at the beginning of the 1990s.

Originally a gathering of school friends, the band adopted its current identity in 1991 as the various individuals returned to their home city of Oxford after
graduation: Thom Yorke had studied English and fine art in Exeter, Phil Selway had studied English and history at Liverpool, Ed O'Brien had been to Manchester, and Colin Greenwood had done literature at Cambridge.

Attention Grabbing

Still performing as On a Friday, they began to attract the attention of the talent scouts, and in the fall of 1991, the quintet was snapped up by the EMI subsidiary Parlophone, the Beatles' original U.K. label. In early 1992 they adopted their new name, Radiohead, a reference to a song by Talking Heads. Radiohead's intense, unsettling music-making set them apart from the mainstream scene. While their music employed elements of guitar-fueled alternative rock, their use of other, more experimental production techniques and melancholic lyrical content allowed the group to stand out from the crowd. At first, the band struggled to live up to Parlophone's faith as the EP Drill (1992) stalled commercially and the singles "Creep" (1992) and "Anyone Can Play Guitar" (1993) made scant impression.

Yet there were some promising signs—critical reaction to the early work had been quite positive, and, when the first album, Pablo Honey (1993), came out, it scrambled into the lower reaches of the Top 30. More significantly, it included the song "Creep," an unnerving slice of self-pity that found its way on to U.S. college radio, where its mood—a searing blend of outsider anguish and jagged guitar noise—resonated with listeners and gave the group a Top 40 hit. Before 1993 had drawn to a close, the debut album had been certified platinum in the United States.

In 1994 Radiohead built on this platform, playing important summer festivals at Glastonbury and Reading, undertaking an intensive U.K. tour, and beginning work in the fall on their second album. The resulting collection, entitled The Bends (1995), produced by John Leckie, clinched a Top 10 album placing in the U.K. and drew interest in the United States.

The new album spawned a number of notable hits with "Fake Plastic Trees" (also included on the movie soundtrack to Clueless ), "Street Spirit (Fade Out)," and "Just" all scoring in the U.K. Top 20. The latter track also left its mark on MTV with a bleak but diverting video, directed by Jamie Thraves, of a man lying on the sidewalk. Such dark and disturbing images became increasingly associated with the band's single-minded approach to their craft.

Benefit Album

Summer 1995 saw Radiohead support R.E.M. on a U.S. tour, opening further avenues in America. Shortly afterwards, Yorke found common cause with former Roxy Music star and producer Brian Eno on a compilation benefit album, Help!, aimed at raising funds for charitable efforts in strife-torn Bosnia. In the following months the band joined tours with Soul Asylum and, in the summer of 1996, Alanis Morissette, who was including her own version of "Fake Plastic Trees" in her set.

The third album was recorded at a medieval mansion in Bath, England. With a working title of "Ones and Zeroes," a reference to the binary language of computers, the result was the impressive OK Computer (1997). It is an ambitious affair that blends a rock format with studio trickery, eliciting comparisons to Pink Floyd and prompting press speculation that it signalled a progressive rock resurrection. Trailed by an epic single, the six-and-a-half minute "Paranoid Android"—a passing reference to a character in Douglas Adams's sci-fi novel The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy —the album prompted the most critically favorable reception so far.

Other tracks from the album placed in the U.K. Top 40. "Karma Police" and "No Surprises" were typical pieces in the OK Computer jigsaw: maudlin, mysterious, and introspective but also strangely sinister. Much of the writing and lyrical content seemed to owe something to Yorke's long-term interest in Outsider Art—paintings and other artworks created by untrained, sometimes mentally unstable, practitioners.

Band of the Year

Questioned in some quarters for an apparent obsession with the downbeat, the miserable, and the doom-laden, the record nonetheless seemed to distill the spirit of the moment. In the United States, the magazines Spin and Rolling Stone both named Radiohead band of the year in 1997. In the time before the recording of their eagerly anticipated follow-up, the band fully exploited the opportunities offered by the Internet, offering previews of most of the new set's tracks via MP3 files. So effective was the tactic in building consumer fascination that the new recording Kid A (2000) entered the U.S. charts at number one.

Produced by the band with Nigel Godrich, Kid A took the band farther away from the rock structures featured on earlier releases. The three-guitar attack, which had been employed to potent effect on the first trio of albums, was now largely sidelined as electronic washes wrapped Yorke's disembodied vocals in an ethereal soundscape.

The opener, "Everything in Its Right Place," sets the tone with waves of keyboards at its core, while "The National Anthem," a storming, stomping, bass-heavy track with the artillery of the brass leading from the front, is an assault on the senses. In contrast, the fragile tones of "Idioteque" entices rather than ensnares the listener.

Companion Edition

It would not be long before another album appeared from the same recording sessions. The following summer, Amnesiac (2001) provided a companion collection to Kid A and, if anything, suggested an even darker setting. Although the band insisted that the new record was more than mere outtakes from the original project, the rationale for issuing a further set of songs was never fully explained.

Nonetheless, there was no discernible decline in quality. Amnesiac was more moving and haunting than its predecessor, with the extraordinary "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box," a plaintive and desperate plea, leading into a maze of melancholy cameos; the terse domestic drama of "Morning Bell," an amended reprise of a Kid A track; and the mournful, contemporary blues of "Life in a Glasshouse," replete with the New Orleans stylings of Humphrey Lyttelton's traditional jazz band.

Late in 2001, the rush of releases continued as I Might Be a Wrong: Live Recordings completed a trio of related recordings. It features live performances recorded around Europe and offers some of the finest bits of Kid A and Amnesiac, including "The National Anthem" and "Like Spinning Plates."

Legacy

During the 1990s Radiohead managed to avoid the mainstream. They attained success on their own, idiosyncratic terms, side-stepping the star-making machinery—the standard promotional interview, for example—and pursuing an agenda of their own that included uncompromising videos and band images that rejected the merely photogenic. Distanced from the Britpop surge, with its strong tendency to nostalgia, the band followed an increasingly experimental line. At one stage it seemed that they might be at the heart of a progressive rock revival, but then they moved to another stage by sculpting a pair of minimal, electronically based albums. They earned high ratings from the critics, who seemed to yearn for a band that takes chances and has the courage to risk failure at a time when the popular music scene was driven by the visual cliché, the machismo of rap, and the guitar posturing of nu-metal.

Radiohead managed to break a 1990s pattern of U.K. groups routinely stumbling at the challenge of the huge U.S. market; Radiohead surmounted this hurdle through a shrewd use of the Internet as a promotional tool. A band of originality and intelligence, Radiohead has left an indelible mark on the evolution of rock music.

Spot Light: "Creep"

If any song transformed Radiohead from unknowns with potential into stars in the making, it was "Creep." A song with more than a note of self-pity, even self-loathing, the piece quickly became associated with its singer, Thom Yorke. It tells the tale of unrequited romance and focuses on the sense of inadequacy the rejected lover suffers: "But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo / what the hell am I doing here?" It was when this most unlikely of rock classics began to attract the attention of radio stations in San Francisco and then in Los Angeles in 1993 that Radiohead knew it would become one of their signature songs. One problem that faced Yorke was the general assumption that the song was autobiographical. When Yorke was asked, "Are you the 'Creep' guy?," the group would retort, "Yeah, we're the 'Creep' guys."

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Pablo Honey (Capitol, 1993); The Bends (Capitol, 1995); OK Computer (Capitol, 1997); Kid A (Capitol, 2000); Amnesiac (Capitol, 2001); I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings (Capitol, 2001); Hail to the Thief (Capitol, 2003).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

S. Malins, Radiohead: Coming Up for

Air (London, 1997); M. Randall, Exit Music: The Radiohead Story (London, 2000); J. Doheny, Radiohead-Karma Police: The Story Behind Every Song (London, 2002); M. Clarke, Radiohead (London, 2003).