Radiohead

Who will ever figure how last year's hype band becomes this year's underdog and then next year's underdog hype sensation? Oxford, England's Radiohead are the prime example of such an affliction. They started as a grunge wannabe band with their Gen X-posing hit "Creep." Immediately, it was recognizable that singer Thom Yorke possessed an intriguing voice, but the material was laughably weak on their debut album, Pablo Honey.

Radiohead is a British rock band formed in Oxford during the late 1980s, originally under the name On A Friday, a name referring to the only time where all band members were able to practice. Their current moniker "Radiohead" was taken from the Talking Heads song "Radio Head". The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, rhythm guitar and keyboards), Ed O'Brien (guitars, vocals), Jonny Greenwood (guitars and electronics), his brother Colin Greenwood (bass guitar), and Phil Selway (drums). Yorke and J. Greenwood are often regarded as being the two main artists behind the band, while the other members play supporting roles.

Producer Nigel Godrich has worked with the band since the recording of The Bends, and is said to have contributed significantly to their sound, often being dubbed the "sixth member" of the band. Another major contributor has been Stanley Donwood, who has produced the artwork for the bands albums since The Bends in collaboration with "Dr. Tchock" – a pseudonym for Yorke. Donwood and Yorke met at Oxford, and also produce the official band website, Radiohead.com (http://www.radiohead.com/).

Rising to superstardom (1994-1996) - left to right: Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway, Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke. While Radiohead are not normally referred to as a Britpop band, their influence on contemporary Britpop, especially bands such as Coldplay, Muse and Travis, is noticeable. Lately their electronic influence has placed them in Warp Records territory, though they remain basically an experimental alternative rock group.

Radiohead first came to international attention when their single "Creep" received extensive airplay and charted in many countries. Striking a highly popular and sympathetic note of similar self-loathing among fans, "Creep" was released around the same time as other so-called "slacker" anthems such as Beck's "Loser". The band later came to hate "Creep" and, until recently, refused to play it, believing that its meaning had been misinterpreted and given too much weight by fans.

The band at the zenith of their popularity (1997-1999) - left to right: Jonny Greenwood, Thom Yorke, Phil Selway, Ed O'Brien and Colin Greenwood Radiohead's first album, Pablo Honey (1993), which included "Creep", was a solid if unremarkable recording that lacks both the force and experimentation of their later work. Drawing heavily on 1960s influences as well as the then popular grunge music exemplified by groups such as Nirvana, Radiohead were considered a less than significant band. The EP My Iron Lung (1994) was released between the two albums, and saw the band in a transitional stage between the poppy simplicity of Pablo Honey and the musical depth of their next album The Bends. It was a significant step forward for the group with Yorke's vocal style to the fore. Tracks such as "Planet Telex", "Street Spirit [fade out]" and "Fake Plastic Trees" were striking, original and indicators of the group's later developments. Widely praised at the time of its release, The Bends is considered by many critics as one of the best albums of the mid-1990s.

After a year of solid touring, the band recorded their next album, 1997's OK Computer, in a studio located in the Oxford countryside. The album received even greater acclaim than The Bends, featuring prominently in many "best album" polls, then and now. OK Computer found Radiohead taking musical risks uncommon in the Britpop world, experimenting with ambience and noise to create a set of songs that many consider to be a high point of late-twentieth century rock music. With worldwide commercial success, Radiohead toured extensively, documenting their 1997-1998 tour on Super 8 and later released on DVD in 1999 as Meeting People Is Easy.

Exhausted by their fame and on the verge of burnout following the OK Computer tour, the band spent the latter part of 1998 in relative quietness. The same year the band released their fifth EP, Airbag/How Am I Driving?, which fills the gulf between the progressive rock of OK Computer and their subsequent experimental work on Kid A and Amnesiac. Thom Yorke admitted that after the tour the band was on the verge of splitting up. He also added that he fell in depression and Michael Stipe (R.E.M.'s singer) helped him a lot to recover and continue songwriting and recording. At the end of 1999 they returned to the studio to record Kid A, a defiantly experimental album that complemented the lyrical and musical hooks of their earlier work with a more minimalist style. The album's arrangements have been likened to a meeting of Pink Floyd and Aphex Twin. The album was released in October 2000. The band cited Alice Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Paul Lansky as influences, as well as the entire back catalogue of Warp Records.



Artist Biography - Radiohead
Radiohead TicketsLatest years (2000-present) - from Left to right: Ed O'Brien, Jonny Greenwood, Thom Yorke, Phil Selway and Colin Greenwood. The next album, Amnesiac, which was released in June of the following year, was comprised of further tracks from the same recording sessions as Kid A. Conceived as two separate sequences of songs, the two albums are similar in style and are linked by two different versions of the same song: "Morning Bell." After the release of this album, the band staged their own mini-festival in Oxford's South Park, featuring Sigur Ros, Supergrass, Humphrey Lyttelton (who played trumpet on "Life in a Glass House", the closing track on Amnesiac), and themselves. It was at this concert that the band finally played "Creep," after having refused to perform the song for many years. Initially the band wanted to release I Might Be Wrong as their new single after "Pyramid Song" and "Knives Out", but soon the idea expanded into a full-fledged live record. I Might Be Wrong also included one unreleased track, "True Love Waits". In the fall of 2001, they released their first live album, which showed performances from Berlin, Paris and various other concerts.

Recording process for their next LP Hail to the Thief was remarkably different from those for the previous three studio albums. Rather than holing themselves up in a studio for months on end, the band elected instead to take their new material on the road in Portugal and Spain during July and August of 2002 prior to recording it. With the songs fleshed out and finalized during the tour, the recording process took only 20 days in a Los Angeles studio. In 2003 the band released their sixth album, which was rooted in less overt experimentation than its two immediate predecessors but was still a long way from their earlier guitar-driven material. The album's title raised controversy in the U.S., being interpreted as a reference to the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. The band deny this claim. In the June 2003 issue of Spin Magazine, Thom Yorke was quoted as saying "If the motivation for naming our album had been based solely on the U.S. election, I'd find that to be pretty shallow." Instead, Yorke claimed that he had gotten the phrase from a radio program about the also controversial 1888 U.S. presidential election. That being said, he couldn't deny that the phrase "Hail to the thief" was additionally used a great deal as an anti-Bush slogan by protestors at the end of the controversial 2000 election campaign that put him into the White House. On the day of his inauguration, Bush was greeted in Washington by thousands of protestors with banners, who shouted "Hail to the thief, our commander in chief!".

Two months before the album release, an unfinished version of the album was stolen, apparently from the recording studio where they were working, and uploaded to the internet several weeks before it was officially released. Unfortunately for them, the original album recordings also met the same fate, but the band remained adamant, didn't pull the album for an earlier date, and released it on the announced day: June 9, 2003. Even though the album was leaked, its sales overgrew those of their last two records in the first week and overall as well. After that, Radiohead embarked on a huge international tour, which continued for about an year. It saw the band visiting Australia and Japan for the first time for 7 years, since their OK Computer tour in 1997. Radiohead headlined the main (Pyramid) stage on the Saturday of the Glastonbury festival, to crowd acclaim and positive press reviews. They omitted the traditional fan-pleasing "Creep", to no-one's surprise, but the crowd got to hear it when it was covered by Sunday night's headliner, Moby. Meanwhile the same year, Jonny Greenwood, with the help of his brother Colin Greenwood, recorded and produced the soundtrack Bodysong for the avant-garde documentary of the same name.


The band in a happy moment: Colin Greenwood, Phil Selway, Jonny Greenwood, Thom Yorke, producer Nigel Godrich, Ed O'Brien. Exactly the same happened with COM LAG (2plus2isfive): the band released their EP one year (2004) after Hail to the Thief. The difference with COM LAG is that it's a bit longer than their previous releases. While the first half is filled with standalone songs like Airbag/How Am I Driving? and My Iron Lung, the second half consists of b-sides, recording demos and different versions of some of the album's songs. In the middle of the year, drummer Phil Selway stated that the band will probably start recording their next LP in 2005. He said in an interview for NME that such a marked change in direction with next album as Kid A is unexpected. To be more specific, the band needs just some time not thinking about music and getting with the right motivation for recording.

By now all the members of the band are working on separate projects. Jonny Greenwood became "Composer in Residence" for the BBC, charged with creating modern classical pieces for the BBC Concert Orchestra. There are a few rumors and reports that Thom is working on solo project, and Phil Selway is involved with the Samaritans' Health organization. Most recently, Jonny (on guitar) and Thom (on piano) combined their talents with Sir Paul McCartney (on bass) for the Band Aid 20 project to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original song, which featured stars like George Michael, Duran Duran and Phil Collins. The project is helmed by Radiohead producer in staff - Nigel Godrich. It features collaborations of members from the most famous bands in the world - like Damon Albarn of Blur, Bono of U2, The Thrills, Sugababes and The Darkness. It is expected to be released November 29, 2004.

Radiohead was one of the few alternative bands of the early '90s to draw heavily from the grandiose arena rock that characterized U2's early albums. But the band internalized that epic sweep, turning it inside out to tell tortured, twisted tales of angst and alienation. Vocalist Thom Yorke's pained lyrics were brought to life by the group's three-guitar attack, which relied on texture — borrowing as much from My Bloody Valentine and Pink Floyd as R.E.M. and Pixies — instead of virtuosity. It took Radiohead awhile to formulate their signature sound. Their 1993 debut, Pablo Honey, only suggested their potential, and one of its songs, "Creep," became an unexpected international hit, its angst-ridden lyrics making it an alternative rock anthem. Many observers pigeonholed Radiohead as a one-hit wonder, but the group's second album, The Bends, was released to terrific reviews in the band's native Britain in early 1995, helping build a more stable fan base. Having demonstrated unexpected staying power, as well as increasing ambition, Radiohead next released OK Computer, a progressive, electronic-tinged masterpiece that became one of the most acclaimed albums of the '90s.