RADIOHEAD’S first visit to Australia in June 1994 was a right fizzer. Not the band’s fault, you understand. It was just greeted with a small fraction of the enthusiasm unfurled these past 10 days in the 8,000-12,000-seat arenas of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.
“Yes. We did a whole tour of venues that had sticky floors and smelt of old beer,” Jonny recalls, addressing his mate with a bemused stare.
O’Brien remembers playing to 40 people in Adelaide, a rude awakening after their manic Japanese tour which immediately preceded. But “Creep” had come and gone here, see. It was all over for Radiohead, we figured.
Ed: “It was a bit of a shock. It would’ve been very easy to say ‘Oh f*** this is bollocks’, but we turned it around by the time we hit Sydney and it was more like doing the club gigs we’d been doing a year before.”