Ed from Radiohead meets Gary Crowley

BBC
21.10.00

Life as Radiohead

Radiohead rose from obscurity playing as a college band to become one of the UK’s top-selling guitar bands.

After clinching their first deal with EMI, they set out touring the UK wanting to be taken seriously. For a year and a half a clapped-out VW van which once belonged to the News of the World was their tour bus.

Radiohead have always been at their best live, but in the early days they’d overdo it.

Now the guys have wisdom on their side Ed says, "The secret is to pace yourself, you get in on Thursday night, have a pint of the black or a couple and that’s it. The tendency was to go mad and peak too soon."

Years of performing at big venues has left the Oxford band sick of playing in places designed for sport, with adverts plastered all over them.

On their European tour, Radiohead made the unprecedented move in playing to audiences under a tent.

Ed says the Pagoda-style tent is liberating and gives their performances that edge. "The idea of playing arenas just filled us with horror, we don’t enjoy playing them. We didn’t want to upset people and we didn’t want to play somewhere like Brixton Academy for four nights in a row because we would suffer. The tent adds to the whole aesthetic of the show and makes it a different experience." Who knows, they could have set a trend!

Working on Kid A

It's only two weeks since it’s release and Kid A, Radiohead’s new album, has topped the album charts at no.1. "To think that people went out and bought it even though we haven’t made an album for a couple of years was great."

Kid A was curiously inspired by the development in human genetics but for some the 11-track album is too experimental.

Critics say that the band have stripped away the guitars and melodies in favour of electronica and moody grooves. Ed says Kid A is the new beginning.

A lot of soul-searching had to be done before Radiohead could really do any justice to the follow-up to OK Computer.

Kid A broke new Radiohead ground with its use of strings and orchestras and according to guitarist Ed experimenting with electronic music was a means of the band testing themselves.

"We were bored of playing guitars, we had to find a different way of working which is exciting. We’re just getting to grips with the technology and their capabilities. We’ve got toys and noise machines, it’s something that we had to do, we had to do this."

The Music Biz

Clinic and Aphex Twin are just some of the bands Ed tips as the ones to watch. While Ed argues that chart music is mundane, he’s very positive about the future of music. "There’s a lot a of good stuff but you’ve got to search for it though, it’s not handed on a platter."

Ed feels a 70’s revival coming on when music wasn’t so studio-led, "It feels like something’s waiting to happen, because of the technology, people are making stuff in their bedrooms and it’s really exciting."

The world of web has been a great tool for Radiohead.

While tribute websites are growing by the minute, the guys have used their own website as a mouthpiece for the band. The Radiohead website has nurtured an ongoing relationship with the fans. Demos are sent to the site daily and their bulletin boards have built global communities of fans.

Throughout the recording of Kid A, fans were able to log onto a diary, "In the studio it was a great way of keeping in contact with other people," Ed says. "We wanted to dissipate the expectations and the hype. We wanted to de-mystify the whole recording process."