I came to see Radiohead – or was it to hear “Creep”? The band kick off with a couple of songs from their first EP. And then it’s that  moment. Third song in and I’m really trippin’. Bursting with restrained madness and unleashed rage, “Creep” erupts from Radiohead’s set like the Alien kissing goodbye to John Hurt’s stomach. You see it, you hear it, but you still don’t believe it! Larynx and bodice ripping vocals from Thom matched by the dirties heaviest guitar drive from Johnny you could ever wetdream of Horatio. A mountain of a song soaring and dipping as Jon lays into his guitar like he’s Edward Chainsaw Hands.

But is there more to Radiohead than “Creep”? Will I still love them tomorrow? Unless my loins deceive me this band is so angry and smart I’ll eat their mantelpieces if they’re not groaning beneath an array of glittering prizes within a year or two. I’ll go for world domination please Radiohead. I won’t settle for anything less. And if you have the gall to be a “one hit wonder” I’ll personally transfer all your photos into fucking tablemats! Oh, and you hadn’t guessed… watch out… there’s a serious ligger about.

It was a small, faintingly hot venue which didn't have the greatest sound-system in the world. And the homecrowd were mainly quite passive as they received their local heroes. 

Radiohead played a fine set, which included ‘Killer Cars‘ and ‘Yes I Am‘. Jonny was his usual hunched, intense self and Ed looked positively scary, glaring across the stage. Being slightly vertically challenged, I couldn't really see Phil and Colin tended to hide in the shadows. The stage-lights were really poor and much to my disappointment, Thom stood in darkness for most of the time, so I couldn't see him clearly. His voice was great, but not perfect and he apologised to the crowd. Predictably, 'Creep' received the loudest welcome from the crowd. The couple in front of me put their arms around each other as the song started and just stood there hugging each other all the way through it. 'Creep' meant a hell of a lot to them. It's been said so many times, but Radiohead really are "so fucking special".

Radiohead, have had to cancel their planned appearance at Stratford’s Phoenix Festival next month because of their overwhelming success in America. The Oxford guitar-types had been due to play at the star-studded three-dayer on July 16 to 18. But with their cracking debut album Pablo Honey taking off Stateside the band had to pull out.

Bassist Colin Greenway said: “We are delighted with the success of Pablo Honey and we’ve got our heads screwed on enough to make sure we build on what we’ve achieved. There’s still a long way for us to go, we want to grow steadily at our own pace and not be rushed into anything.”

Guitarist Ed O’Brien added: “Even though we can’t play Phoenix we’ll be playing the Reading festival later at the end of August so hopefully that’s compensation.” Pablo Honey is available on Parlophone Records and is one of my top ten albums of 1993 to date.

 

Obscurity is being snatched away from Radiohead like youth is stolen from the old.

Two months ago Radiohead showed bagfuls of talent and the secret was out that his was the start of something big.

Now things are finally coming together and the band sound better than ever before.

Knowing something the rest of the world doesn’t Radiohead have pressed on steadily, pacing their climb to fame. Unperturbed by bands racing momentarily ahead of them, Radiohead know when they pass the finishing post, unlike the Cornershops, Huggy Bears, Back to the Planet and even the Suedes, they’ll have stamina, the songs and the backing to take them steadily forward onto the next goal, leaving the others burnt out and choking on their dust.

A more self-assured Thom E Yorke steps out now, happier with himself and holding on to notes on Prove Yourself forever.

Guitarist Johnny, hit in eye with a bass battled on, attacking Creep with as much passion as a vampire going for the jugular and the whole band have now waved a last farewell to all the inhibitions which once held them back.

Radiohead, like spoilt children can do no wrong and are fast becoming a band to live your last five minutes for – and this is only the beginning!

 

The film company for Arnold Swarznegger’s latest movie have approached Radiohead to ask if they can use a Radiohead poster and “Creep” sticker in his latest movie

 

Despite the towering presence of New Order, highlight of the weekend is likely to be on the second (Melody Maker) stage on Saturday, when Radiohead, heirs to pop’s vacant throne, return to the Thames Valley fresh from conquering America.

If you have yet to discover this Oxford-spawned five-piece, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you do so immediately.

They are going to be MASSIVE – remember where you read it first (could be anywhere actually – their rise to the top is confidently predicted in everything from Select to Our Dogs – probably).

 

“I’ll end up being more arrogant and my temper will get worse. I read an old interview with Lou Reed and thought to myself, Hmmm, sounds familiar…”

 

Following one of Radiohead’s American gigs, one fan was so desperate to meet Jonny Greenwood, the band’s space-cadet guitarist, that she posed as a strip-o-gram in order to meet him. Unfortunately she spent a fruitless night standing outside his hotel room door wrapped only in a towel as she’d picked the one night that Jonny G had gone out partying for the night with one of Strangelove’s road crew who happened to be in town. Two Japanese fans saw half of the “Creep” video on TV – following that they flew over from Japan and made three visits to Oxford looking for the band before following them on tour.

The beauty of Radiohead is tha they are really on their own. If you were to look around, then you would not find any other band that sounds like these five boys. Radiohead are hard to describe. One thing is for sure, they are a pop band. Full stop.

Pablo Honey, their debut long player, is a good opening offer. You will be lucky to hear a better debut all year. It is a wondrous, powerful, charming album for 1993. It has 90s pop written all over it.

It is the opening chapter to a story that should not finish for many years yet. Radiohead are an important band.

Last year Radiohead were allowed to develop, they didn’t have too much pressure from the press. They got on with the job of touring, playing their songs to the nation. They seemed to support everyone under the sun.

They toured with Kingmaker and the Frank and Walters, stealing their fans on the way. A year is a long time in pop music, well it is in these days, it can make or break a band. Radiohead made it through all the crap, and gained valuable experience in 1992.

Tonight it shows. These days they are confident and look comfortable on stage. A bit of a difference from their debut performance in Nottingham at the Imperial, at the start of of last year.

Tonight those stolen fans were out in force. This was the first time that the “new” Sub Bar had seen a gig like it. Packed solid. People were being turned away at the doors. It was hot. It was sweaty.

Radiohead have gone up a volume. Loud. Radiohead were charming, delightful, raw, lovely. Their show was a joy to watch.

How Do You was the jewel in their set. It pops out and smacks the crowd in the face. A great slab of poppy-punk-pop. Creep sees Thom turning into a Rock God, as several hands tried to pull him into the crowd.

Of course he handled it as a true pro. The smash hit (“Straight in at…number 32”), Anyone can play Guitar, received the warmest cheer.

John proved that anyone can play guitar, by playing his with the palm of his hand.

The other album tracks, Vegetable and Blow Out, are good pop songs. Blowout (“Our progressive rock track”) is one of the examples why Radiohead are so special, because it sounds like nothing else they have previously done. It jumps out to you from the rest of Pablo Honey. Radiohead are one step ahead of anyone who might even be close to them.

Radiohead is not Thom Yorke’s band. It is a process of five identities, five-a-side football team who can’t play footie but produce some of the best guitar pop around at the moment.

Five personalities that found their way into the sound, and it doesn’t look like they are coming out.

On a Friday? Radiohead should be tune in twenty-four hours a day, every day. For now.

Tonight was a head-shagging evening.

Thom Yorke can’t help feeling “very English” as he sits in the Capitol Records New York offices and begins a second day of interviews about his band’s Capitol debut, Pablo Honey. Apparently, the playfully volatile lead singer of Oxford’s Radiohead couldn’t contain his temperament during a recent MTV interview that went awry. “I was trying desperately not to be English about it and get stressed, but we were sitting there like wallflowers, occasionally answering these pointless questions. Finally, I really blew it by saying, “You get paid to do that, don’t you?” They just decided they’d had enough of me.”

That irrepressible lack of control makes Yorke a compelling and even charming focal point on “Creep”, the first single from Pablo Honey. Against a spare backdrop of wispy minor chords and a sample, steady basic drum groove, Yorke puts a gentle, poetic, almost too-precious front with earnest lines like “You’re just like an angel/Your skin makes me cry.” Self-pitying bitterness surfaces slyly at first: “I wish I was special/ You’re so fucking special.” Then, after a few jolting bursts of distortion from Jon Greenwood’s guitar, the emotional dam breaks, unleashing a flood of crashing cymbals, churning guitars and the pent-up frustration as Yorke declares “I’m a creep/ I’m a weirdo/What the hell am I doing here/I don’t belong here.”

It’s the same potent combination of pop-songcraft, angry, post-adolescent insecurity, self-effacing humour that made every Replacements song like “Unsatisfied” and “I will Dare” so irresistible. As a lovable, neurotic, distinctly British misfit who can’t keep quiet about his problems, Yorke resembles Morrissey more than he does Paul Wassenberg, especially in his tendency to use a falsetto for emphasis. There is also a little of “Boys Don’t Cry”-era Robert Smith’s fragile determination and some of Only One singer Peter Perret’s snotty self-loathing in his pungent delivery of lines like “Should I still love you, still see you in bed/ But I’m playing with myself and what do you care/When the other men are far better.”

Rather than sinking into a depressing, self-obsessed void or simply feeling sorry for himself, Yorke and fellow guitarists Greenwood and Ed O’Brien let out emotional steam with a liberating torrent of tuneful six-string chaos. Working from a base of two simple, strummed chords, “Stop Whispering” builds to a blissfully noisy climax of bent strings and tortured feedback. Yorke even finds some rock-and-roll redemption in the spirited DIY anthem “Anyone can play Guitar.” He can’t help injecting a little pointed, punk-rock cynicism with lines like “Comb my hair/I wanna be Jim Morrison” but three blasting guitars clear the sarcasm out of his system for the soaring chorus: “If the world does turn and if London burns, I’ll be standing on the beach with my guitar/I wanna be in a band when I get to heaven/Anyone can play guitar and they won’t be a nothing anymore.”

One of Radiohead’s biggest strengths lies in the interplay of O’Brien’s “polite guitar”, Greenwood’s “abusive guitar” and Yorke’s “inaudible guitar”-Instead of bashing out a monotonous wall of sound, they build layers of gentle R.E.M.-ish arpeggios, meandering melodic hooks and bristling power chords that intensify Yorke’s lyrical mood swings. Boston producers Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie, who have had plenty of experience with the frenzied grunge of Dinosaur Jr and Buffalo Tom, help emphasize the stark soft/loud dynamics by keeping the verses spare and putting the edgy, overdriven guitar very up front in the choruses.

According to Yorke, the band developed that explosive dynamic aesthetic in the six years it’s taken the five of them “to learn how to play, It took a lot of playing in front of only five people and the soundness to realise that it’s a good idea to go down to the absolute bare minimum and then scream like hellfire into the mic and bring things up again.” Over time, it became an intentional part of the songwriting style. “I come to rehearsals with all these gorgeous little polite melodies, and then we spend hours trying to fuck them up. Everything gets burned in chaos for a few weeks and then we just sort of dig a song out from that.”

After his recent MTV mishap, Yorke seems a little concerned about the attention they’re getting for their debut. “Maybe we’re in a dangerous position because we released a first album that has loads of faults, but it’s just our first album and we’re going to make another one, and another one. I mean, the most exciting thing about being a fan of a band is seeing how they change and get better. It may sound boring and old and rock and roll – and I don’t believe in rock and roll or anything but I think the only way to really function as a band and really express yourself is through touring, hard work and by surviving on the sidelines until you drift into the mainstream. And that doesn’t happen overnight”.

The Market Tavern is an ugly, single storey building which looks like a youth club that no youth would be seen dead in. As the name implies, it is the pub primarily used during the day by the workers of the livestock market, in the middle of which it stands. In fact when you go for a piss you can hear the cows mooing in the adjacent building.

On Friday 12th February, the train from Birmingham was chocka. At Kidderminster, everybody gets off and heads for the Tavern. Unfortunately, there was a notice on the door, announcing that owing to some meanie in Oxford the night before providing Radiohead with a weedy PA, Thom's voice had given out and there would be no headline band.

The re-scheduled date was March 2nd. When Radiohead appeared, Thom came straight up to the mic grinning his head off, then said, "Er.... Sorry about last time." All was forgiven instantly.

Five songs in, Thom puts his guitar down and people start nudging each other. The stage is dark and a disembodied voice mutters "This is a thing we call 'Creep'." The roar of approval drowns out the first half- minute, and the ear-splitting wall of guitar in the chorus almost blows your head off. No weedy PA here! The song finishes and somebody shouts "Anyone Can Play Guitar“hopefully. Thom asks the band, "Shall we play that then? “ BANG! Instantaneously, all five of them hit the opening chord, and the entire crowd join in the opening “Deehhhhh-stineee"!

The gig continues at a high level of intensity and "Faithless..." is a particular highlight. We're all deeply impressed, and are extremely pleased to have seen a band of this stature for only £2.50. We congratulated ourselves all the way home.