They got their first whiff of adulation and success in the States for their Creep single and Pablo Honey debut album.
And while the band still content themselves with smaller scale live shows in the UK, they are stadium fillers in the USA.
But the path to the top has left a bitter taste in the mouth of singer Thom Yorke – and if anyone mention’s Creep again, there could be trouble!

Difficult
He sighs: “We’ve spent four years trying to get people to move on from that and listen to Radiohead as they are now. But it’s proving difficult.”
The brief story is that after a series of UK singles in 1992-93 which radio wouldn’t touch with a bargepole – America went Radiohead mad and put both Creep and the first album in their Top 10.
Cue explosion of home-grown interest and a similar tale of success.
But the Radiohead story from that point on is somewhat fractured.
Having flogged themselves to death on tour in America, the group came home in early 1994 to find a public clamouring for new material which the band were in no fit state to provide.
Yorke explains: “We had to get our heads together and come up with an album which would prove we weren’t a one-hit wonder.”

Rumours
They fell well behind schedule delivering said album to the record company and rumours abounded that the one Radiohead album was all we were going to get.
True to form, however, last year heralded The Bends – a stunning collection which blew away everything the band had previously done.
Yorke says: “It came out at a time when the British influence of bands like Oasis and Blur had very obvious Sixties reference points, and we’ve never come from that angle.”
A European and US guest slot on REM’s Monsters tour proved beyond doubt that Radiohead had emerged from the right side of a creative tunnel and the only failure surrounding The Bends was its astonishing absence from the Mercury Music Prize shortlist.
Now, with five often fraught years behind them, Radiohead look set to be a dominant force in the British scene.
Yorke believes they’re a stronger band following an 18 month period of soul-searching.
“There were a few time when we thought we really had torn the band apart after the first big US tour,” he admits. “We suddenly weren’t in control any more and that was the scariest bit.

Stronger
“You just feel someone’s pulling your strings all the time, and the bigger we became the worse it seemed to get. We seriously considered pulling the plug on the band, but pulled back in time.
“That period has made us stronger as individual people and as a group. The bonus is that it’s also provided me with pages and pages of angst-ridden lyrics for the years ahead – I’m onto the sixth album at the moment!”