Radiohead has worked harder than just about any other British band to crack the American market. Their first single, "Creep" (memorable for its nihilistic chorus: "I'm a creep/ I'm a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here?/ I don't belong here") charted around the world in 1993, and earned Buzz Bin status on MTV. Instantly, the band was tagged a one-hit wonder, a labeling straitjacket that they've been trying to wriggle out of ever since. The million-selling album on which the song appeared, Pablo Honey, was followed by The Bends (1995), which, although it didn't sell nearly as many copies, helped crack the "Creep" mold with a downpour of critical acclaim, some of which compared the band to the likes of U2.
The quintet from Oxford, England - Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar), Jonny Grreenwood (lead guitar, keyboards), Colin Greenwood (bass), Ed O'Brien (guitars, vocals), and Phil Selway (drums) - soon found that, beyond critics, theiir biggest fans were fellow musicians. R.E.M. insisted on having the band open for them on their 1995 tour, ostensibly so they could catch Radiohead's show every night. That same year the band also toured with Soul Asylum, and in 1996 they hit the road with Alanis Morissette, who was so blown away by "Fake Plastic Trees" that she added it to her own concerts. She's not the only one who was impressed: both Chrissie Hynde and Tears for Fears have covered "Creep."
With the release of OK Computer in July to more rave reviews, the days of being the "Creep" band seem to finally be behind them. In fact, they rarely play the song in concert anymore. The new album has earned comments like "groundbreaking," "stunning," and the "articulation of the anxiety of late-twentieth-century man." Guitarist Ed O'Brien attributes the accolades to pre-millennium tension, a lot of luck, and just plain hard work. From his hotel room in Seattle, O'Brien (commonly known as "the tall one" in the band) talks to Wall of Sound about Radiohead's leap to instant fame and their climb to respectability.
OK Computer debuted at No. 1 in the U.K., but you have yet to become a household name in America. So what is it with Americans?
Well, I mean America's a big ol' country. We're doing the things that we want to do in America. We're picking up fans. We're now doing the stage where we're playing sold-out theater tours, and those are fantastic venues. It's really satisfying for us. I mean, one of the things--with "Creep" and everything - we have such a problem with is that we were suddenly sort of catapulted into the Top 40, and we didn't feel we deserved it. It was a good song, but we didn't have any fan base. We always took bands like R.E.M. as a role model, and U2, and they spent three or four years slugging it out around America, building up. And that's the only way that you can gain any longevity.
Elvis Costello said that... America is like the Mt. Everest of places to tour. Because it takes its victims, you have to work hard - really, really hard in order to be successful in America. But once you've been successful in America, and you've taken awhile to get there, it's the thing. You've really achieved something. But boy, does it take its toll on bands. Lots of bands have split up. Lots of British bands never achieve it.
I heard you recorded the album in an apple-storage shed.
That was our rehearsal studio. We recorded a month there. We basically tracked "No Surprises," "Subterranean Homesick Alien," "The Tourist," and "Electioneering." Then we went off to Bath, just outside Bath to a big country house. Took all our mobile gear and went into a fifteenth-century manor house owned by Jane Seymour, the actress. She spends most of her time in L.A. now, I guess.
And you recorded in her house?
Yeah, it's fantastic. Amazing. Peaceful. Really stunning.
I had no idea that Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was also a patron of the fine arts.
She's a great lady. [Laughs] I think we had to pay a whacking great deposit, of course.
How did you go about the actual songwriting?
It usually comes up with Thom [Yorke, vocals] on acoustic guitar and a vocal melody or whatever, and work around that. Occasionally, myself or Jonny [Greenwood, lead guitar] will come up with chords or something. Jonny's very good at it; he's incredibly musical, sort of classically trained. If Thom has something, he'll often put in some quirky chords or whatever. But then we get to rehearsal and then that's when it becomes the Radiohead song, if you like. We put a lot into it and spend a lot of time working on stuff.
Critics say you're moving into art-rock now.
Nah. They're talking bollocks. It's just an emotional thing. It's not a cerebral thing. It can be got by lots of different people. I think our gigs tend to be quite emotional sometimes.
It seems to be, the better the music gets, the more everyone wants to say its art rock rather than pop.
Yeah, exactly. We do pop songs. We've got layered pop songs. They can be played on acoustic guitar and sung with, so they are pop.
But - gasp! - no chorus, though.
No chorus. No hooks. We'll probably kinda get back into chorus hooks and... [Laughs] There are things we want to do at the moment. Maybe occasionally we've been guilty of being willfully perverse, but we kind of enjoy that. Anything that's really out-there for the sake of being out-there doesn't actually make it. But you should hear some of the stuff that doesn't make it onto the record.
Some people say, "God, you know, you've done something that's really out-there." We go, "Listen [laughing] we've reined it back in. What you've heard is nothing compared to what lies in the vault." We end up doing three full versions of songs sometimes. "Paranoid Android," when we first started playing it, when we first toured it - that song was eleven minutes long with this kind of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Hammond-organ solo. [Laughs] It was very dodgy territory, but we enjoyed it at the time and when we got into the studio to do it, it was - mmmm no - maybe we should condense this. And so the six-and-a-half-minute song is like, wow, I mean, we like, edited it to fuck. We brought it down to its most condensed form. So when radio people say "We can't play it," we're going like, well, you know . . .
You've released it as a single though.
On MTV - bless their cotton soul! - 'cause they've been so supportive of us. I've heard lots of bands have an axe to grind with MTV. We've actually got friends at MTV, and they love our videos and they play them and it's just fantastic... they've been proactive in putting us on when radio stations wouldn't touch us. MTV were like "This is a great video. We like this band. We're gonna put it on." They've been very cool.
Do you still plan on making videos for every song?
Well, it's kind of on hold at the moment. We had a video done for this song called "Let Down," but it's falling [off the charts] so we have to write it off. We're kind of on hold at the moment, 'cause it is a very costly thing to get involved with and we need outside finance and no one has been forthcoming in financial assistance. So it's on hold at the moment.
It'd be nice to make something, but we're just so busy at the moment. The thing about videos is it's not like anything else you do, in a sense that you have to trust the director. You never know how it's gone on the day of the shoot. Two weeks later, you get this thing back. When you've been fortunate to be working with people and you've had like - most of the videos on The Bends, the Jake Scott "Fake Plastic Trees," Jamie Thraves and Jeff - I forgot the fellow's name who did "High and Dry" [David Mould] - and Jonathan Glazer on "Street Spirit." We were very lucky; they're great great directors. They did a great job with us. And Magnus [Swedish artist Magnus Carlson, whose cartoon character "Robin" is popular in the U.K.] did a great job on "Paranoid Android." So, with this thing with "Let Down," we remember what it's like to get a shocking video back. We're not in that stage where we have to put it out, because we have a reputation now; we've built up this consistency on videos that we're kind of aware of
and to throw something in there that's complete dogshite would upset the whole balance of it. We're in this position where we have to write it off. There's ridiculous amounts of money to be paid for a video. You can make an album for the cost of one video.
Speaking of which, you were nominated for Breakthrough Video. Congratulations.
That's cool. We've had quite a few nominations for awards in the last two years. We never won a sodding thing. But that's cool. We don't really like awards ceremonies. We're always on tour. We're always working. I'm amazed at how many bands are at these awards ceremonies. It's like, you're not doing any work? We just don't have the time for it.
The bands that show up at those ceremonies are usually the ones that are on hiatus.
Yeah, or they're the ones in rehab. Rehab's not a luxury we can afford.
At least, not with your schedule. You're touring with Teenage Fanclub, playing festivals, doing radio gigs...
The thing is, we fucking hate these radio shows.
The DJs?
Oh, the DJs are alright. It's the whole setup that's terrible. They're awful events. They're not about music; it's about how many bands you can cram onto a stage in six hours. So we're treating it a bit like a James Bond mission. Our crew's gonna set it up: "We're gonna let you arrive, walk off the bus, do the show, and leave" 'cause we've hung around at these things for ages and found them so demoralizing.
So you just do the show and hop back on the bus. And what are you guys listening to on the tour bus these days?
We listen to a Harlem Shuffle compilation, a soul compilation, stuff from the late sixties, early seventies. We listen to Teenage Fanclub. I mean, they're our support band, but we're huge fans of theirs as well... I usually have a couple of CDs that I always take on tour for those typical tour moments - the two CDs are always Marvin Gaye What's Goin' On and the Clash London Calling. I've been sort of getting back into hip-hop, like listening to Straight Outta Compton and stuff. It's great.
Does that mean there's going to be a little more soul on your next album?
There's always soul on our albums--in one form or the other. [Laughs.] Rubber soul.