During 1997 the British band Radiohead’s OK Computer became one of the most acclaimed albums of its year and vaulted the quintet from cult status as well-respected men to the top of the international pop heap. What to do for an encore? For Radiohead and producer Nigel Godrich, that meant eschewing the conventional path of emulating prior successes, instead releasing two albums within eight months of each other that sound nothing like their acclaimed predecessor.
Risky? Indeed, but it paid off; Kid A, released last October, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart without the benefit of a single or video and only limited touring, while the new Amnesiac rolled in at No. 2. Yet it’s hard to overstate just how gutsy a move Amnesiac and Kid A are for Radiohead, and how much was at stake prior to the former’s release.
OK Computer didn’t come out of nowhere, of course; the band’s debut album, 1993’s Pablo Honey, launched the hit single "Creep," while 1995’s The Bends was bolstered by the group’s stint touring as R.E.M.’s opening act. But OK Computer raised Radiohead’s profile exponentially, winning a slew of international awards, including a Grammy, and scored high on virtually every year-end critics poll. Songs such as "Paranoid Android" and "Karma Police" received substantial radio play. It also created a rush of bands trying to imitate the spacious, melodic sound which Radiohead had achieved on that album.
But as the subsequent documentary Meeting People Is Easy revealed, the five musicians - singer Thom Yorke, guitarists Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood, bassist Colin Greenwood (Jonny’s older brother) and drummer Phil Selway - did not warm to celebrity; they disliked it so much, in fact, that they purposefully sought to redefine Radiohead on their own terms. So with everything to gain by simply repeating the lushly orchestrated pop soundscapes of OK Computer, Radiohead chose to deconstruct itself and its music, painstakingly - emphasis on the pain here - crafting songs that sound nothing like their celebrated predecessors and quite often eschew standard melodic and songwriting conventions, replacing them with ambient sonic pastiches and even some arrangements that leave O’Brien’s and Greenwood’s guitars largely on the side.
Ultimately, besides putting out two albums that have both baffled and enraptured fans and observers, Radiohead served notice of its intent to chart its own ambitious pop path, stubbornly forwarding a notion that intriguing and fresh music can win out over formula and creative malaise. As crazy as that sounds in light of what rules the charts these days, Radiohead may be right - an achievement that could even make a paranoid android feel a little better about things.
Music Connection: The band seemed to approach Kid A and Amnesiac with some very deliberate purpose.
Ed O’Brien: Our goal was really not to do what we’ve done before - it’s really as simple as that - and not to go over old ground. It’s just that a lot of the time it didn’t feel right to pick up the guitar and do kind of what we’ve done before. It just felt like we didn’t have a choice; this is the record we had to make. There wasn’t mass amounts of thinking behind it; it was just "We’re not gonna go over old ground.”
Colin Greenwood: The reason we did these two records is to show that anything is possible rather than everything is expected. The last thing we wanted to do was go into the studio and make another version of OK Computer. The media was building us up to be the next sort of U2 or R.E.M. But some of our experiences on OK Computer made us very uncomfortable with that career trajectory, so we’ve been spending the past two years working out how to do things a bit differently.
MC: Were you really surprised at the impact that you made with OK Computer?
Greenwood: We were, especially when there were bands appearing in England that were having big success with sort of diluted versions of what we were doing; I’m not interested in any of them, though they’ve gone on to sell a lot more records than we have. But we thought we’d become a target for other people, and we wanted to change it, sort of become a moving target, you know? I think people who would have been influenced by us before - like the number of bands in England who, when journalists write about them, use the R word to describe them - I think that’ll drop off now, unless the band is being described in terms of willful career-wrecking decisions and wayward artisticness. (laughs) We’ve always been a difficult band to pin down; I think that’s what ended up being good for us.
MC: So how hard a task was it to reinvent yourselves as dramatically as you have on these albums?
O’Brien: If you tend to do something that’s different and new, it’s not going to be easy ‘cause you’re challenging your own preconceptions. I’m not surprised that some people have found listening to the record quite difficult; we did as well.
It took us awhile to get our heads into that space, and we’re the people making the record. But it’s always like that - it was like that on The Bends and it was like that on OK Computer. So it never really changes in that respect. If you’re gonna do something new, it’s going to be difficult. It should be difficult, ‘cause the notion of doing something truly new implies that, really.
MC: Was it harder than the band expected?
O’Brien: Not expected; maybe than we wanted. But if a band has made three records and toured for eight years pretty solidly and then takes four, five months off, there is going to be a kind of hangover from all that. And then look at how long we’ve been going as a band. People are having families now. It’s like anything you do that’s difficult; you never realize how difficult it’s going to be beforehand. You know it’s going to be difficult, and you remember what it’s like ‘cause you’ve been through that on The Bends and on OK Computer. It’s consistent in that respect, ‘cause its like the last two records, emotionally, to make.
MC: As you hopped between studios making the album, there were all sorts of rumors about inner-band turmoil and near-breakups while you were making the album. Was that indeed the case?
O’Brien: Yeah, but, you know... I don’t know how much of it is that we’re drama queens. It’s like a five-way relationship; I don’t know whether it’s splitting up, but it’s like re-addressing the balance or re-addressing things. It’s like any relationship; you have to do it once in awhile, and that involves a day or two of some hard talking. But that’s what you have to do in a relationship, I think. So I think it’s no different with a band.
MC: Was there a degree of panic when the new songs did not come easy at first?
Greenwood: We recorded lots of things early on, which we were unhappy about, that we didn’t think were very good. And six months later we want back to them and wound up using a lot of them for the two albums, for bits and pieces that ended up on songs for both records. I think that says more about our state of mind at the time, which was sort of fractured and confused.
MC: There’s the potential of setting a trap for yourself where you’re never satisfied. How did you know when you had something that truly worked?
Greenwood: I think once you decide that you have to release an album, it’s important to stop recording at some point - otherwise you can go up your ass forever.
The only time you get to assess the quality of your work is when you complete a record and release it to the public; then you see how it’s received and you get an idea of what’s good and what’s not, what works and what doesn’t work.
I think, for us, playing live concerts and releasing records will always be crucial.
MC: When did you know Kid A was on track?
O’Brien: The opening track, "Everything in its Right Place.” That was the first one where, okay, it was significantly different from what we’ve done before, but it was a great piece of music.
That was the summer of last year, ‘99, and after spending a lot of weeks, a lot of head-scratching, that was the first one that was "Okay, this is really good and really different, as well.”
It’s Nigel (Godrich) and Thom; we tried tracking as a band, and it hadn’t really worked. We had a second studio, and one evening they sort of locked themselves in there with keyboards and the Pro Tools and they worked on it and they got it - so much so that it became the opening track on the record because it was the first track we wanted people to hear.
MC: It seems the great leap that was made on Kid A was for the five of you to agree that not everybody had to play on each and every song.
O’Brien: Yeah, definitely. It think it was a really liberating thing. It took a while to get your head around and actually, really genuinely, being happy about this track that you haven’t played a note on.
You know the nature of bands; you want to put your thing in. But sometimes on this record you just didn’t. You were part of the production committee, if you like, and you talked openly about what you thought about the song, but you might not necessarily play on it. It’s a really good place to get to.
MC: Ed, was it difficult for you and Jonny to put down the guitars?
O’Brien: Not in the end, no. There’s not a guitar until the fourth track, until "How to Disappear Completely.” And then there’s guitar on that, on "Treefingers,” on "Optimistic,” "In Limbo,” "Morning Bell.” They are still on quite a few; it’s not like we’ve completely thrown them away.
But on "Treefingers,” for instance, that’s all guitar, sampled guitar, and I don’t think it sounds like a guitar at all.
MC: One interesting thing you did was split up and work in two different studios, devising pieces of music that you would then toss to the guys working in the other studio. What was the point and the result of that exercise?
O’Brien: That was really a response to being scared of finishing stuff off. (laughs) That was Nigel’s suggestion, and it was a good exercise; hopefully it wasn’t like one of those art school projects that was totally theoretical.
The thing that was good was that it was totally relaxed; it was being like a Kid Again, let loose on the machines ‘cause the rules were such that you weren’t allowed to pick up acoustic instruments - drums, guitars, blah, blah, blah. The only sounds that could be generated were from machines and from synthesizers, and no microphones were allowed to be used, and no vocals.
It was also familiarizing ourselves more with the equipment we had, too. And stuff did come out if it; there was some good stuff. There was some atrocious stuff as well, but that’s all part of it. It made us less nervous using the gear, which was a good thing.
MC: Was the group ever in danger of breaking up during this process?
Greenwood: I don’t think so. I mean, I think it’s a relief when you emerge; you come out into the real world again and you realize that your music is good compared to other people’s music - and also there was other good music out there as well. We all like that band Low, and the new Kristen Hersh record is really good. There’s some really exciting records being made at the moment, so that’s all good when you realize you’ve done good work plus you know you can still be excited by good music.
MC: What makes Amnesiac different from Kid A?
Greenwood: I think the difference is Kid A’s like a more far-off, distant-sounding record, whilst Amnesiac is more present. Kid A is like a message recorded on your answer phone, whilst Amnesiac is a good, direct conversation with someone. Amnesiac is a more present example and representation of the music that we’ve been recording over the past 18 months.
O’Brien: The part that I disagree with is the "traditional-sounding” part that’s been ascribed to [Amnesiac]. I don’t think it’s more traditional. I think there are definitely elements of what we’ve done in the past. There’s perhaps four or five more songs that are more straightahead, for sure. But I don’t think they necessarily have the obvious verse-chorus routine, although some of them have that.
MC: Ever consider doing a double-album instead of two single albums?
Greenwood: Yes, we were gonna do it as a double-album, but then we thought that was kind of cheesy, the kind of thing a Seventies progressive band would do. We think that records should be no longer than 45, 50 minutes maximum; it should be long enough for your average car journey and certainly no longer.
MC: If all the songs were done during the same sessions, how did you decide which ones would go on which album?
Greenwood: They were all done at the same time. We had around 20 to 30 songs that we were finishing, and we selected the first team, the first football squad (laughs) for Kid A, and for the second match we selected the Amnesiac team, and the songs that were left over we just used on some B-sides for the singles.
MC: What’s it been like playing these new songs live?
O’Brien: The thing about them that’s really liberating to play live is that because they weren’t made in a band context - they weren’t written on the road or they hadn’t been written for a band - we’ve had to change them to work live. The thing that you hear, the music that you hear on the record, is different from the music that is played live. We’ve taken them into a band format. Barring (Kid A’s) "Motion Picture Soundtrack" everything else is [played by] the full contingent. It’s been really good, that whole exercise.
MC: So what’s next for Radiohead in terms of songwriting and recording?
Greenwood: We’ve talked about doing a guitar album next. My best guess for the next album is a combination of Amnesiac with more guitar music. But the most important thing is it’s song-based music rather than sort of instrumental, non-lyric based music. We try not to insult or bore the intelligence of our audience, ‘cause we’re aware their tastes are moving on as well as ours with music, and it’s exciting to be part of that."