Radiohead Biography

In 1995, with the release of 'The Bends', Radiohead earned their long-overdue respect. Critics raved about the album, and the band landed a spot on R.E.M.'s European tour (and R.E.M.frontman Michael Stipe was moved to comment on his opening act: 'Radiohead are so good, they scare me.'). Radiohead's third album, 'OK Computer', released in June 1997, earned even greater critical and commercial success, immediately reaching number 1 on the British album charts, topping countless 'Best Of '97' lists and winning the "Best Alternative Music Performance" category at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards.

Fourth album 'Kid A' (2000) was a distinct sea change - rather than provide a sonic sequel to 'OK Computer', it was a far less conventional, less accessible record. Not based around melodic guitar rock, and instead deploying interesting minimalist arrangements, electronically sequenced beats, the album divided opinion amongst the fans and the critical community alike. (For every hack who thought it was the group's best work to date, there would be a formerly dyed-in-the-wool fan convinced that their heroes had lost it). And although Yorke maintained that they hadn't purposely set out to make a 'difficult' record, the group's decision to tour what was an already unconventional album with a deliberately non-commercial, non-sponsored tent, playing smaller venues, was symbolic that Radiohead were not merely interested in matching the sales and the prestige of their two preceding albums.

In 2001, around the time that his first child was born, Thom Yorke took the habit of spending the early evenings driving alone around the fields and by-ways surrounding his home just as dusk was drawing in. "I've got one of these cars with the natty blue headlights and the colours of the headlights got mixed in with the wild-life running into the bushes. The twilight invoked a dream-state within me. It's incredibly beautiful where we live but I used to listen to this Penderecki tune that's really ominous and scary and I'd just get this perverse sense of foreboding.'

These solitary drives helped inspire the ideas that bolster up much of what would eventually become Radiohead's sixth album, 'Hail To The Thief' (2003). 'I wrote a lot of stuff quickly: pages and pages of notes that seemed pretty incoherent at first. Most of it was taken from the radio because -suddenly being a parent- I'd be confronted by the radio giving a news report every hour of the day. It was during the Afghan war and it would ring bells in my head. I'd sit there making mad lists on pieces of paper of the people in the public eye that I had it in for.'

In early 2002 the quintet reconvened at their Oxfordshire rehearsal/recording studio for six whole months of ironing the material for 'Hail...' into workable shape. 'We're an old-fashioned band in the sense that we work very intensely on our arrangements', claimed guitarist Jonny Greenwood. 'The rehearsals were all recorded endlessly and we'd eventually got a compilation of the best songs, so that once we reach the studio we could present Nigel (Godrich) with finished material and work quickly.'

The group also began performing the new material live at European shows during the same period. In September 2002, they flew out for recording sessions in Los Angeles, having had their arms twisted by producer Godrich. 'I remember us recording "Kid A" in a country house in the middle of nowhere and Nigel would keep telling us 'we should be doing this in L.A.. We could be eating sushi right now', recalled Jonny, 'and we'd be standing in some market square in Oxfordshire at midnight and there weren't even any street lights! So we said, 'Nigel, you can have it your way this time. But only for two weeks.''

"Nigel dragged us out to L.A.", added Ed O' Brien, "because he'd done three records there -two with Beck, one with Travis. We'd always been hesitant about working in Los Angeles because -let's face it- Radiohead mixing in with the Hotel California mind-set doesn't sound like a potential marriage made in heaven. But we quickly realized you can function out there without becoming tarnished by whatever else is going on there. It was the best recording experience we ever had. We finished one song each day we were booked. We didn't over-scrutinize. We didn't get too cerebral. We trusted in ourselves, Nigel, the studio and the songs and just let go, really."

Letting go seemed to be just the ticket - scoring a number one album chart success with 'Hail to the Thief', Radiohead appeared to have recaptured much of the youthful energy and exuberance of 'The Bends', not to mention adding another healthy dose of cynicism and the macabre to the mix, particularly with the Brechtian "We Suck Young Blood". Inspired by Thom Yorke's trips through Hollywood during their time recording in LA, the singer summed it up thus: 'It's got a sex thing about it -sex being a form of currency in Hollywood. There's a malignant quality to it -a dark force devouring everything in its path. It's an expression of that desperate urge to be somebody at any cost, even if it means being preyed on and sucked dry by every scheming parasite in the world. You find examples of this in the music industry and the porn industry but it could just as easily relate to the way the extreme right seduce young people to enlist in their ranks. Fascism starts with the embittered 50 year old sado-masochist who finds dysfunctional teenagers who he then works on for a couple of years until they become transformed into homicidal little skinhead motherfuckers.'

For all its sinister lyrical undertones, however, the record is certainly not without moments of benign ecstasy: 'Sail To The Moon' is an exquisite sonic dreamscape to rival the likes of 'Street Spirit' and 'Pyramid Song', and a tender-hearted salute to Yorke's infant son. But then there's that belligerent techno bass line punching its way through 'Myxamatosis' causing Thom to wail peevishly on about his Drop The Debt experience of '...watching the politician as 'whirlwind of nothingness', just telling you what you want to hear in order to get your signature and then forgetting you ever existed. That was a mind-blowing experience. All power corrupts. The closer you get, the uglier it becomes. They're not even human beings. These people are possessed'.

Thom Yorke was quick to defend the overtly political title of 'Hail to The Thief' (itself taken from a book about the dubious George W Bush 'victory' in Florida in the US elections). 'We don't have to stand on a soap-box and preach because hopefully we're channelling it through the new record. We didn't start out to make a protest record at all. That would have been too shallow. As usual, it was simply a case of absorbing what's going on around us. The title of the record goes so much deeper than just being some anti-Bush propaganda. If we got into a situation where people start burning our records, then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history. If we were threatened in any way for simply making a piece of art - that would be bad. Then it would be time to move to somewhere obscure. Like the moon."

Having toured 'Hail..', culminating in spots at Glastonubry and the Coachella festival, a hiatus of sorts ensued. The band came to the end of their contract with EMI, and sensing the way the wind was blowing in the industry, Radiohead found themselves questioning why they needed a record company at all. They began writing and performing live some new material, and recorded for their next album first by themselves and then eventually under the guidance of Nigel Godrich once more. The album, 'In Rainbows', completed by the summer of 2007, was released in October that year, first of all as a digital download for which fans could name their own price. Clearly, for all those cheapskates buying the album for a penny, there were still plenty of good-hearted folk out there who paid something a bit fairer, and in any case the publicity gained boosted no end the subsequent physical sales of the record. What's more, the album was a hit with the critics, containing some of their most accessible work to date, and as such deserves to be remembered as much for its songs as for the self-policing online pricing scheme the group employed to sell it.

• Radiohead Discography