Stepping Back From The Precipice, Enjoying The View

By Barry Walsh
HMV.com
18.10.00

It's a mildly surreal scene inside the Courthouse, one of Toronto's more opulent eateries. The main chamber's high ceilings, warm wooden tones and ornate Victorian furnishings are offset by klieg lights in a far corner and the puttering of camera crews. A battery of journalists and record company personnel mill about, brandishing combinations of bottled water, fresh fruit, schedules and cell phones. Meanwhile, in one corner of the room, a man is seated at a piano, quietly padding out chords. Perhaps inadvertently, he's restored the inherent warmth of the room that the media trappings have obscured. But suddenly he stops, gathers himself up and purposefully strides over to the back table, not meeting any of the eyes that can't help but follow him.

The man is Thom Yorke, lead singer/ chief songwriter for English quintet Radiohead. For those with a casual interest in such things, Radiohead is the band currently sitting at the top of the pop charts in several countries. The band who has, however temporarily, unseated the Eminems, Christina Aguileras and Steps of the world. But for those who have been awaiting the release of this new album, the strangely beautiful Kid A, the notion that Radiohead could take top spot is somewhat akin to a sign of the apocalypse. Or make that the Second Coming. And the fact that the band, renowned in equal measures for songs of heart-stopping beauty (check 'Street Spirit' from the Bends) and its guitar-fuelled sturm und drang (try all of OK Computer), cracked the code of the Top 10 with an album as uncompromising as Kid A is just this side of unbelievable.

For Kid A is an album that barely resembles anything else in the history of pop that has 'moved units,' made by a band that in some ways barely resembles Radiohead. Add to all of this the fact that Radiohead, put through the wringer during a grueling tour for 1997's OK Computer, eschewed any notion of playing by industry rules this time around. No videos. No singles. No year-long tour. Not a hope in hell, scoffed some.

And if we're to believe Ed O'Brien, affable and quite tall guitarist, the band (also including Jonny Greenwood on guitar and keyboards, bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway), didn't really see what was coming either. Holding court in one of the restaurant's other rooms, O'Brien is positively chuffed, if not completely floored, by this turn of events.

"We really, really didn't think we'd get to Number One," he asserts, rolling a cigarette. "We love this record to death - we weren't attempting to do anything at all perverse, we were just trying to do something different. But to go to Number One in so many countries, including here and the USA... it's mad!"

But if their first week chart placement is 'mad,' their schedule, for the first time in years, isn't. They've elected to perform only three North American dates - New York, Toronto and Los Angeles. Tickets for the last two shows are being offered up on eBay for the slightly inflated sum of ten thousand dollars. The frenzy is further fuelled by a triumphant appearance on Saturday Night Live, performing two of the most challenging cuts from Kid A, the lurching, propulsive 'National Anthem' and the techno-psycho 'Idioteque.' The fact that they pulled the numbers off with a mixture of aplomb and venom, and the smiles on their faces afterwards, illustrates the notion that perhaps Radiohead are learning to seize the day.

"We're at a certain stage now where we've got a creative window of opportunity, and we've got to use it. We can't be holed up doing endless rounds of tours and videos. That's the thing about the OK Computer experience - there's nothing worse than embarking on a year's tour and then six weeks into it you're absolutely shattered. And then you've got all the rest ahead of you. So it's all about keeping fresh."

That freshness comes from avoiding everything the band has come to regard as anathema. Their dissatisfaction with the prescribed way of doing business was brilliantly, if not depressingly, captured on Grant Gee's Meeting People Is Easy. This time out, to avoid becoming the shell-shocked, numb collective they were by the end of the film, they opted to let Kid A's music speak for itself. That meant very little advance press, which lead to a lot of journalists bantering about Radiohead's 'anti-publicity campaign.' Now, with the album at Number One, the pundits are applauding the brilliance of the band's anti-marketing 'strategy,' which infuriates O'Brien.

"Oh my God," he exclaims. "You can't win, can you? People always seem to be crediting us as being these marketing geniuses but there is no master plan in mind. We're just reacting to what we've done before. We know what we like to do and what we don't like to do, and we were in a position with this record whereby the record company couldn't tell us to have singles. We were aware of the commercial risks involved, but the commercial side has never been as important as the creative side. And the people in the record company who've worked on the record have been able to be really creative about it. They've found it empowering."

For Radiohead, empowerment came in many ways. There was the liberating effect of deciding not to promote the record traditionally, but it all began with the decision to not make a traditional Radiohead record. Thom Yorke, he of the angelic voice and unerring melodic sense, decided he'd had enough of melody, and wanted to concentrate on rhythm. It was time to initiate an all-new Radiohead Way Of Making Music. Only at the time, nobody knew what the New Way was. In the midst of the confusion, O'Brien started posting diaries of the process on the band's site (radiohead.com) shedding light on their progress, or lack of it.

"When you're in the middle of any sort of crisis, and you can't see out of it, in hindsight you realize it's something you had to go through. In the middle of it, you can't see a way out, and it's literally 'heads down,' but for us it was going back each day, talking about it, sorting it out."

Once light started appearing at the end of the tunnel, the process of birthing Kid A became much easier. Studio software enabled the band to utilize stream-of-consciousness approaches to song construction. Like Can in the 70s or contemporaries Massive Attack, Radiohead the band became Radiohead the production collective. Of course, there was always the chance that the whole thing could've backfired. Producer and band associate Nigel Godrich candidly told some press outlets he wasn't sure if people would like it. Would this system of remaking and remodeling various blips and bloops end up largely misunderstood, and worse, unheard?

"Obviously you want people to like it, but you have to trust your instincts. There's a long line of brilliant albums that were commercially unsuccessful. Pet Sounds is a good example, and Scott 4, one of my favourite Scott Walker albums, was deleted after two weeks! In the UK before the album came out, there was a lot of ambivalence towards it. And we had to keep telling ourselves 'This is the album we had to make.' We'd rather go down having made the album we wanted, as opposed to being successful with something we didn't want to make."

Moral of the story - follow your instincts and do what you gotta do. And now, with Kid A just out of the gate, the question on the lips of the band's rabid fanbase is 'what next?' And it's a question the band's been pondering as well. Thirteen songs recorded during the Kid A sessions lie in waiting, to be released in one form or another next year (O'Brien won't reveal whether it'll be an EP or a full-length - it all depends upon track listing, which is "crucial to the band").O'Brien is enthusiastic about doing an album a year, but as he's quick to point out, the band can take twists and turns before arriving at consensus. In the meantime, there are a few shows to play, a select few interviews left to give, and hopefully more firsts on the way.

"It's been absolutely brilliant, and for the first time in our lives we're really enjoying the moment," O'Brien asserts. "It's totally surreal,totally unexpected, and let's f***ing enjoy it!"

Perhaps, for one weird moment in time, everything is in its right place.