Post Bends blues

by Cameron Adams.
Rolling Stone Australia
10.97

Watching Radiohead's guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, in flight is like watching a younger hipper version of the Simpson's Montgomery Burns. Greenwood has hair and morals, but, like Burns, he has bizarre stretched fingers which adapt themselves to the task at hand. And when Radiohead is on stage bringing it's instant-classic OK Computer to life, Greenwood's hands work overtime. As well as playing guitar, he coaxes weird noises out of samplers and takes care of keyboard duties, propelling a Radiohead live show into truly special territory.

The band's recent show headling the UK's Glastonbury Festival in front of over 50,000 people was a tour-de-force.

Greenwood's role in rock history started accidently. Radiohead had a wisely jettisoned name "On A Friday" and was working on a new song written by singer Thom Yorke. His bandmates encouraged him to make the lyrics less obscure. The song became "Creep". Greenwood, unhappy with the song, retaliated by assulting his guitar just before the chorus kicked in. He had unwittingly created a rock & roll moment and Radiohead's first anthem.

While "Creep" broke Radiohead around the world, it almost finished it. The resulting album, Pablo Honey, threatened greatness but rarely delivered. Radiohead had already internally disowned the album during the endless touring to follow "Creep" around the globe. The tour dragged on for almost two years, often without justification. Australia was one of the most unfortunate incidents. Long, long after "Creep" had been a top 10 hit and long before thier second album was released, the band still remember embarrassingly empty Antipodean venues, which became even more spacious once "Creep" was delivered 20 minutes into the set, rather than predictably kept as an encore. "We had a bit of a disaster," says Greenwood of their Australian jaunt. "But it was a wonderful place. It was actually good for our egos that tour."

Those who did attend were treated to a preview of most of the songs that would comprise Radiohead's second album, The Bends. "We went insane on the Pablo Honey tour," says Greenwood. "We had most of the songs for The Bends written and we were on this endless tour waiting to record this album which we knew was much better than the record we were promoting."

The Bends reinvented Radiohead. The first single "My Iron Lung" was inspired by Yorke's shyness (partly due to his lazy eye) which is often mistaken for arrogance. The lyrics read like an apology note from the band ("This is our new song, just like the last one, a total waste of time"). And from there on it got even more internal. Although lacking anything as obvious as "Creep" to alert America to it's beauty, it still managed to convince a few odd million people to vote with their wallets. A string of singles: "High And Dry", "Fake Plastic Trees", "Just", "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" were not only remarkable songs but reinvented the tired pop video format. Touring The Bends was a more enjoyable experience, with the band supporting everyone from REM (Michael Stipe became their unofficial publicist with his oft-repeated quote "Radiohead are so good they scare me") and Alanis Morrissette, who even covered "Fake Plastic Trees", which came as an antidote to the string of "Creep" covers (everyone from Chrissie Hynde to Tears for Fears, ex-Take That star Mark Owen to local lounge crooner Frank Bennett). "Alanis did 'Fake Plastic Trees' in a soundcheck when we were touring with her," says Greenwood. "It was peculiar. It was very American, the drummer had his hands really high in the air all the time and the guitarist hardly moved his hands at all, which is almost exactly opposite to us really."

Radiohead was still writing new songs as The Bends kept spawning singles and praise. When asked to contribute to the Bosnian relief album Help, which was to be recorded and released in under seven days, the band offered one of its favourite unrecorded songs, "Lucky". Two years later and the exact same version, recorded in a day, makes it onto the Radiohead's third album, OK Computer. "We tried to remix it but we couldn't get the same chaos that we got in the original." says Greenwood. "Exit Music (for a film)" was also another early postcard from OK Computer. Originally planned to feature on the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack, the band offered "Street Spirit"'s sonic landslide of a b-side, "Talk Show Host", instead. "Exit Music" merely plays over the final credits. "I think we knew as soon as we'd finish that it had to go on our record, and not the soundtrack," says Greenwood. "It was about more than the film, which is a bit arrogant to say, 'It's bigger than Shakespeare.'"

Greenwood is partly responsible for the diet of experimental '70s rock in a '90s context that programs OK Computer. The guitarist says that reports (via his bass playing brother Colin, no less) that the seemingly endless OK Computer sessions were only concluded when he uttered 'I can't do any more' and left the building, are greatly exaggerated. "It wasn't quite that precious. I didn't say, 'That's it darling, my artistic juices are fully spent, I'm creatively drained' and throw the back of my hand to my forehead," says Greenwood. "It was more that I'd had enough, rather than I couldn't do any more. I couldn't be bothered to do any more. We'd done so much recording and so many versions of the songs it was time to start touring and thinking about the next record. It's only 45-50 minutes of music, it was sounding great to my ears, we were just being nervous, being Radiohead."

OK Computer is more Radiohead than ever before. After working with legendary producer John Leckie (Stone Roses, Lennon) on The Bends, the band went it alone this time. That's not to say there weren't offers.

REM's producer Scott Litt even offered his services to the band, before withdrawing them. "Scott Litt said that he wanted to work with us but thought that we didn't need a producer," says Greenwood. "When people like him are telling us we don't need him we decided to go it alone. Every producer we've ever met has said you don't need a producer. Maybe we'd have finished quicker if we'd had a producer, but we probably wouldn't have enjoyed it as much and it wouldn't have been as good. It was just the six of us (including engineer Nigel Godrich) in the room and we were all the same age, there was no father figure. It was back to the old days of four track recording at school or whatever, it was more relaxed."

Recorded in the library of an old mansion belonging to British actress Jayne Seymour, OK Computer is a brave rewarding album. The first single, "Paranoid Android", reclines over seven minutes and a dozen different mood swings, with Yorke's rally cry "kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy" now emblazoned on many Radiohead t-shirts. Chosen as a single partly to prepare the world for the album, and partly just to be difficult, it's subsequent success in the UK (straight in at number two and an unlikey singalong anthem at Glastonbury) has backfired on the band. "We were assuming that radio stations around the globe would let it gather dust on some corner shelf and carry on playing Green Day or whatever turns them on," says Greenwood. "We actually don't want to release singles, we just want to put albums out now and again, that'd be great. You get out of the whole grubby world of promotion.

Epic singles, a taste for prog rock and long periods of time in a studio... is Radiohead turning into Pink Floyd? "I'd say that we're an experimental pop band," says Greenwood. "I love Teenage Fanclub and the Pixies, they're my favourite bands and they're pop bands."

The Pink Floyd connection still lingers. "I confess I have started listening to Pink Floyd, but only about a year and a half ago. Before that they were a band that everyone laughed at when I was at school. I grew up the generation that found them embarrassing and rubbish and 'old bloke'. It was like watching your geography teacher play drums. But I found albums like Meddle, which I never knew existed, to be amazing. Terrible lyrics though, after Syd [Barrett] left. Great music, great confidence in the lengths of songs."

OK Computer has been described by many members of the band themselves as a "stoned Radiohead". Greenwood admits that the chemical factor was no higher or lower than before. "Some songs are influenced by bands who do quite drug related music like Pink Floyd. As a band we whip ourselves up into our own brand of psychosis, whether we're using drugs or not, our brains tend to be fairly messd up anyway. It is like a stoned Radiohead, it's certainly slightly further out than The Bends. But drugs aren't necessary for recording. More estate agents than musicians take drugs these days, they're not that interesting."