Some of you may have already seen the video for "Paranoid Android", the first single from Radiohead's new album OK Computer. If you haven't, I can assure you that it's the most graphic and disturbing six minutes of animation since Beavis needed tp for his bunghole. And if you have, it's doubtful that you've forgotten about it. And if you think "Paranoid Android" is a bit Kafka-esque, then just listen to what vocalist Thom Yorke has to say about the origins of the equally unusual "Subterranean Homesick Alien."
"I just drove down the lane one day," he begins curiously, "and actually what happened was I think I hit a bird, probably a pheasant. It was one of those tiny little country roads. And actually, just literally at the point where I hit the bird, I was fascinating about being abducted by aliens, and the song sort of started from there. And then there's the other side of it. When I was a kid at school one of the very first essays I had to do was this essay that asked, 'If you were an alien landing from another planet, how would you describe what you saw?' I just thought, 'That's a really mind-blowing question.' because you would find everything hilarious, wouldn't you? That's what i was trying to get across - as well as the killing of a pheasant..."
Long before Thom and the rest of his bandmates - who incidentally are Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien on guitars, Colin Greenwood on bass and Phil Selway behind the drums (but you already knew that) - looked to plowing down fowl for musical inspiration, they were entrenched in another unlikely scenario. Upon the strength of the self-loathing, unorthodox hit single "Creep," in the blink of an eye Radiohead had gone from just a collection of Oxford kids to something special, so very special, in fact. Their 1993 debut Pablo Honey, the album which spawned "Creep," showcased the band's boundless promise. It also brightly displayed the fact that while Radiohead certainly had the big guns, they hadn't figured out how to load them properly.
Fast forward two years to The Bends, an album where that mound of potential was actually sculpted into a rock record virtually free of the common cliches and trappings in which 1995 specialized (Smashing Pumpkins anyone?). But in addition to being without those detriments, The Bends was also lacking a huge single like "Creep." But that doesn't exactly make them one-hit wonders does it? "But we've only had one hit," Phil offers with a droll grin.
Beyond all of this is OK Computer, the band's third full-length release, which, in addition to being the most stripped down representation of the band to date, is quite simply their best record. Completely lacking any obvious rock hooks, OK Computer is a meandering, mournful, miserable celebration of loss and the unknown which aches relentlessly - quite a progression from much of the minor chord mayhem of the bends. Just what the hell are they doing here? "I don't know if it's as much a shift from The Bends as it is a natural progression," Phil speculates. "It's not as if at the beginning of the recording we said, 'Okay, we're going to sit sown and rip up everything we did before."
Thom, however, sees it differently.
"It doesn't feel like a progression," says Yorke. "It doesn't feel like we progressed. There's no backward or forward movement really."
"We've been moving sideways," Jonny chimes in.
"Yeah," Yorke agrees, "like a crab on the beach."
Ed is a bit more helpful.
"There's lots of space on this record. It's almost got a Phil Spector-for-the-nineties sound. These people [like Spector] use these big sort of soundscapes. They don't use them in a we're-going-to-play-stadiums kind of way. That's kind of what we wanted."
Yeah, but why stop the rock?
"It didn't feel like the right thing to do," Thom says. "There wasn't any need to rock out on this record, no sort of 4 wheel drive. If people want rock they can go listen to Aerosmith."
Ed adds that, "Another thing was being bored, to be honest. When we were rehearsing for the first month for this album none of the guitarists even stepped on a distortion pedal. It had more to do with dynamics."
No doubt the eccentric recording locations of OK Computer greatly affected the record's overall sound as well. Instead of working from within the traditional studio constructs, the band opted for make-shift recording stops as peculiar as an old house in St. Catherine's Court and the band's own rehearsal room which they have affectionately dubbed "canned applause."
"We were told, 'Take as long as you want. Record it where you want and record it with whom you want,'" Ed explains. "I think the album is the sum total of all these things. It's also the sum total of the band co-producing this record, so there's a slightly chaotic atmosphere to it. It's the sum total of all the rooms we recoded it in. We had a certain sound that we wanted to get but it's gone off on a tangent because of the limitations that have been imposed upon us voluntarily. You know, recording in unorthodox situations like the ballroom of a manor house or our rehearsal room, which is essentially an apple storage shed."
Unorthodox, peculiar, eccentric - while all of these words do well to eexplain Radiohead's recording locales, they also serve as accurate descriptions of the band's past few videos like "Just,""High And Dry" and the aforementioned "Paranoid Android." Obviously this form of multi-media is very important to the band. Phil explains that they are about to embark on a quite creative undertaking. "For this album," he says, "we've decided that since everyone has picked up on this whole 'soundtrack feel' - which doesn't really exist as such - but we've decided to [act] on that and have a video done for each track on the album. we've got one completed which is the video for "Paranoid Android" and two more for "Karma Police" and "Let Down." It's a large project but this is an album which lends itself to it."
"I just did the video for 'Karma Police,'" Thom confesses. "No one is in it, just me. I had to make sure they weren't in it," he says facetiously, "because i'm the star."
"Like we care," cracks Jonny.
Now, now Jonny. The rest of us do, so let's hear about it, Thom.
"It's like a Hitchcock thing," the vocalist explains. "It's a one shot piece - actually two shots. But this car is driving itself and I'm sitting in the back as it's chasing me down the road in the middle of the night. Then this guy sets fire to the car and I'm sitting in the car while it's in flames... and it's cool."
Do you get out?
"No," he says, almost pleased with himself, "I'm glad to be there."
But as for the significantly less dour subject of touring, there are obviously other places where they are glad to be. And fortunately for us, America is one they not only like but will be arriving in by month's end. "America is a great place to tour because it's such a huge country," Ed points out. "We've been very lucky. The first time we ever toured here was a sell-out tour because of "Creep." We did a club tour and it was sold out like 1200 people a night. We didn't realize how lucky we were. "Creep" meant that we got to travel the world. We had this American tour manager who would tell us every other day, 'You don't realize, this is not normal. You don't come over here to America on your first tour and sell-out with people waiting around the block in lines that are huge.' and consequently, when we came back for The Bends and toured the same clubs - I mean, we sold out, but it was over a long period of time. There weren't huge lines. It was cool though. It felt like we were starting again so we could build up our own proper following as opposed to a top 40 billboard thing."
At Stereo-type, we like to think of ourselves as part of the proper Radiohead following, which is parly when we decided to slap them on this month's cover.
"We made the cover?" asks a pleasantly surprised Ed.
Yeah, of course you did.
"What are you doing," he inquires laughing, "a special on one-hit wonders?"