I ask the staff if I can take a drink to my friend in the cloakroom queue
"Drinks are discouraged in the foyer,
sir."
"So can I or not?"
"Drinks are discouraged in the foyer,
sir."
"Is that a yes, a no or an in-theory-no,
but we'll turn a blind eye?"
The supervisor is called. He ambles over, looking vacant. The answer is, predictably, "No" but it takes us nearly five minutes to get to that level of emphaticness.
Having said all that, the actual Arena part of the Arena is not that bad. It's been designed by someone with half a brain, and manages to be quite roomy even at this capacity crowd. It reminds me of Brixton Academy (minus sloping floor, sadly) and manages to seem not that much bigger.
But who am I kidding? The thing which shrinks this Monsters Of Rock ArenaFest!!! venue to a managable size is pure and simple Radiohead. I swear that after Teenage Fanclub came off, the stage was rolled a couple of hundred feet closer to the stalls.
Radiohead are probably the best band in the world and have produced at least one album of true greatness. The reasons why are all on display tonight.
Jonny Greenwood is the best guitarist I have ever heard live and understands guitar music in a way that no one else alive does. In their first song he makes noises which I would say, are about 7 or 8 years ahead of anything anyone else is doing. Then, during The Bends and Planet Telex he shows that he can take traditional rock patterns and do more with them than Oasis or Weller ever could.
The small, understated use of electronic instruments to provide little shimmers for the songs is masterful. So few guitar bands can use dance music technology as a tool and a raw material without it taking over.
Thom Yorke exercises such anguish and control in his voice and lyrics that place him up there with Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain and very few others. Listening to him, you realise that you aren't at the show. You are alone in your bedroom. You're numb for no real reason, maudlin drunk and pre-menstrual. You're listening to OK Computer and you're about to start crying.
They do it all. They even start to play Creep, and Thom bails out of it. They skid to a stop. This was very clearly not in the schedule. The sneer with which Thom cuts it dead echoes the way that Nirvana used to treat Smells Like Teen Spirit. Instead, they hammer through a couple of fast songs, then start to slow down. Paranoid Android is the regulation six-plus minutes and as always seems to last about two. Karma Police is every Sunday morning come-down I've ever had, and every one I'm ever going to have.
The song which gets the biggest rise out of the crowd is Fake Plastic Trees. That is, it's the only song to remind me that I'm not alone but in an arena with thousands of people, most of them are w**kers. I could make a case for it and Nice Dream being the album fillers of The Bends. Instead, they are transformed into stadium-fillers. I suspect quite strongly that Thom and Jonny could perform their laundry list and it would still work.
They finish their set with Street Spirit and Creep. Two of their very, very finest songs. Street Spirit is just perfect, each strained syllable serving to isolate you in a way that no drug or hormone can. Just like last time, I feel as though I am being locked in a small metal box and Jonny is throwing entire walls of sound at me. Theres a slight pause and then all motherf*cking hell is coming out of the speakers, and this is Creep.
In the original version, Creep doesn't have the edge of their later material, but in the here and now, it has been hammered into a loud, vicious, brutal, cathartic, tender focus for their entire set. Loud? You haven't heard loud or harsh until you've heard this. One of the very few pieces of guitar music to be able to take on the most aggressive slices of drum'n'bass or hip-hop and batter them senseless.
I was sure I'd seen the best gig of my life after seeing Radiohead at Glastonbury. I was wrong. I'm prepared to lay money that in 20 years, I'll bore people about this gig, in just the same way as I've heard my parents bore people about seeing the Stones play or Pink Floyd at Earls Court in the early 70s. I just hope to God Radiohead aren't still touring in 2017.
-Ben Evans Indie World
02.12.97