Thom Yorke (8 page)

They appreciated
Pablo Honey
for what it was, a crash course in how to be a rock band provided, in part, by Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade. In an interview with
Mojo’s
Nick Kent years later, Thom was asked. “Would you have preferred a different producer?” “Oh no,” he replied. “That was great. They were rock ’n’ roll. They were brilliant.”

Their long-term producer Nigel Godrich has also defended Paul and Sean from the accusation that they somehow let Radiohead down. The problem was that Radiohead simply had no experience of making a record at that point and there was no time to learn. “They’d been signed very quickly and put in a studio very quickly,” he told journalist Nick Paton Walsh. “The situation required somebody to take the situation in hand or the record wouldn’t have been made. As a result, they felt, quite justifiably, that they hadn’t had as much of an input as they’d have liked. They hadn’t made a record they felt was completely theirs – even the artwork was done by somebody else.”

But Paul and Sean had the same frustrating yet encouraging feeling that Radiohead were capable of much more. “When the guys put me in their van and took me to the airport, I remember thinking, ‘These guys really have what it takes and if they could just go out there and play on a regular basis, then they will become a mighty band,’ says Sean. “I definitely had a very strong intuitive feeling that they were capable of it. Then all I can say is that ‘Creep’ was so Goddamned powerful and hit the zeitgeist at the exact right time that it enabled them to go out and play and become the mighty band that created
The Bends
.”

It’s no coincidence that it came out the same year as ‘Loser’ by Beck,” says Paul. “There was a lot of that kind of thing around. 
The thing about the first record was just that they needed to get off the ground. They needed to get up in the air. It got them a tour and that took them around the world and made them play together a lot and really gel as a band.”

Both producers accept that
Pablo Honey
was nothing compared with what Radiohead would come up with next. But they make the fair point that it was the process of recording the debut that helped push them on to the next level. Still, it must have been a little frustrating when, right at the end of the sessions, when it was too late to record anything else, Thom played them two other demos that he had. They were ‘The Bends’ and ‘High And Dry’.

One thing
Pablo Honey
and its subsequent tour taught Thom was how not to do things. It taught him not to listen to the record label. Not to try and copy what was going on elsewhere. Not to listen to what the press said or what other bands said. It was like one of those disposable rockets that they used to use to blast the Space Shuttle into orbit. It served its purpose. It got them off the ground, but once they’d finished recording and touring it, they didn’t want to think about it again. “When I hear the singing, I just don’t recognise myself at all,” Thom said to Nick Kent. They certainly didn’t realise that they would have to spend the next two years playing the same songs over and over, before they could go back into the studio and try again.

‘Creep’ was the first single to be released from
Pablo Honey
and, after the
Drill
EP’s poor performance, expectations weren’t all that high. Even so, when it only sold 6,000 copies initially and peaked at 78 in the UK charts, the band, their management and the label were all disappointed. The problem was that it received very little radio play. BBC Radio 1, in particular, decided that it was just too dark. Other bands in a similar position have been helped out by the music press but, although the single enjoyed mostly positive reviews, the band weren’t given many column inches. They were in the unfortunate position of being seen as too weird and out-there for the mainstream and, as a major label band, too corporate for the alternative.

Luckily, a series of support slots kept them from thinking too much about commercial success (or lack of it). As they played more and more gigs, they were getting better and better, even if the British music scene hadn’t realised yet. First they went out with Kingmaker, a band best known for their quotable front man Loz’s regular appearances in the press. Then they headed out again with Irish band the Frank And Walters. It was on that tour that they took another major step forward. In retrospect, the combination of the happy-go-lucky Frank And Walters and the ‘dark’ Radiohead seems highly bizarre but at the time nobody found it odd. The Frank And Walters were on a roll with their records selling quite well and earning highly positive, if slightly patronising, coverage in the press.

“It was a sell-out before it started, so it was a good tour to get,” Frank and Walter drummer Ash told this author, “and there were a few bands in for it. We saw Radiohead at The Venue in New Cross and they were really good. So we said to our managers ‘Let them do it.’ It was the song ‘Creep’. They played it third song in or something and it was like, ‘Fuck!’”

“It worked really well!” says Nigel Powell, who did the lighting for Radiohead on that tour and many others. “The Frank and Walters
were lovely fellas. They were really friendly. This was the time before Radiohead were the most respected band in the world! They were just another band who’d signed to Parlophone and tried to break through.”

To the Frank And Walters, meeting a band like Radiohead was something of an eye-opener. The Irish band were very young, too, and they’d always seen rock ’n’ roll as, essentially, a mobile party. Meeting somebody like Thom, who was so desperate to continually improve his songwriting and play better shows was, according to Ash, an inspiration.

“They were definitely different from any other band we’d ever come across,” he says. “We moved to London in about 1990 and most of the bands we met were into the usual rock ’n’ roll stuff of getting drunk and meeting girls, but they were very different. Most other bands were thinking, ‘This is great, we’re on the gravy train, the record company are giving us money to go and tour and have a good time.’ But, with Radiohead, you suspected that they had the recipe for success in their back pocket. Over the whole tour there were only maybe two nights when they’d go and get drunk and let their hair down. They used the soundchecks for what soundchecks are supposed to be used for, practising the songs and getting things right. Other bands would get dragged up there by the tour manager suffering from a severe hang-over, just bashing out some noise for the soundman and hoping he could work with it. They were different characters to most other bands we’d come across, alright.” It was during the Frank And Walters tour that ‘Creep’ came out for the first time. Ash thinks that its relative failure hit them pretty hard.

“It was a bit odd,” says Ash. “They were with EMI and there were a couple of A&R guys at the shows and they were getting mid-weeks [sales figures] through for the single and all wasn’t rosy. They were under a bit of pressure because, I suppose, if you’re on EMI, there’s some expectation on you because it’s such a huge company. I’ve been there myself when you’re in the van and the call comes through that the single’s peaked at 61, you start thinking to yourself,
Oh, right, that’s the career over now then. We’ll just pack our bags and head off
.

We played Oxford, which was their hometown gig, on a Saturday night and I think the ‘Creep’ single had been released on the Monday and they got the midweek on the Thursday, so they knew it wasn’t
charting. The tour manager at the time said the people at EMI weren’t very happy with it.”

It was the worst time for them to hear bad news. The first few dates of the tour hadn’t gone badly but they weren’t blowing anyone away and now they had to play their hometown gig with a cloud hanging over them. They knew that EMI’s patience was in short supply. They also knew that ‘Creep’ was the best song on the album and if that wasn’t going to chart then how well were the follow-up singles going to do?

“The band could have gone into their shell and felt sorry for themselves,” says Ash, “or they could do an amazing show and I think that was the first time I saw them and thought, ‘Jeez, these guys are something.’ For the previous gigs, they were OK but they didn’t quite let fly. Jonny Greenwood took the band to a different level. Back then Thom wasn’t that charismatic. Jonny seemed to carry the band. That was the first night I saw him going from one of two guitarists to the main attraction. It was the same songs but it was completely unlike the previous sets they did.

When the tour started they were a bit stand-offish with the audience. It was as if they didn’t know how to interact with an audience. But that night in Oxford and for the rest of the tour, it was weird; it took the single not doing well for the band to step up to the mark. For the next twenty-odd dates of the tour, they were amazing. I remember a gig in Glasgow, which is one of those areas of the UK with a big Irish population [and] so a lot of people who’d known us from Irish radio [came]. They had an audience who didn’t know them and didn’t really care about them. But one or two songs in, you could watch them become instant fans.”

Radiohead’s live show was very different to the other bands that were popular at the time. There was an intensity and a fervour to the way they played that lifted even their lesser songs. At a time when most other big-selling indie acts were all about a good, beery night out, Radiohead were trying to create something closer to a spiritual experience.

“I suppose back then, ’91, ’92, it was an era of ‘Let’s all jump up and down together and hold hands and won’t the world be a great place?’” says Ash. “Gigs were all about moshing and jumping around and having fun. Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Carter and all that sort of stuff. Radiohead were playing music that you couldn’t really
mosh to. They weren’t being all, ‘Let’s clap hands for this bit.’ There was no ‘You fat bastard’ song (the opening tune for Carter USM)! They were very different to the bands that were touring but they were still able to win over an audience. And I’d always assumed that to win over an audience they had to be jumping around and stage-diving and doing all the mad stuff. But for the first time I saw that a band were able to win over an audience who were just watching the performance of the songs.”

As the tour went on, Radiohead were becoming a much bigger band almost surreptitiously. Although ‘Creep’ hadn’t sold well, Radiohead now had an ardent fan-base who were busily proselytising on their behalf. It was as though everybody who saw them play went home and told three more friends that they
had
to catch this band.

“Word spread,” says Ash. “I don’t know how it spread, because it was pre-mobile and pre-internet and stuff, but I think when the tour started off, somewhere like Cheltenham, there were 200 people at the gig and 30 of them were watching Radiohead and 170 were in the bar. Then everything changed after that Oxford gig and the audience wanted to see them. I’m not sure why. Because I think the problem with ‘Creep’ from day one was that it didn’t get the radio play. EMI [struggled to] get it on the radio so it didn’t filter through but it seemed like by the end of the tour they were a really big band. Rather than people popping in for ‘Creep’ and then going back to the bar, people were there for half an hour before they went on. We used to try, where we could, to have a local act and the local act would be on and there’d be 300 people in the hall watching them because they didn’t want to miss Radiohead. We were just worried ‘Would they stay for us?’ I’m not sure how it happened, it must have just been word of mouth, unless people were sending smoke signals or writing to each other. We finished the tour at the Astoria in London and it was a sell-out gig and a great vibe and there were 1,500 people in there and they were all watching Radiohead, the whole gig, from start to finish. There wasn’t the usual support band chatter. People were watching and they were watching vigorously. It was a great tour. It was a great tour for us as well. Sometimes you don’t get the support band right but that time we got it right!”

But Thom remained something of an enigma. He appreciated the friendliness of the Irish band but, at the same time, a tour for him
was a kind of mission. It wasn’t about partying and socialising with the support band. It was about the music. Nothing else.

“The other lads we knew quite well,” says Ash, “but we’d get to a venue and Thom would take himself off with his guitar to some corner and change the strings and be strumming away and getting ready for the soundcheck. And they’d put as much effort and enthusiasm into doing a song at the soundcheck as they would at a gig, which is admirable. Because when you’re touring for a long time, you’re fed up with music and you’re just going through the motions. But you could see they were really honing the whole thing and working on their craft.

But he wasn’t odd or rude or anything. If you chatted to him, he’d chat back and I’d have full-blown conversations with him but he wouldn’t instigate a chat. He didn’t seem like a, ‘Let’s have a chat over a cup of tea,’ kind of bloke. He seemed quite reserved. I guess he was just shy. It’s hard to think of someone who’s a huge rock star and an icon to millions as shy, but I guess looking back he was just a shy, young guy who was just trying to get on with his life and write songs and play music as well as he could.”

Ash says they couldn’t help but be influenced by Thom and the rest of the band’s dedication. “By the end of the tour, we were pretty much taking the lead from Radiohead, getting home, getting a good night’s sleep, and then getting up and eating a good breakfast,” he says. “Instead of busting open the tin of Tennent’s Super in your anorak pocket! With Radiohead it was very much back to the hotel early. They used to take their instruments with them and start working on stuff. Jonny was always fiddling with the guitar and anything else. He had that sort of brain. He wanted to know how things worked and how he could get them to work so they’d suit him. I’d imagine he was up in his room taking the trouser press apart and getting it to work more efficiently. Or he’d have his guitar and he’d be writing the intros for the next twenty albums. They were always up early, always got breakfast, always at the venue before time. They were like the model band. At that time, being in the music industry was something you did while you were waiting to grow up, but they were different.”

But Radiohead learned from the Frank And Walters, too. At a time when things didn’t seem to be going according to plan, with their records not selling and EMI breathing down their necks, the
successful gigs gave them a massive confidence boost. Frank And Walters also, perhaps, taught them the importance of relaxing every now and then. Certainly on later tours, they weren’t always back to the hotel room straight after the gig to work on songs. And there was one thing about the Irish band that Radiohead would always appreciate. At a time when it was the norm for support bands to have to buy their way on to a tour, the Frank and Walters refused to take a penny.

“EMI got on to us saying, ‘How much do you want for the tour?’ says Ash, “and we’d never encountered that before, paying to get on to a tour, we were shocked, we thought there’s nothing worse than a band having to pay to play. So we went, ‘Jesus! Nothing! They’re a great band, we don’t want anything.’ [People were] going ‘Fucking idiots! You could get ten grand or fifteen grand for this!’ We were like, ‘No way.’ It was nice, a couple of years later, I read an interview with them where they name-checked us and said that bands toured with them on merit, nobody ever had to pay to play on their tours. It was nice that a tiny bit of their inspiration for that decision came from us.”

An indication of the way their audience had grown over the course of the tour came with the release of next single, ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’. It wasn’t bad but it was no ‘Creep’ and yet it was much more successful, giving them their first Top 40 hit. It was a song that, lyrically, summed up Thom’s already ambiguous attitude to the concept of rock stardom. He’s complained in the past that it’s been taken as an entirely sarcastic sentiment when, in fact, he meant it as a celebration of the guitar. But it seems to be both. “I do want to be in a band when I’m in heaven,” he said in an interview, “it’s the best thing you can do with your life.” But he also said that, “rock ’n’ roll just reminds me of people with personal hygiene problems who still like getting blow-jobs off complete strangers.”

Just like ‘Creep’, ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’ exhibited a simultaneous fascination with the beautiful people and the glamorous life, and a contempt born out of knowledge that he would never feel part of it. There was a small part of him that really did want to be Jim Morrison but, increasingly, it wasn’t a part he had a lot of respect for.

Not long afterwards, the debut album
Pablo Honey
was released. It did pretty well too, peaking at 25 in the charts. But they still
weren’t shifting units in the way that EMI hoped. It didn’t help that they insisted on releasing a single that wasn’t on the album, ‘Pop Is Dead’. It was their first real dash for independence and it wasn’t a great success. They decided to produce it with their live sound engineer, rather than using, as Thom put it, “expensive producers”. In consequence, it had a powerful, raw guitar sound but it was a little muddled. It sounded like it was something that Thom just needed to get off his chest. The lyrics were all about record labels killing pop by concentrating on their back-catalogues rather than new music. It was something he felt passionate about but the record buying public as whole probably didn’t. It was a flop, causing an outbreak of gloom in the band.