Radiohead: Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album

305 Pages·2007·12.79 MB·English

by  Tim Footman

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Radiohead - Welcome To The Machine
OK Computer And The Death Of The Classic Album
by Tim Footman
A CHROME DREAMS PUBLICATION
First Edition 2007
Published by Chrome Dreams
PO BOX 230, New Malden, Surrey,
KT3 6YY, UK
[email protected]
WWW.CHROMEDREAMS.CO.UK
ISBN 1 84240 388 5
978 184240 388 4
Copyright © 2007 by Chrome Dreams
Editorial Assistant Jake Kennedy
Cover Design Sylwia Grzeszczuk
Layout Design Marek Niedziewicz
Photographs courtesy of Retna, LFI, Rex, Paul Joseph.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk
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Contents
Introduction: This Is What You Get 6
1: I Don’t Want To Go To Seattle – 1980s-1993 16
2: A House In The Country – 1994-1997 28
3: ‘Airbag’ – Contradictions And Collisions 40
4: ‘Paranoid Android’ – Jonny Hates Prog 48
5: ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’
And The Poetry Of Perspective 58
6: ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ – This Is Not A Death Song 64
7: ‘Let Down’ – Sentimentally Handicapped 70
8: ‘Karma Police’ – Listen To The Voice Of Buddha 76
9: ‘Fitter Happier’ And The Strange Death
Of The Rock Star As We Know It 82
10: ‘Electioneering’ – Don’t Vote, It Only Encourages Them 92
11: ‘Climbing Up The Walls’ – The Horror, The Horror 98
12: ‘No Surprises’ And The Beauty Of Despair 106
13: ‘Lucky’ – Holding Out For A Hero 112
14: ‘The Tourist’ – Dead Ringer 118
15: Pictures Drawn By Dumb Computers – Artwork And Design 124
16: Thank You For Listening – The Album 136
17: Makes You Look Pretty Ugly – The Videos 156
18: Asbestos And Skeletons – The Songs They Left Behind 166
19: Every Day In Every Way – The Critical Response 176
20: Like A Detuned Radio – The Cover Versions 188
21: Performing Monkey Bookings – 1997-1998 200
22: Labyrinthine Catacombs – 1999-? 210
23: Everything’s Gone Green – Ok Computer
As An Ambivalent Eco-Manifest 224
24: The Emptiest Of Feelings – Ok Computer
And The Death Of Indie 230
25: A Song To Keep Us Warm – Ok Computer
And The Death Of The Classic Rock Album 246
26: Spine Damaged – Discography, Bibliography, Etc 264
Index 282
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INTRODUCTION
THIS IS WHAT YOU GET
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OK Computer
I want a perfect body.
I want a perfect soul.
—Radiohead, ‘Creep’
1993. I think it was a Sunday, about lunchtime. I was in my
flat in Streatham, south London, staggering into some semblance of
life after a heavy-duty night at the Fridge club. The phone rang.
“Look at the telly.” It was G.
“What am I looking at?” I asked, still not entirely awake.
There was a band on, playing a tune I thought I’d probably heard on
the radio over the previous few weeks. American, I presumed.
“It’s Thom,” said G, excitedly.
“Thom who?”
“Thom Thingy,” she said. “He was at Exeter about the same
time as us. You remember. With the funny eye. He’s on telly with
his band.”
“Bloody hell,” I said, or something pretty close. They weren’t
American. And I did remember the little bloke with the funny eye,
just about.
“Thom Thingy’s a pop star. Like he said he’d be,” said G.
No kidding. I’d seen the booklet produced for the final-year
art show. Each student was allocated a page. Thom had declared his
ambition: “TO BE A POP STAR.” And now he was.
G and I listened and watched, united in contemplation from
opposite sides of the Thames. I remembered his other band, the one
in Exeter. The drummer used to live next door to me.
As it faded out, G said: “Even I didn’t shag Thom.” G, as
I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me saying, had an eventful love life
when she was at Exeter University in the late 1980s. But she hadn’t
shagged Thom Thingy.
The song was ‘Creep’. ‘Creep’, as you may be aware, is
a song about what is known in some circles as low self-esteem. In-
deed, it could be read as an anthem for the sort of people that even
G wouldn’t shag.
‘Creep’ wasn’t quite Radiohead’s first record, but if anybody
says they’d heard of Radiohead earlier, they’re probably lying.
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Radiohead
I hadn’t heard of them. I’d heard of Thom Yorke, though; I’d seen
him; even to the extent of wary, nodded acknowledgements in the
Ram Bar. He was in a band called Headless Chickens then. In fact,
I’d sort of, kind of, shared a stage with them, I think, at some char-
ity show or another. I recited some bloody awful poetry1; Thom
played some pretty good guitar and occasionally sang. The Head-
less Chickens covered ‘Raspberry Beret’ by Prince and ‘All I Have
To Do Is Dream’ by the Everly Brothers. I think G shagged the bass
player, but not Thom.
‘Creep’ made the British Top 10, and also did well in the
States. It cemented Thom’s image, fairly or unfairly, as a spokes-
man for the damaged, the confused, the angry and unloved. His
short stature and droopy eye only provided part of the equation. If
you sing about being a creep and a weirdo, you don’t get sympathy
sex. You get the reputation of being a creep and a weirdo. People
are literal like that.
But at the same time, Thom Yorke was, indeed, a pop star. His
band, Radiohead, were 2 signed to the legendary Parlophone label,
which had sprung The Beatles on an unsuspecting planet 30 years
before. They were on Top Of The Pops. They were on Arsenio and
Conan. They were on MTV, in front of half-naked teenagers, look-
ing uncomfortable. It was all terribly exciting.
And they released an album, called Pablo Honey, and a few
more singles, and it was still quite exciting, but people wanted
them to produce more songs like ‘Creep’, with that guitar bit that
went “DUH-DUH, DUH-DUH, DWAAAANNNNNGGGG”, but
they didn’t. And, a bit later on, they released another album, called
The Bends, which was absolutely chock full of songs that weren’t
‘Creep’. By this time, other pop stars were singing music hall songs
at dog tracks, and appearing under Union Jack duvets on the cover
of Vanity Fair. It was all quite different. In fact, it looked rather as
if that was what being a pop star was all about. Those that didn’t do
this tended to kill themselves, or disappear. Thom was in the wrong
game. If only someone would change the rules...
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OK Computer
“What is this shit?” was the notorious and justified response
of Rolling Stone critic Greil Marcus to Bob Dylan’s 1970 double
album Self Portrait. Maybe it’s something that writers and musi-
cians – in fact, anybody doing anything that requires time or effort
– should ask themselves a little more often. It’s certainly a ques-
tion that potential consumers – that’s you, probably – are entitled
to ask.
This, then, is a book about OK Computer, the third album by
the British band Radiohead. There’s some biographical and con-
textual background about the band (chapters 1 and 2); then a track-
by-track analysis of the album itself, and related activities (chap-
ters 3-18). Chapter 19 deals with the critical response, while the
next chapter is on the creative response by other musicians, in the
form of many and various cover versions of the 12 original tracks.
Chapters 21 and 22 take the Radiohead story up to the time of writ-
ing. There are three conclusions: the first considers one of the key
themes of OK Computer, the relationship between people and their
environment; then the album’s place within the genre into which
Radiohead, however grudgingly, fall (indie/alternative rock) is ex-
amined; and finally, there’s a chapter about its standing in the wider
continuum of The Classic Rock Album (maaaan).
So that’s the shit, in basic terms. But it doesn’t quite explain
why the book came about; why it’s about this album and not another
album; why there are so many footnotes. So…
OK Computer is a record that seemed to encapsulate its time
(1997), and yet still seems as resonant and relevant today. Radio-
head are rare in that they have balanced critical and commercial
success for many years, and their most famous offering exemplifies
that achievement, enduring analysis at the fingertips of academics
even as it exists as background music in coffee bars. It’s a rock
record in the sense that there are guitars and drums in there, but it
also rubs its back against dance music and electronica, jazz, modern
classical forms and that old devil called prog. Its lyrics cover poli-
tics, economics, alienation, transportation, paranoia, science fiction,
suicide, microwaves and the occasional pig. Despite persistent ru-
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