Abingdon
Oxfordshire
England, 1985
Five young lads form a band while attending Abingdon School
widely regarded as one of the finest boys’ boarding schools in all of the United Kingdom.
The five were guitarist and singer Thom Yorke, bassist Colin Greenwood, multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood, who was Colin’s younger brother, guitarist Ed O’Brien, and drummer Phil Selway.
Other than the Greenwood brothers, the five didn’t really know each other that well when they formed the band. They named the band, On a Friday,
because that’s the day they usually practiced in the school’s music building.
Bands like Joy Division, R.E.M., U2, and the Smiths influenced them.
Most of their early shows were at random parties around the Oxford area.
Their first official concert was at a place called Jericho Tavern. Hardly any people showed up and their performance didn’t impress anyone in the local music scene.
And then, giving in a bit to pressure from their parents, the band members all went to college.
Eventually, all of them but Jonny would graduate from university.
While attending, they all knew they wanted to keep playing together, but while they were in college, for nearly four years, On A Friday didn’t play a single show.
However, they did find time during holiday breaks to practice.
In 1991, the band began performing in public again.
By this time, bands like the Pixies were more of an influence on them.
At their first official show since taking a break, at the Hollybush in Osney, they played to an audience of just six people.
Although, apparently those six people really liked them.
And then, after circulating a demo tape around Oxford and getting several more gigs at the Jericho Tavern, they started to create a buzz.
They got so much attention that they ended up signing a six-album deal with EMI, one of the largest record labels in the world.
Shortly after signing, the band changed their name to Radiohead, a reference to a Talking Heads song, because, I guess that sounded cooler than On A Friday.
They released their first EP, entitled Drill, in May 1992. It didn’t really do that well, and so they got some new producers and headed back to the studio.
There was one song in particular that they ended up recording in just one take.
Legend has it, the band didn’t even know they were being recorded during the take- they thought they were just rehearsing.
After they were done playing, the whole room burst into applause.
The song, called “Creep,” didn’t impress the band much.
Because he didn’t like how quiet the song was, Jonny tried to fix it the song later by adding random blasts of guitar noises.
That ended up being one of the best parts of the song.
Eventually, the record label was really excited about “Creep” and determined it would be Radiohead’s lead single.
During its initial release, though, it wasn’t really that much of a success.
BBC Radio 1 didn’t play it because they found the song too depressing.
So, although Radiohead toured the United Kingdom like crazy, it didn’t help the song become a hit much.
Lucky for them, “Creep” did become a hit in other countries, like Israel, New Zealand, and the United States.
By the time the band released their first full-length album, Pablo Honey, on February 22, 1993, it was becoming a worldwide hit.
It especially did well in the United States, where Radiohead toured their butts off.
The song seemed to fit well within a genre of music that recently went mainstream called “alternative rock.”
Pablo Honey received moderate critical praise and much commercial success.
Due to the album’s success, Radiohead toured for the rest of 1993 and into 1994 to support it.
The extended length and grind of this tour almost caused the band to break up.
In the end, Pablo Honey generated two additional hits: “Anyone Can Play Guitar” and “Stop Whispering.”
“Creep,” overshadowed all others, though, which is why the band later got sick and tired of playing the song live.
By 1994, Radiohead was actually sick and tired of all of their songs, and began writing new material and testing it out live in places like Australia and Southeast Asia.
The new material ended up forming the band’s second full-length album, The Bends, released on March 13, 1995.
This album was a bit more polished and complex than Pablo Honey, with more effects and the introduction of keyboards into the mix.
Radiohead also toured heavily to support this one. While the album was less of a commercial success, it was definitely more of a critical success.
And they did manage to score a couple of solid hits with “Fake Plastic Trees” and “High and Dry.”
It was their third album, Ok Computer, released on May 21, 1997, that took Radiohead’s success to the next level.
Ok Computer was both a commercial and critical success. Many many music critics called it an instant classic.
Today most regard it as their best album, and one of the greatest albums of all time.
It featured the singles “Paranoid Android,” “Karma Police,” and “No Surprises,” but it was really always just an album to listen to all the way through.
The band toured for a year to support the album.
Also that year, Radiohead became one of the first bands in the world to have a website.
And then, a bit of a break. Thom Yorke later said that during this time, about 1998ish, the band again came close to breaking up due to burnout.
Yorke himself suffered from depression and writer’s block at the time.
After the huge success of Ok Computer, each band member had a different vision for Radiohead’s future.
Eventually, though, they were able to sort it all out and head back into the recording studio in 1999, recording off and on for the next 18 months.
Radiohead released their highly anticipated fourth album, Kid A, on October 2, 2000.
It was a dramatic change in direction for the band.
With this one, the band ditched their more traditional rock sound for a minimalist, textured, electronic, and just way more experimental one.
At first, many fans didn’t know how to take this new direction, and early reviews of the album were mixed.
Eventually, though, this album also came to be hailed as one of their greatest and one of the greatest.
Radiohead release no singles or music videos to promote Kid A. They barely talked to the media.
Instead, they relied on their website to promote everything.
On June 5, 2001, Radiohead released their fifth album, Amnesiac, which was really the leftovers from the Kid A sessions.
Strangely, the album didn’t feel like Kid A leftovers to most people. It was another solid album, and while it was also heavily electronic and experimental, it still had a different feel to it.
This one did have singles. “Pyramid Song,” “I Might Be Wrong,” and “Knives Out.”
While critics often said it wasn’t as good as Kid A, they still generally praised Amnesiac.
This time around, Radiohead did not tour nearly as much.
When they did tour, they had to learn how to perform electronic music live for the first time.
In 2002, they returned to the studio and recorded tons of new material in just two weeks.
Quite a bit shorter than 18 months, eh? Plus, this time the band was pretty relaxed recording, as opposed to the tense times during the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions.
This new material ended up making up what would become their sixth album, Hail to the Thief, released June 9, 2003.
With this album, Radiohead combined the experimental and electronic elements of the past two albums with the alternative rock instrumentation of the previous albums.
The album had three singles, “There There,” “Go to Sleep,” and “2+2=5.”
That’s right, Radiohead’s popularity caused them to transcend the laws of mathematics.
And with that, Radiohead’s contract with EMI was over.
After the band’s tour in 2004, they went on a hiatus to spend time with family and work on side projects.
Jonny Greenwood worked on multiple soundtracks.
Yorke released a solo album called The Eraser.
But the hiatus didn’t last too long. In February 2005 they returned to the studio, this time without a record label.
That ended up being the material for their seventh album, In Rainbows, but it took them awhile to finish it.
It was finally released on October 10, 2007. But it wasn’t released how bands normally did it at the time, especially bands as big as Radiohead.
They released it as a “pay what you want” download, directly from their website.
This decision shook up the music industry and created a big debate about the merits of just letting the audience decide whether or not to pay for your music.
"And you had no idea of the real consequences of it all...
no idea how it was going to work out
because it was a brand new model if you think about it.
People hadn't really done this before.Certainly not at your level.
So was it an exciting thing, saying 'let's throw it out there and see what happens.'"
Thom: "It was certainly exciting.
because...there were a few meetings, and, uh, sitting down
just finished doing the record, had it in a box
wanting to put it up, free of the mechanics, free of all the drudgery of the whole thing."
Although many downloaded the album for free, Radiohead still ended up making plenty of money from it.
XL Recordings later released a physical version of it.
In Rainbows was arguably the most critically acclaimed Radiohead album since Kid A, with hits like “Nude,” “Bodysnatchers,” “Jigsaw Falling into Place,” and “All I Need.”
In 2008, EMI released a greatest hits album without Radiohead’s opinion on the matter.
By this time, social media was big, and the band found themselves touring less and slowly withdrawing their media presence.
In 2009, York started a new band to perform his solo songs live called Atoms for Peace, featuring long-time producer Nigel Godrich and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea.
In 2010, Radiohead played only one official concert all year. That same year Philip Selway released a solo album.
Meanwhile, the band had off and on been recording what would become their eighth album, The King of Limbs.
They self-released it on February 18, 2011 in digital format.
This one featured much more sampling and loops than previous releases.
The band again decided not to release any singles from the album, but “Lotus Flower” ended up becoming a hit mostly due to this music video, in which Thom dances, well, I guess you can see how he is dancing here.
This video caused a viral “Dancing Thom Yorke” meme, in which fans manipulated the audio or video from it in creative ways.
Oh, and yet again, The King of Limbs was another album adored by most critics, although not as much as their other albums.
In February 2012, Radiohead went on their first big North American tour in four years.
On June 16, 2012, just before fans were allowed in a show at Toronto’s Downsview Park, the venue’s roof collapsed, killing drum technician Scott Johnson and injuring three members of the band’s staff.
Eventually, Radiohead finished out the tour supporting The King of Limbs.
And then, another break. In February 2013, Atoms for Peace released an album, and in 2014, Yorke and Selway both each released another solo album.
Jonny Greenwood scored another soundtrack as well.
In September 2014, Radiohead regrouped to record their ninth album. Once again, recording was slow going.
In 2016, Radiohead decided it was a great time to mess with their fans.
On April 30, they sent cards in the mail with lyrics from a new song, called “Burn the Witch,” to all fans who had ordered stuff from them in the past.
On May 1, the band deleted all content from their website and social media profiles and replaced them with blank images.
Predictably, the internet went crazy.
On May 3, they released a music video for “Burn the Witch” and made the song available for download.
On May 6, another video for a song called “Daydreaming,” and made it available to download. Pretty clever marketing, I suppose.
A Moon Shaped Pool, their ninth album, dropped on May 8. And yes, it was critically acclaimed, but by this point Radiohead could release an album full of crappy songs and critics probably would still like it.
This one had a more orchestral feel, mostly thanks to Jonny Greenwood’s arrangements.
It was haunting, a slower tempo, and was a bit more low-key.
Since then, Radiohead has released a 20th-anniversary OK Computer reissue, called OKNOTOK, which included three previously unreleased tracks.
One of those tracks, “I Promise,” is so good you wonder how it never made it on OK Computer.
Then you remember that OK Computer ridiculously good, and it makes sense.
It’s 2017 now, and Radiohead are bigger than ever, and are already considered to be one of the greatest bands of all time.
It began as five teenage boys rehearsing in the music department of a boarding school in Abingdon.
Today, a band that sells out massive arenas, that continues to amaze and inspire, that rarely disappoints, that has five albums on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, that couldn’t care less about such a list, and that keeps doing its thing whether anyone else is following or not.