BEGINNING.
Thomas Edward Yorke, born in 1968 Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, first felt the bite at age seven when he witnessed Brian May rip his Red Special with Freddie Mercury on stage. While attending Abingdon school in Oxfordshire, Yorke would meet future band mates Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood. The boys, still dressed in schoolboy uniforms, would go on to form the band On A Friday, gathering it’s namesake from the fact that in a strict boarding school Friday was the only day they were allowed to play. According to Yorke, “School was only bearable for me because the music department was separate from the rest of the school.”
RADIOHEAD
In 1991, after attending university, the members of On a Friday reunited, recorded demos and moved to Oxford which the indie scene there was dominated by the shoegazing genre, something that the band never really caught on to. signed with UK-based Parlophone Records, a subsidiary of EMI, the same company that signed The Beatles, Alice in Chains, Blur, Coldplay, The Verve and Duran Duran. EMI requested that the band change their name to Radiohead, inspired by the last track on the Talking Heads album “True Stories.”
Radiohead would release their first single “Creep” to mixed reviews – BBC radio refused to play it because the track was “too depressing.” Heavy rotation on Israeli radio, however, would give the band their first opportunity to tour overseas, radio stations in San Francisco and along the west coast would play the track religiously and the band to would land their first music video on MTV.
With increased interest across the pond, the band jumped between continents with over 150 concerts played in 1993 alone. After releasing the track “My Iron Lung” as a reaction to the stresses of fame, the single sold well proving that the band had staying power. By 1995, their second studio album, “The Bends” would be received with open arms; Gavin Edwards of Rolling Stone Magazine has stated (retrospectively) “When critics describe bands such as Coldplay as sounding like Radiohead, they usually mean that they sound like Radiohead’s brilliant second album.” With the back of Michael Stipe, Radiohead would open for REM in 1995, gaining a larger fan following.
Shortly after “The Bends” was released, Nigel Godrich would produce B-side “Talk Show Host” and would tour with Alanis Morissette before recording “Exit Music (For a Film)” which would appear on the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack that year. By 1997 OK Computer, Radiohead’s third album would be released. The album marked a movement toward more electronic, experimental and ambient tones. Being the band’s first charting UK album, it received the Grammy award for Best Alternative Album that year. Top songs off the album, include the well “Paranoid Android” which gained critical acclaim for it’s animated video, “Karma Police” and “No Surprises.”
The band went through a period of turmoil and uncertainty from 1997 to 2000, when Yorke was experiencing deep depression and writers block leading the band to nearly break up on several occasions. After deciding on a completely different direction, the band recorded with Nigel Godrich to produce Kid A Radiohead’s fourth studio album. The album, which utilized non traditional instruments such as the ondes Martenot and jazz horns, garners the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album in 2001 despite no radio play. Audiences and critics were divided on the album, some heralding the work for it’s originality and others condemning it for being too abstract. Amnesiac, Radiohead’s fifth studio album, was compiled from tracks that were recording during the same sessions as Kid A. Following the same electronic/abstract style as it’s predecessors. Commenting on the album, Dave Herrera of Hybrid Magazine stated “In effect they’ve created the soundtrack for the movie in your head. I’m sure this record will only get better with time…”
Hail to the Theif Radiohead’s sixth studio album, would surface in 2003 and returned, at least somewhat, to guitar rock foundations : the album held an element of electronic influences though. According to Chris Ott of Ptichfork Magazine, “For its moments of gravity and excellence, Hail to the Thief is an arrow, pointing toward the clearly darker, more frenetic territory the band have up to now only poked at curiously. Experimentation fueled the creativity that gave us Kid A and Amnesiac, but that’s old hat to Radiohead, who are trying– and largely succeeding– in their efforts to shape pop music into as boundless and possible a medium as it should be.” The band would perform at Coachella and Glastonbury Music Festivals that year among denials that the album’s title was a comment to the 2000 election. Radiohead would go on a world tour before heading back to the studio and ultimately deciding to go on hiatus in 2004.
In 2005, the band recorded the single “I Want None of This” for the War Child charity album, Help: A Day in the Life for release online before recording their next album, In Rainbows, once again with Nigel Godrich. The album was released under the “pay what you want” operation. According to Mikael Wood of Spin Magazine “…In Rainbows isn’t all old-fashioned guitars and vitriol; the album also boasts a handful of gorgeous quiet-storm ballads that seem to have been imported from a time even less troubled than the late ’90s.” The band would receive the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album in 2009.