How Radiohead became themselves in 7 not-so-easy steps.
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What the hell are they doing here?
This Friday night, Radiohead will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Thom Yorke is blowing off theceremonyto work on piano pieces in Paris.
Other members it is not clear how many will hit the Barclays in their inimitable fashion.
Theyre so effing special.
Radiohead transcended them over and over again.
Here is how they did it, in seven crisis points.
Radiohead, even at the beginning, knew how to play both sides from self-pity to tongue in cheek.
Many Gen X-ers felt like creeps, too, or at least feltforthem.
But did they understand it?
Did the audience get it?
From the video, it appeared that the singer had a lazy eye.It must have been autobiographical, right?
It was covered by many, and one of the many was Prince stunningly at Coachella in 2008.
Was Creep a joke it took listeners years to get?
Did Yorke really write Your skin makes me cry in earnest?
They would take in much of their own air soon enough, and it would become more rarefied.
It is an unsettling document to watch.
These pale, skinny boys were shoved outdoors, forced at gunpoint to sing for teenybopper hedonists.
Someone should have called Amnesty International.
When Yorke cried, I dont belong here, he totally meant it.
The success of Creep brought them this far was it worth it?
They were not here to be voices of a generation, and they were here to last.
There were plenty of one-hit wonders in the 90s.
How did Radiohead survive becoming a male version of 4 Non Blondes?
Or, for that matter, Blind Melon or the Proclaimers or Crash Test Dummies.
The race was on.
REMsMonsterfound the band following trends rather than setting them.
This left a spot for … Its ok if youre 14 years old.
The triumphant sounds of stadium rock hid a dystopian vision that would soon be unmistakable.
But they would have to endure the holding pattern a little longer.
Were you aware of it at the time?
Did you write it off as juvenilia?
This album might not be talked about today without what happened right after, but it certainly deserved more.
Those trees are fake and plastic.
Dont want to be crippled and cracked, left high and dry.
You do it to yourself, and thats what really hurts.
They wish something would happen.
It was about to.
Hows this for timing?
On or about June 16, 1997, human character changed, yet again.
(Was the Bloomsday release intentional?)
The music was intended for people who depended on, but also despised, their computers.
Radiohead took their time recording this one a year and a half (the Beatles could have made threeSgt.
The cognitive dissonance between a triumphant sound and 0blique lyric was all over the album.
Those chords, plucked out of the air, sound like they always needed to exist.
The lyrics came from someplace else, and are not always meant to make sense.
And yetOK Computers initial U.S. sales were underwhelming.
It did not get past No.
To live in the age ofOK Computerwas to live in contradictions.
You, in 1997, were getting mixed messages.
Did you cry atTitanicknowing the dialogue was awful?
Did you vote for Bill Clinton, realizing he was aiding and abetting a slightly mellowed right-wing agenda?
Radiohead: Cassandras of the Late 90s.
Hey, man, slow down, they warned us at the albums end.
They knew it was futile, but the sound was as intoxicating as anything they had ever made.
Yorkes voice, thin and petulant, could soar on those elongated lines.
So Alone: How to Lose Fans and Influence People
Poor Radiohead.
It now seems so inevitable that the Beatles followedSgt.
They could not makeOK Computer II, because their adventurousness was their brand.
They were neither Coldplay, Travis, nor Muse, and they were not even themselves five minutes ago.
And he who is not busy being born is busy dying.
Time for new DNA.
All melody bored me, recalled Yorke.
Did this freak the rest of the band out?
Yorke wasnt just throwing out melody, but also rock-and-roll instruments.
No drums for Phil?
No guitar for Jonny or Ed?
No bass for Colin?
Just Yorke and keyboards and synth-drum programs?
Artistic development or labor crisis?
Those ok computers were being put to use.
Critics and fans were divided.
Everyone is so near, sang Yorke, like a hostage.
Women and children first, he cried on Idioteque, headed for an iceberg.
The rock lineup did emerge for Optimistic, In Limbo, and other tracks saved for later.
They performed their controversial new songs onSNL, with Yorke spazzing out.
We would have to hug this one out.
Im a reasonable man, get off my case, Yorke sang, sounding like anything but.
We ride tonight / Ghost horses.
This line seemed worth repeating at the end of You and Whose Army.
Not much of a guide, not much of an escape.
This would not be a reasonable new millennium, and it ventured into a darkness no one saw coming.
Were you exhausted from all those antiwar marches?
Were your 20s gone, was your youth misspent?
Were you newly married, or betrothed or committed, and bewildered about your new adulthood?
The album is actually splendid, more than a placeholder.
Imagine what it would have done for you in the summer of 03 your optimal brooding soundtrack.
The lyrics were as cryptic as ever.
The entire music business was abuzz about this, because no one had done it before.
Everything they did seemed like a deliberate departure from where they had gone before.
It still sounds luscious, still takes off its clothes.
By the timeIn Rainbowshappened, Yorke had stopped rhyming most of his lyrics a while ago.
That day job will be continuing to confront and astonish his listeners with each new Radiohead release.
(The pair look like they are in theBeing John Malkovichportal.)
Slight of hand / Jump off the end / Into a clear lake / No one around.
Low-Flying Panic Attack: How True Love Waited, Beyond the Point of No Return
Keep your cool.
Do not give into emotion.
Nearly every track was a beatitude.
Some thought Burn the Witch saw Trump coming (its origins were earlier).
The string arrangements explored new splendors, providing a soft landing for this low-flying panic attack.
Dont listen too closely, or you will break down and weep in public.
These songs were not just intonations of dystopia.
In their cold, English way, they plaintively and elegantly went straight for the heart.
She passed away from cancer the next year.
Her illness lingers over the entire album.
Those live performances of True Love Waits sounded a little too triumphant.
This love song wasnt done until the love itself had been exhausted.
Yorkes voice sounds desperate, meek, ready to give up.
The keyboards rumble arpeggios underneath, like rococo layers of experience, like a Greek chorus bearing witness.
The only attitude left is surrender, a final gauntlet.
Live long enough, and you will have survived something.
You may retreat to the music of youth perhaps yours.
This is all the more reason to respect his wishes while the show at Barclays goes on.
Its about a fantasy, and if its persuasive enough, you could devote your life to it.
You could devote your life to a whole lot worse.
The Rock Hall acknowledges an artist after the quarter-life crisis of 25 years.
Dreamers, they never learn, sings Yorke.
Beyond the point of no return.
This is not real; it is Platos cave, and we will never make it out.
It is frustrating, it is intolerable, and it is Radioheads muse.
What the hell are we doing here?
It is a question that has been resounding since 1992.
Radiohead is still asking it.
