The five members of Radiohead first met at a private boys school in Abingdon, a small, picturesque town on the outskirts of Oxford. Thom Yorke (b. Thomas Edward Yorke, 7 October 1968, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England; vocals/guitar) had been given his first instrument, a Spanish guitar, at the age of eight by his mother. He formed his first band two years later, then joined an existing school punk band, TNT. Singing for the first time, he realized he would require more sympathetic band members and formed what would become Radiohead with school friends Ed O'Brien (b. Edward John O'Brien, 15 April 1968, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England; guitar), "who looked cool", and Colin Greenwood (b. Colin Charles Greenwood, 26 June 1969, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England; bass) "because he was in my year and we always ended up at the same parties". They shared an interest in Joy Division and the Smiths and Greenwood earned Yorke's sympathy for joining TNT after him. Mild-mannered drummer Phil Selway (b. Philip James Selway, 23 May 1967, Hemmingford Grey, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England; drums) bound the new band, titled On A Friday, together. The addition of Colin's brother and jazz fanatic, Jonny Greenwood (b. Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood, 5 November 1971, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England; guitar/keyboards) completed the line-up, originally on harmonica, after he pestered his elder brother and friends continually to let him join.
In 1987, a week after his first rehearsal with the band, On A Friday played their debut gig at the now defunct Jericho Tavern in Oxford. With a musical canon resembling a youthful Talking Heads, they added two saxophone-playing sisters to fill out the line-up. However, the band were then put on hold while the members pursued their academic careers, in an effort to appease already frantic parents (Jonny finished his schooling). Colin became entertainments officer at Peterhouse College, Cambridge University, and helped get his friends together for occasional gigs there. At Exeter University, Yorke played guitar in a techno band, Flickernoise, while Selway drummed for various theatrical productions (Blood Brothers, Return To The Forbidden Planet) while studying at Liverpool Polytechnic. The band finally regrouped in Oxford in the summer of 1991, but without the brass section. They recorded two demos and gained a contract with EMI Records before changing their name to Radiohead (after a Talking Heads song). Their first commercial broadcast followed when "Prove Yourself', from the Drill EP, was voted Gary Davies" "Happening Track Of The Week" on BBC Radio 1. Two minor hit singles were followed by "Creep", the alternative rock song of 1993, with a self-loathing lyric ("I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, I don't belong here") stretched over driven guitars that at one point simply explode. Ignored when it was first released in September 1992, its re-release sparked enormous interest as the band toured with Kingmaker and James. Taking the band into the UK Top 10 and the US Top 40, it also announced a Top 30 debut album, Pablo Honey.
Unlike other celebrated UK indie hopefuls such as Suede, Radiohead also translated well to international tastes, from the USA to Egypt. Two years of promotional activity followed, before the release of The Bends in March 1995. With the pressure on following the plaudits, the recording process was not easy. With hardly a note recorded over two months, producer John Leckie ordered all bar Yorke out of the studio and told the singer to "just fucking play it". The songs came, and he and the rest of the band relocated to Abbey Road Studios to finish off the album in a mere three weeks. The Bends did not disappoint, with a vibrant mood range encouraging Yorke's prosaic yet affecting lyrics: "When your insides fall to pieces, You just sit there wishing you could still make love". Notable tracks included the hypnotic "High And Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees", and the UK Top 5 single "Street Spirit (Fade Out)". By the end of 1995 The Bends had been universally acclaimed, enough to win them a BRIT Awards nomination as the best band of the year. Two years later, they unveiled the follow-up, OK Computer, which received the most spectacular reviews of any rock album in recent memory, and won the band a Grammy Award in 1998 for Best Alternative Rock Performance. In polls (notably the All-Time Top 1000 Albums book) the band received massive press exposure when they became the first and only band in recent history to really threaten the Beatles' domination.
Their next album took a long time to record, and the huge anticipation surrounding Kid A was matched by the shock it caused when made available to the public. Instead of taking a safe route and building on the style of their last two albums, the band delivered a challenging electronic set, almost free of guitars and closer to the space age progressive rock of Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. Reviews were initially mixed, but the fact that it entered both the UK chart and the Billboard 200 at number 1 cannot be ignored. The equally challenging Amnesiac followed barely eight months later. The commercial success of both albums and the phenomenal speed with which tickets for their subsequent US tour sold out, owed a lot to the band's willingness to exploit their Internet presence in favour of conventional promotional methods.
Following the release of a mini-album of outtakes, Radiohead began work on their new studio album. Released in June 2003, Hail To The Thief marked an uneasy alliance between the band's more experimental tendencies and the bold guitar rock of The Bends. They also attracted some critical flak in America by explicitly linking the title of the album to President George W. Bush. Later in the year, Jonny Greenwood branched out from Radiohead to compose the music for the indie film documentary Bodysong. In 2006, Thom Yorke made his own solo bow with the challenging album The Eraser.
Having fulfilled their commitments to EMI with the release of Hail To The Thief, the band announced they would be looking at alternative methods to release any future Radiohead recordings. The next album was duly released in October 2007 as a digital download, and in a bold move the band declared that the customer was able to choose the price they wished to pay (anywhere from nothing to £100). However, a "hard" copy of In Rainbows was also made available in the form of a "discbox" containing CD and vinyl copies of the album.
Radiohead have now stood the test of time and must be applauded for pushing forward and refusing to release the type of material populist supporters demand of them.
