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Exclusive Interview:
The Varied Frequences of RADIOHEAD
By Alan Sculley
You're Radiohead. You've finished the decade by releasing one of
the best albums of the 1990s, "OK Computer." It's a powerful, visionary
work that deftly combines old school guitar rock, modern electronica and
ambitious song arrangements, evoking the memory of such innovative albums
as the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" and Pink Floyd's
"Dark Side Of The Moon." It tops many year-end best-album charts, earns
Radiohead band of the year honors from a host of high-profile magazines and
newspapers and firmly establishes Radiohead as the kingpin of British rock.
So how do you follow that kind of an achievement? If you're Radiohead, you
radically reinvent your sound, re-emerging first with "Kid A," a CD that
has no obvious radio singles and could very well puzzle a large part of
your audience. Then some nine months after that you issue another CD culled
from the same sessions, "Amnesiac," that continues to push the boundaries
of the band's sound.
"I think by the end of, having toured on 'OK Computer' and such, I think we
felt like that was very much the end of the first phase for us as a band
really," said drummer Phil Selway, explaining the band's mindset entering
into the sessions that produced "Kid A" and "Amnesiac."
"In some ways it was still the same band by the end of 'OK Computer' as it
started 14 years before that. I think we felt that we'd done pretty much
everything we could do with the setup as it was at that point. So I think
we went in with the attitude that we had to find new approaches, new ways
of working together, trying to break down the rigid definitions of what
everybody did within the band."
"I think (singer) Thom (Yorke) coined the phrase that we split the band up
and reformed it with the same people. I think that's a very good way of
putting that, actually."
Bassist Colin Greenwood echoed that thought in characterizing the
adventurous ethic that typified the recording sessions.
"We wanted to try to do some music that was more recording studio based
rather than just being another live album like 'OK Computer,'" Greenwood
said. "It was like we went away to studio night school for 18 months and
learned something about the technology, and trying to find new sounds and
ideas to inspire us."
In the end, certain trademarks Radiohead established on their three
previous CDs, "Pablo Honey" (1993), "The Bends" (1995) and "OK
Computer"
(1997) survive on the two new releases, such as Yorke's soaring vocals and
the angular feel of the melodies to many of the songs.
But especially with "Kid A," the differences in the music are more obvious
than the similarities. For one thing, where Radiohead has predominantly
been a guitar band on past CDs, "Kid A" is based mostly around keyboards.
Where previous songs had their
share of rocking tempos and jagged guitar riffs, "Kid A" is largely ambient
in its tone, with layers of keyboards and other electronic instrumentation
forming much of the CD's musical backdrop.
While "OK Computer" had begun to shift away from standard verse-chorus type
song structures, "Kid A" is more free form, to the point where expected
devices, such as choruses, bridges and hooks, at times seem displaced --
and in some songs even non-existent.
"Amnesiac," while carrying forward some of the ambient tone and random
feel of "Kid A," takes Radiohead back into more organic and familiar
musical territory. This time, the songs feel more conventionally
structured, while several tunes return Yorke's supple vocal melodies to
center stage (just note the singing on "Pyramid Song" or "You And Whose
Army," two songs with a lush, expansive sound).
And while songs like "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box" and "Like
Spinning Plates" continue to make keyboards and electronics the centerpiece
of the "new" Radiohead sound, guitars push their way back to the forefront
on "Amnesiac" songs like the tangy "I Might Be Wrong" and the chiming,
almost delicate sounding "Knives Out."
Selway, while noting that the band did experiment liberally with song
forms, argued there is more structure -- even on "Kid A" -- than might be
immediately apparent.
"I disagree with (the idea) there aren't the
hooks and there aren't the
choruses. I mean, there are choruses in something like 'Optimistic,' 'How
To Completely Disappear,' 'Morning Bell' even," he said mentioning three
"Kid A" tracks. "There are identifiable structures there. But the
verse-chorus, middle eight take on writing a song, that isn't the be-all,
end-all in songwriting.
"I think on the first few listenings it is difficult to actually find the
obvious landmarks in there," Selway said. "Once you settle into the record,
you do find those landmarks and you do find the melodies and you do see
where the hooks are. And in some ways even though the arrangements haven't
been as rigidly structured as they have been in the past, they are
structured within what we do, even if it that just comes about from editing
something down until it actually makes sense as a track."
The process of finding a "new" Radiohead sound wasn't easy for the band
members. In fact, Selway said it was only when the band came up with the
lead track to "Kid A," "Everything In Its Right Place," some seven
months
into the process that the band members felt they had started to key in on a
direction for the new music.
With its gentle keyboards, haunting melody and disjointed effect-laden
vocals, that song sets the texture and tone for most of the songs that
follow on "Kid A," as well as the more ambient material on "Amnesiac."
"It's quite a big leap of faith to throw all of your working practices out
the window and having to learn new approaches, especially when they're not
bearing that much fruit for quite a while," Selway said, reflecting on some
of the struggles the band experienced early in the creative process.
"(It's) fairly inevitable that you end up thinking is there any way of us
working together? I mean, it's not like we were at each other's throats.
We were being much more cohesive in some ways than we'd ever been before
and we were being much more open. But at points it just felt that possibly
we'd reached our creative peak with 'OK Computer.' Fortunately we
persevered with it and
we did, well I feel we've gone through into the next phase now and it's
opened up a load of possibilities for us now as a group of five people and
also working with (producer) Nigel (Godrich) as well."
"I don't think we had any idea (of a musical direction)," Selway said. "I
mean, part of that is we had taken about five months off as a band as well.
So initially it was a case of actually trying to find out where each
other's heads were at that point. Then we got back into the studio and
Thom, the kind of music Thom had been responding to at that point was
electronic music like Aphex Twin and stuff like that. In a way that was the
guiding light at the beginning of it. Then you try to apply that to five
people, how do we fit in with that? I think the only firm plan that we had
even early on was not really repeating what had gone before."
In the end, Selway said having ventured into new territory, especially on
"Kid A," the band felt comfortable in returning to more familiar musical
turf on "Amnesiac."
"We recorded 23 songs and I'd say tracks that we chose for 'Kid A,' they
fit very well together and actually make sense as an album," he said. "But
we have other songs which I suppose fall into the rather more readily
identifiable approach to songwriting."
"I think the tracks are more readily identifiable, maybe what people would
see as the classic elements of Radiohead," he said of "Amnesiac. "We tried
to veer away from them, but inevitably you revisit them at certain points."
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