Radiohead in 100 (+) gigs

The British seaside is not quite as exciting as going to new territories like Copenhagen or Lisbon for a gig, but the rituals are the same. Today I queue, there’s a line down the outside of the venue, a guy compliments my shoes “nice dabs!” I really don’t remember much beyond that. Gabi is still not enamoured with the place, people are breaking away into their own little groups, I want some space in my head so I can process the new songs, I like having friends but sometimes I find myself pulled in too many directions. Caffy is here and has discovered a B&B themed on The Beatles.

The show is consistent with last night’s. Afterwards I find Lisa, through from Manchester, and we have a quick catch up. She’s got a proper job now, a real life, but Radiohead still hit her where it hurts. The band are driving home tonight, something they still do if within striking distance of Oxford. I pinch a Lucozade from the rider. In lieu of an aftershow, Bar Red, the pub next door to the venue, is staying open until 2am. In need of a wind-down, I go to join the others, have a brandy for medicinal purposes, but can’t find the Japanese contingent. A quick look round the back to the stage door tells me where they are. I don’t want to, I’ve told myself I won’t, but I end up waiting with them, caught up in the buzz, needing to see Thom, needing to connect just a little bit more. It’s getting colder now and only the brave keep waiting, eventually rewarded with signatures, a few words. I think I got told off. I don’t need to do this any more.

We have a day off to travel to Wolverhampton. In spite of all my planning for this tour, this is the one place where finding accommodation has been problematic. There just aren’t that many places to stay in the city centre. My budget is already busted by all the gig tickets and travel costs. I have been planning Gabi’s trip as well as my own and have been trying to keep the prices down. I can’t spend over £50 per person, per night at the Premier Inn (which seems to be where everyone else is staying). Memories of the Britannia Hotel (scene of all the action back in 1994) flood back, but we can’t afford it. After a lot of assiduous googling I book what looks like it might be a homely Inn, The Wheatsheaf, with rooms above, right in the middle of the centre a short walk from the venue. I am very pleased with myself for having come up with this solution.

We arrive from the railway station to find a rather dilapidated “old man’s pub” which seems to be held together by stale cigarette smoke and grubby polyester. The barmaid seems a little surprised that we have turned up. We are shown through the back of the bar and upstairs to the room. It appears that no one has stayed here for some considerable time. Indeed, it appears that no one has even been in the room for some considerable time. It’s not very clean, even the beds are dusty. The sheets are threadbare. There are dubious looking hairs in the sink. It looks like the set from a particularly austere production of ‘Look Back In Anger’. The stale smoke smell from downstairs hangs in the air. I can tell Gabi is horrified. I try to make the best of it, but I am mortified. We have three nights here, the longest stay of the whole tour. I phone the Premier Inn, but it’s too late, they are full. We have no option but to stay. Gabi spreads a towel on the bed so as not to touch the sheets and sleeps in her clothes.

After a broken night (there is a pub downstairs, thankfully not a particularly busy one, but still fairly noisy) we make our escape in the morning and don’t even ask if there is breakfast. Across the road is the back entrance of Marks and Spencer which mercifully has a clean, light and airy café where we are able to caffeinate and take stock. Why, in the name of all that is holy, are The Best Band In The World™ playing two gigs here? The Civic Hall is a venue they’ve played before, I have lovely memories of the shows and Wolves is handy for getting back to Oxford, maybe they have some attachment to the place?

In an attempt to convince Gabi that the provincial towns of Britain are not all complete dumps, I take her to the municipal art gallery, a stately Victorian pile easily the grandest building in this tired city. We spend an hour or so regaining composure amid the oil paintings and make the best of it. At lunchtime we meet Yasuko and the others and find a pub that has a sign outside proclaiming hot food with a picture of some sausages with the legend “bangers and mash”. Our choice is made.

We spend most of the afternoon in the place, eating, drinking, chatting, wondering what the hell else there is to do in Wolverhampton to a soundtrack of George Michael’s Greatest Hits. To my continued annoyance I can never ignore background music in pubs. I’m a bit restive and go out for a wander around the shops, it takes about 10 minutes, there really is nothing else to do around here.

After running into Tim, I get sorted for these two gigs. I have a pass. I also get a call back from the management (after emailing them to ask very nicely) to say I have a ticket for Thursday too.

Gabi has found a spot at the front, she wants to shoot some video. We are to the far left, almost in the wings, but close to Ed, who has some new sound effects. It’s an intense show. G has a very steady hand.

Being at the front is gruelling but they’re on such fine form that it’s worth the pain, the full bladder, the dehydration, the sore knees, being in Wolverhampton for more than 24 hours… They play their surf/ Pixies number Spooks again, it’s so unlike them, a little wig-out in the middle of the set. Another new song pops up (on the setlist it’s called Open Pick – later it will surface as Jigsaw Falling Into Place) it’s more HTTT than the rest of the stuff, guitar heavy. Thom and Jonny doing their familiar rooted to the spot wobble, which is also the only way to move when you’re wedged in the front row. They end on the revitalised Planet Telex and a final encore of There There.

We make it out alive. Just.

I use my pass, and Tim also lets Keiko and Yasuko and some others in to the pay bar aftershow. I have a conversation with Jonny, pretty much the longest I ever had. “I haven’t been ignoring you, I’m just an arrogant rock star!” he says, layering on the irony. We talked a bit about the gigs, he likes the new songs and would play them all night if he could. He also picked Copenhagen because he likes the place, so that explains the shows there.

I run into Julie from the management, briefly. Thom is with some rowdy guys, they are unlikely friends of his from Cornwall. I drag him away so that K and Y have chance to speak to him, they’re worried they won’t get another chance (we’re always worried we won’t get another chance). I asked about the bass-heavy track that has been playing at the end of each show, apparently it’s on XL, but it’s not him… “the day I start mentioning Rastafari then I’ve really lost it”. They don’t stay long, Thom wants to get home and I can’t buy Tim a thank you drink because he’s driving them all back to Oxford. It’s weird. They don’t need me any more, there are lots of other people here. It feels like everyone has finally grown up.

 

We survive another night in ‘Guest House Paradiso’… and are the earliest customers in the M&S café. With little else to do but wander round taking photos, we end up eating in the same place again, after a short while I realise that George Michael is still playing on a loop. By mid afternoon I can take no more and ask one of the bar staff if they might possibly be able to change the music, he looks at me with a browbeaten expression and explains that he can’t. The stereo is locked inside a cupboard and they don’t have a key. He can’t complain, it was the boss’s choice, but I can see a hollow look in his eyes, if I think two afternoons of ‘Father Figure’ and ‘Careless Whisper’ is hard to bear, then try working here.

Later we head to the venue, the regulars are queuing, much to the amusement of the locals. We have seats tonight in the balcony so can avoid all that. I bought a ticket for Gabi, co-ordinating all this took the rest of the afternoon.

The new songs dominate the set and Let Down is the first encore. There’s more locals in the crowd (only the really committed would spend so much time in Wolverhampton). I don’t think there is an aftershow in spite of my sticker. I think the band went home.

In the meantime, this email has arrived, which explains why Thom is so chummy with XL Records….

info@waste.uk.com

15 May 2006

To: me

this is just  a note to say that something has been kicking around in the background that i have not told you about.
its called The Eraser.
nigel produced & arranged it .
i wrote and played it.
the elements have been kicking round now for a few years and needed to be finished & i have been itching to do something like this for ages.
it was fun and quick to do.
inevitably it is more beats & electronics.
but its songs.
stanley did  the cover.
yes its a record!
no its not a radiohead record.
as you know the band are now touring and writing new stuff and getting to a good space so i want no crap about me being a traitor or whatever splitting up blah blah…
this was all done with their blessing. and i don’t wanna hear that word solo. doesnt sound right.
ok then thats that.

i think its out in july and im pretty certain XL are going to put it out.

love thom

www.theeraser.net

In the clapped-out room in Wolves Gabi makes a video of Yasuko and I, trying to perfect our clapping along to 15 Step and falling about laughing.

Somehow we all make it to London and go to the various places where we have beds for the night (we’re crashing at Ken’s bachelor pad in The City along with Jason from New York). I take a walk from the South Bank via Fleet Street to rendezvous with the others at Eros at Piccadilly Circus so that those who have come from afar can see a bit of London. People have come from Sweden, Vienna, New York, even Peru. Some of us go for a drink in Soho before making our way to the venue in Hammersmith.

The Peruvians, a couple of very young chaps who run a Radiohead website called, logically, Radiohead Peru, have been saving up for this trip, their first chance to see the band. For various reasons Radiohead have not been able to play in South America (expect Mexico City) up to this point and the internet is getting restless about it. The Peruvian contingent mention their annoyance at every opportunity and are keen to petition the band in person. Gabi runs her own Radiohead web site in Argentina, I sense a rivalry between her and Italo who runs Radiohead Peru. He’s a very persistent guy, a little naive but very excited to be here.  He gets interviewed by the NME, which rather goes to his head.

By this point, I’m tired as well as elated, aggravated by everyone else’s shit and I just need to commune with ‘my boys’.  This is what I’m here for and all the social stuff, all the normal people stuff just gets in the way. Every time my fix is interrupted, when what I want to happen doesn’t quite happen, I get a little closer to realising that those days might be over, that we aren’t really real friends (we can never be real friends) that they are The Best Band In The World ™ and now they’re one of the biggest as well.

The Boardies converge on a pub near the venue, we are already virtual chums so there is a lot of catching up over beers. We don’t really have much in common beyond a love of this band and a compulsion to enliven our less than fulfilling work days by chatting on the band’s Message Board.

These generally shy people meet; some get together, then split up, some marry; some share flats, form allegiances, some fall out spectacularly. Somehow the gig itself isn’t all this is about, for some people it’s not the biggest part any more, but that isn’t true for me. I am in my usual pre-gig funk.

For the first night at Hammersmith Keiko and I have seats, tickets from Julie at the management. We break away and take our places in the balcony.

We have time and space to catch up here, she has been doing this for a long time too. She has her own rules, she’s worried that I’m trying too hard to please other people, to make too many friends. I know what she means. She says we have earned this. My instinct is to share, use any spare tickets, make sure everyone can get in. Knowing how great getting into an aftershow makes me feel, I want others to know what that is like. However, taking new people along is a nerve wracking experience. What if they don’t understand the etiquette? I convince myself that I understand the rules, but worry that I don’t behave well enough myself when I get there. That’s the nature of Radiohead, there is always worry.

We have a wide view of the stage from the front row of the balcony, these guest list seats are the hottest ticket in town, I’ve been hanging on the phone all week to get them, but the whole of this tier must be guest list. Friends in high places.

At first, a London show seems a little more restrained than the nights that have gone before. Something about a London crowd still reins in the energy of the band. In Thom’s case, it makes him extra edgy. But that’s London, the number of liggers, the presence of “friends”, of “industry people”, mention this weird atmosphere to anybody in or with the band and the reason is always just “London”.

But then the show opens with Videotape. Thom starts in the dark at the piano but for the first time the rest of the band join in, then it hits me (again) why it’s this band and not any other. In the hands of a lesser outfit this would be an Bics-aloft ballad, but as they add layers of rhythm and noise it swirls up into more than just a little song full of sentiment. It has centrifugal force and the precious feeling I’ve been waiting for falls into place.

This opening threatens to alters the dynamic of the night but the red lights flash and Radiohead clatter into a noisy segue of The National Anthem and 2+2=5.  I hate to be in a seat for this. I writhe to the rhythm. I am long past caring how much this annoys those around me. This is why I am here. It pulls my nerves taught, chills my spine, steals my breath.

Seven shows into this stretch and the new songs are making themselves at home in my head. The new version of Nude is not just the latest version of ‘Big Ideas’. It starts quietly, people shout “Go on Thom,” like they’re cheering on their team. He sings without an instrument, grips the mic tight, the crowd fall silent, he only has to sing, knows he’s taking everyone with him. The new songs are falling into place, little tweaks, notes taken, ideas worked through. It’s always the new songs.

Thom plays I Want None of This, a restrained piano-led piece as the first song of a second encore. (They recorded it quickly and released it as a download in aid of Warchild last year, it has been the only official release for a while. Brave move.) Somewhere in this massive room one person is shouting, a few people chatting is inevitable with an unknown quiet number but this is drowning out a particularly Neil Young-ish chord change. With a venom not heard from him in a long time, Thom silences the heckler with a curt, “Shut up you cunt.” (A moment immortalised on YouTube – we’re in the era of phones aloft by now. You can piece together most of these Hammersmith shows, there were more people with better phones.)

London shows, man.

Keiko and I stagger up the stairs into the back bar. I get pulled apart by these shows and I have difficulty explaining the state of myself to people. It’s not just a gig. It’s not just a spectator sport.

Keiko is talking to Sharona, Jonny’s wife (of course they’ve met before). Keiko is somehow different to the rest of us, more memorable, more of a fixture, the crew know her. Today there are quite a few recognisable faces around (if your frame of reference is Radio 4) John Simm is here. (Some people say the actor looks like Thom, but in this context I can’t see it); The comedian Jeremy Hardy; Abingdon School alumnus Tom Hollander (with a heavy beard) he must be someone in the band’s old mate.

The hangers on don’t stay long, there’s no free bar. In spite of this, Keiko and I stay and drink a few beers together, we need this space to calm down. I say hello to Phil and later Ed, but Keiko has more chat for them than I do. We hunker down, realise we’re not going to speak to Thom and have another pint. This show was top drawer, and it feels about the music again (it was never not about the music, don’t let it be about anything but the music). I’m still trying to analyse it in the mini cab back to Farringdon.

I have an almighty hangover.

Earplugs and eye mask only get you so much sleep on the floor of an open plan flat with three other people in it.

Regrouping in the shopping centre at Hammersmith, Gabi and I have a meal but I’m still feeling a little unusual by the time we head to the venue. I have a standing ticket tonight. Lots of boardies are here queuing, I make a deal and save myself a place but I’m not even going to try to make it to the front. Gabi and some of the others do. Last night was one of those shows that makes you vow never to stand anywhere else but I don’t quite have the moral fibre for it so I hang back with a gang of boardies leaning on a rail in the middle of the floor.

After the support, just before the surge, I need the bathroom. In this old theatre it’s at the side of the hall through a small corridor, not a moment for claustrophobia. I tunnel my way out, do the necessary then with head-down-elbows-out fight my way back in. Facing down disapproval with every “’scuse me.”

It takes longer to get back than it took to get out, while I was in the ablutions the crowd has constricted, this phenomenon occurs at every packed show but you can never quite predict the moment it will happen. At a Radiohead show like this, it usually happens too soon and the last ten minutes or so before the band come on stage is spent squashed, in a state of high tension.

“I’m trying to get back to my friends,” I keep repeating as I dodge around people’s pints and black looks. Attempting to get further into the crowd at this late stage is very poor form, I rarely try this unless I am actually returning to my spot (once or twice it has become necessary to employ the manoeuvre to get a better view, but it usually comes back to bite you).

I tap the girl in front of me on the shoulder, “Excuse me I’m trying to get to my friends” she turns round and it’s Shirley who is in fact one of the friends in question. I take my place between her and Marv and try to collect my thoughts. I am flustered, my stomach hurts, I’m dead tired but I’m still wired enough to keep me going.

The venues this week have not been tiny but they are small in comparison to outdoor gigs. The rooms are large enough to benefit from the screens that float at the back of the stage. Tiny cameras positioned at strategic points around the stage capture little details of the band in action: a foot on a pedal, Jonny’s fringe, Ed’s shakers. My favourite is the one I think of as “nose cam” which allows Thom to sing into it in extreme close up while at the piano, employed to best effect during You And Whose Army which to shake things up a bit, opens tonight’s set.

There are nine new songs tonight: Open Pick, 15 Step, Arpeggi, Videotape, Go Slowly, Spooks, Bangers ‘n’ Mash (My initial amusement at Thom’s tiny drum kit has given way to enthusiasm for Jonny’s snake charming guitar), House of Cards and 4 Minute Warning which they played (and fluffed) in Copenhagen, which involves Ed, Colin (with two tambourines) and Jonny congregating around Thom’s piano for a slow number apparently about nuclear war. They don’t play Nude tonight and some of those titles need work, but they have at least an album worth of new material. There is even room in the set for Street Spirit and to my delight, Black Star (with audible vocals from Ed!). They finish on Karma Police and people who have come for a sing-a-long get their money’s worth.

Keiko bestows her pass upon me. This is my last show of this tour and she wants me to be able to talk to Thom. In the foyer, we’re doing our usual thing of waiting for useful people, waiting for everyone else to leave while not getting thrown out ourselves. Ken, straight from work and still in his suit, has a photo pass, Gabi is on a high from being at the front and I want to take her with me but can’t find anyone who can make this happen. I stick the pass to my jeans, tell her to not get thrown out, and go upstairs to the bar. Ken strolls in with his obscured photo pass and a business like smile at the bouncer (sharp dressing in this context means you’re industry – looking like you belong here is half the battle).

Upstairs, we find Mel from W.A.S.T.E., who Ken has met before and who now remembers me. We ask her nicely if she could possibly see her way to getting Gabi up here. She leaves us in charge of her son Cole (who is about 10 and wearing a Radiohead shirt a few sizes too big for him). He has the dazed look of someone who has just had their world rocked off its axis. Radiohead shows will do that to you.

We take in the scene in the bar, the afters are already in full swing. There’s Adam Buxton talking to Julian Barrett and some other comedian I can’t quite place. There are a few familiar crew faces around and I go for a sweep of the room to see if I can find Tim. He’s on the edge of a group of folks who are surrounding someone I can’t quite see. I go over to say hello and realise that the person at the centre of the group is the young actor Daniel Radcliffe, now about 16. I do a double take and carry on talking to Tim who says something about it being an all ages show… Back near the door, Ken is still waiting for Mel to come back. Cole is minding his own business, still getting his breath back.

“Do you want to meet somebody?” I ask.

His eyes pop out of his head when he sees who it is and I shepherd him over to Tim, “Do you think he’d mind?” I step back and let the only other actual kid in the room meet a Wizard.

Mel has returned with Gabi and demands to know what we’ve done with her boy, we explain that he’s over there, talking to Harry Potter and he won’t be long…

I’m off the sauce this evening and need a sit down, just my luck that tonight is the free bar (should have kept my powder dry for the last night of the UK leg.) I let it all go on around me for a while, these things are all about waiting. Tonight I am sweaty and goggle eyed which is not a good look when the bouncers have their eye on you. I find a vantage point and watch as Daniel Radcliffe is introduced to Thom Yorke. He has the same look of shock and awe that Mel’s son had on meeting him.

Later Thom is at the bar talking to an older, well dressed couple. It’s not his parents and they look too formal for industry folk. If I don’t go now, he will be gone. He does this thing where he has a spare drink in his hand ready to head off to a private area where no one will be allowed to follow like he’s only just popped into the bar to see if there’s anyone he should be talking to. This usually only happens after an hour or so when the first wave of liggers has drunk all the free booze and left the building.

I’m trying to time this right, I don’t want to interrupt his conversation, but I also don’t want him to leave without having the chance to at least say hello. I hate it when people interrupt us, so I don’t want to do it myself. The security guy has been clocking me for the last 15 minutes, I’m sitting on my own without a drink and I doubtless look dodgy. He will not hesitate to put me out in the street without an excuse. I head for the bar and the edge of Thom’s conversation with the couple. For once I’m sober when everyone else is several sheets to the wind.

“Oh hello,” he says when he spots me, “this is Lucy who’s been coming to see us since nineteen ninety… what is it?”

“Three.” We both pull an “oh shit” face.

“Bet that makes you feel old!” says the chap.

Thom is not quite laughing, “These are my neighbours from… oh you’re not meant to know this…” he tells me where and I stick my fingers in my ears pretending not to hear.

We get to talk then, the couple realise that I’m not here for an autograph, I want to ask about the solo album, “So it’s not drum and bass then?” He scowls at me.  He says he’s doing a photo shoot around London “in a dirty raincoat”.

He says something about doing anything after three beers, and he’s clearly had more than that by now, but the bar is closing and he has to go.

Julie from the management appears and before I know it Thom is gone.

Julie comes back, clutching a large cardboard folder, unusually she’s a bit drunk too. It’s her birthday, she’s been to fetch some artwork from Stanley. She lets me sneak a look at what will be the long fold out cover of The Eraser. I thank her profusely for her help getting me on the guest list and she tells me how many people she turned down,  Razorlight weren’t getting in but apparently Keane were here, Jamie Oliver, Siouxsie Sioux (I thought that was her). LA is so over subscribed they’ve already turned about 50 big names away.

I don’t remember getting back to the flat.

Next day, Yasuko, Yama and I head into Soho to see the rest of Stanley’s exhibition at Lazarides Gallery (I’d missed the opening last night as it was before the show). I have no idea what this album will sound like yet but the artwork looks like a black and white vision of my walk down Fleet Street…

News of Thom’s solo album spreads gradually. We’ve seen the artwork (at Stanley’s Lazrides show), he’s confirmed to me it’s not drum n bass… but what will it sound like? Has he played us any of the songs? (Just one, as it turns out, Cymbal Rush at Koko. Told you it didn’t sound like a Radiohead song).

The NME reports on the tour and in between interviewing “super fans” and obsessing about the amount of guitars the band are using in the new stuff (as if this re-legitimises their presence in their pages) it offers a preview of The Eraser. It is coming out in July, it is not the end of the band, it is songs, it has been made with Nigel, it “was quick and fun to do”. Thom doesn’t want to hear that word “solo”. No one has heard it yet. It was a secret so people didn’t think the band were splitting up.

The rest of the page is taken up with interviews with fans, the NME’s attitude is still to present people like Tea on N’s experience in pejorative terms, probably because she dares be critical about the new stuff – it IS unfinished after all. All the new songs get the full treatment (in other magazines too) which is rather unfair, but they’re already out there. Turn over of bootlegs is faster than ever. Videos are on YouTube before the tour is over. You don’t have to wait for someone you know to get their hands on tapes anymore.

The NME’s hyping of every last fart of Radiohead output, keeping track of the recordings of new songs available online, interviewing someone who is bootlegging the shows (this isn’t a new phenomenon after all, it’s just a band of this size makes an impact, makes it news worthy. The online activity is starting to register with the paper press, who are still getting to grips with having websites, are being out done by big blogs like Pitchfork). Also Thom is resolutely not talking directly to The NME, so they have to fill the cover-promoted feature with something.

The Eraser website has an animated bit of the artwork and continues to be updated with clips trailing the release. I resist until Gabi sends me a link to the whole thing and we listen together, early one morning, instant messaging as we hear each song.

To me it is the sound of Nigel locking Thom in the studio and forcing him to finish the songs. It’s more intimate than recent Radiohead music, the vocals are right in your ear, sexy in a resigned way rather than angry. The other thing that stands out is Thom singing in character or as another person talking to him, observing himself from outside. It’s personal stuff with all the personal bits taken out. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears with Yorke lyrics.

In an interview conducted in Blackpool with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke published online on 1st June (one of the first in what turns into a two month campaign) Thom talks about the album being ideas that “worked in an isolated laptop space”.

“It’s the stuff I do when I get bored…” He came to it thinking he was being clever with programming but in the end Nigel forced him to be a singer again. “You should have seen the stuff I didn’t put in.” He confirms that any future record deals will be for one album only. He’s into the idea of making singles and EPs but they haven’t really talked about how to release in the future yet. “I want something that gets you out on the dance floor, I always have, but we never do that.”

So what has he learned? “I have a lot more confidence.”

“I had fun doing it as well. That is mostly what I have learned – this is fun. I’m very lucky.”

In the photos the raincoat doesn’t look that dirty.

It doesn’t sink it yet but this moment in the band’s trajectory is pivotal. Saying no to meeting Tony Blair was in the middle of it. A breakthrough in the struggle. A lifeline to the creative energy they need to make another Radiohead record, where the personal and the political are expressed together with a clarity heretofore not achieved. The inspiration for Harrowdown Hill is much discussed and becomes a news story in itself (as quotes from interviews are wont to do in this age of rolling news).

(See The Eraser LP review Pete Paphides, The Times, 30 June 2006).

Working at the edge of a newsroom has compensations for me. I have access to all the papers and keep all the reviews. There are dozens, every newspaper now has a music section and recommends tracks to download, in all but a couple you can sense the frustration that this is not a Radiohead album. There are a LOT of interviews with Thom, which there haven’t been for a while. This LP gets well documented. Reading between all the angst and end of the world-ing there’s a more settled, more confident Thom operating in the middle, he’s got an overview, he knows what he can do and what he can’t. People still don’t quite realise how funny he can be.

The Eraser, Amnesiac… rubbing out and forgetting, sorry to be here doing all the remembering for you…

A northern show to balance out the two consecutive V Festival appearances (money in the bank against any future risks to be taken while being without a label). Tacked on to the T on the Fringe bill, although this show is a headline gig and not a true festival appearance, everything in Edinburgh in August is labelled “festival”.

The night before, Boardies Shirley, Anthea, Tim C, and Jodi meet me in Glasgow and we go to the cinema to see silly Jack Black comedy Nacho Libre and then end up in a Monday Open Mic Night at a bar called Bloc. I am persuaded to air my karaoke Fake Plastic Trees… later Ange shows up and kips at my flat.

Next day to Edinburgh. Melody Nelson, sends intelligence on the size of the venue and the various plans to meet up before the show. Yama and Yasuko have a B&B booked as close to the venue as they could find and I plan to crash with them. Meadowbank is a large venue holding 25,000 usually used for sport and only occasionally used for gigs.

I bought a ticket, then found out that Julie from the management has put me on the list. Then at the last minute, a work email informs me I have a plus one from the promoter.

Ange wants to see Edinburgh Castle so we go there first and take some photos. Knowing I have guest list tickets, I decide not to queue. Nearly everyone has a mobile now so most of the organising is done on the hoof. With all these spares I seem to be a hub for ticket exchange, I set Ange up with a free spare, as she is really short of cash we try to sell the others, but no one coming down from town to the stadium needs one. It seems there were more tickets released after the initial run sold out.

It gets nearer and nearer to show time. I can hear first support act Deerhoof inside, already on stage and I need to be in the arena. We run for the door and throw the spare tickets to a group of people sitting on the grass outside, one day this good fortune will revisit us in a time of need, “Use them, give them away, it’s Ticket Karma!”

We have beaten the crush to an extent, and we end up somewhere in the middle for the eccentric and enjoyable Deerhoof set. As it gets busier I have a decent view of Beck, whose show begins with an extended film of his puppet alter ego touring the city. The last time I saw him play was a few years ago at The Gig On The Green in Glasgow, during the Sexx Laws tour when they played in jumpsuits with police incident tape around the stage, I’d not seen him since and he gives good live show. It’s weird to have a light hearted act supporting Radiohead.

The weather has held and this long night is still light, if a little chilly, when the band appear. Jonny has his hood up, Thom with denim jacket buttoned. Through Beck’s set I’d gradually got pushed further and further back. Meadowbank is a wide arena with the stage set up in the middle of the athletics field. By the time the crowd consolidates I find myself way back in the centre of a tightly packed scrum. I tell myself I can stand it, but I’ve lost most of the people I came with and I don’t have any allies to help me stand my ground. Radiohead come on with Airbag, then 2+2=5 then The National Anthem. The mosh gets increasingly ferocious, this crowd are on the move and I realise that I won’t stand much more or be able to see anything. It’s dark now and I have to jump up and down to even see the lights.

I duck out to the side, can see the running tracks marked on the ground under my feet. As the set goes on I keep moving, trying to get a vantage point at one side or the other, but there are too many heads in my way, no matter where I end up I can’t see. I give in and dance, trying to work off some of the nervous energy I have bottled up. The set is has more regular-crowd pleasers than the May tour, Videotape and Nude slot elegantly into the middle, giving a respite from the singing along and the younger than average crowd throwing its weight about. I keep dancing. Another short new one, All I Need, slows the pace for a couple of minutes. I pause and watch the big screens.

They keep playing for over two hours, they’ve played 24 songs including True Love Waits. I’ve got nothing left, I feel like I’ve been beaten up or run laps of this track.

Then they play Creep and I laugh my head off. The lights blaze as Jonny’s guitar cracks, Thom is just about drowned out as a forest of arms go aloft.

Yasuko and I take our passes and eventually find the aftershow in a commentary box at the side of the stadium. The toilets are no longer plumbed in and it’s all a bit ramshackle. The band are off somewhere else. Someone spotted the tiny figure of Johnny Marr so they’ve doubtless got an inner sanctum for the likes of him. I say hello to Thom as he passes through and see Phil talking to Kate Rusby in a corner. I push Yasuko to speak to Thom as he comes back in and he tells us he’s off to have his back done (they’ve got a masseur!) I could use that myself right now, I have headbanger’s neck.

I arrive the day before and hire a bike. My paper map of Amsterdam blows out of the basket early on so I go back to some of my favourite places – Kitsch Kitchen, the shops in the Jordaan, looking for coloured tights in de Bijenkorf the department store near the Dam Square… I like Amsterdam, can stay with family and go back there often. I am late to the meet up at de Waag – a restaurant I recommended to the Boardies – and find them all in the midst of a celebratory dinner. I join for a portion of amazing gingerbread ice cream and a few drinks then wobble back to my second-cousin-once-removed’s place.

I have Gabi’s ticket for this rescheduled show. I sent her a load of videos and clippings as a swap.

A lot of the usual crowd are here making a weekend of it. There are a few of the long serving hardcore who will travel any distance, some more determined and single minded than me and there are few more recent members of this contingent who enjoyed the shows earlier in the year and still need one more fix.

Mid-morning I arrive at the station adjacent to the Ajax stadium complex, which houses tonight’s venue. There are about a dozen of the hardcore huddled together in the rain outside the Heineken Music Hall. Some of them have bought fishing stools and waterproofs from a sports shop, which is helpfully located across the concourse.

This place has the perfect set up for a queue. Polite, good humoured security staff; catering facilities; transport; shops; a bar next door… everything we need. I have bought some food and drink to share, a trade off allowing me to take turns at the front of the queue while coming and going throughout the day. The most zealous of the queue fiends aren’t here and there is nobody numbering anyone’s hand. I bring coffees and snacks then go back into the city to meet other friends. When I come back I meet Scarlett.

An intense person even for a Radiohead queue, she wears huge heels, has monstrous fingernails that have grown into talons, and loads of tattoos, many of them Radiohead related. At first I am suspicious, I’ve run into other people in the queue that scare me with their need to be near the band. A bit rich coming from me, but I’m very self conscious about what I’m doing. She introduces herself, she’s been following the tour in America, apparently with no thought to the expense. She’s here for the music, she says, has been getting more tattoos along the way. She wants to compare notes so we go for a drink in the cinema bar.

She is vague, but the gist of it is, due to tragic family circumstances, she has inherited some money and decided to follow her heart’s desire, following Radiohead on tour. I’m sceptical, always, but the more she tells me, the more I want to know. There are things she seems to understand, and more importantly, she doesn’t want anything from me. We get supercharged on whisky and lemonades and talk ten to the dozen. For about an hour we are temporary best mates.

Later we get soaked in the rain outside. The waiting is part of the whole experience, the community of feeling. As we wait, Ricci, who comes to a lot of shows, says something that stays with me. “What do other people have in their lives that makes them feel this way?” I can’t answer, because this is the only thing in my life that makes me FEEL this much.

Because this is a one-off gig it feels special. Knowing it will be the last one for what could be a very long while, makes me determined to soak up as much as I can.

It’s got harder and harder for me to deal with the politics of the queue, no other band I’ve ever seen inspires in their fans this kind of mania for getting to the front. Sometimes I can’t handle it, and end up somewhere further back, dancing, but those gigs are somehow never quite as good.

After some banter with the Dutch doormen, we surf a wave of euphoria into the hall. And there I am, on the front row, there’s a moment of relief and a sense of achievement. I’d been denying it to myself, but I need it.

Once you’ve got your spot, you can settle in for the real waiting. You can come and go (at least until it locks down) and have a beer and know that the rest of the night will fall into place with the security of that barrier under your arm, your belongings safely tucked in the pit, allies on each side. The tacit rule is that you can’t be here unless you’ve earned it. If you don’t queue, then try to go straight to the front, people don’t like it. I don’t have the patience to go through the process very often. I get too aggravated in the queue. I don’t really want to share my band. I don’t always want to tell tales of past adventures to people who will then latch onto the possibility of being my plus one. But on days when it all works and that doesn’t bother me, the prize is precious and worth the hours in the rain.

The barrier in front of you allows you to relax to certain extent, you don’t have to bob and weave all night to be able to see. There’s no one ahead of you to flick their hair in your face or to be six feet tall and block the sightline. You have a clear view of the stage and if you’re lucky you can immerse completely in the experience. You can turn everything else off and merge into the show, it’s not just in front of you, you are part of it.

I find myself with my eyes closed. I want to be swallowed up by the music, lifted out of my body and into the noise, but I also want to be able to see everyone and everything happening on the stage. The tension between these contradictory desires is over powering. I want the charisma and sexiness and soaring joy of the whole experience. I want this to be just for me, but without the rest of the crowd there would be no show.

In Amsterdam I get what I want. This is the show I craved. The songs are just right, the band are in their best mood and everything clicks. I am on the edge of being drunk but even after all the whisky it’s the gig that has me intoxicated.

I reel outside, suddenly alone, not ready to join the others. I wander round the back of the venue where the Japanese and Italian contingents hover by the bus. There is no party tonight as far as I know, there is no sign of anyone. I blow a kiss at the bus and find my way back to town.

 

Jonny’s new piece, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, is being played at a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. (The full programme: BBC Concert Orchestra – Red, White and Blue. Anne Dudley – Northern Lights, Steve Martland – Crossing the Border , Joe Duddell – Shadowplay, Jonny Greenwood – Popcorn Superhet Receiver (Thomas Carroll – cello, Robert Ziegler – conductor, BBC Concert Orchestra)

There is a fairly large scale boardie meet up – we have a quick go on the Carsten Holler slide at Tate Modern then food in the Archduke pub. My impatience with the others spurs decision making.

The first half see the BBC Concert Orchestra play a sort of cello concerto with the emotional performances and wild hair of the soloists providing the entertainment.

At the interval I spot boardie Estelle in the foyer and think she’s queuing for the bar, but actually she’s taking to Jonny, so I wait and say hello, faltering into a two handed hand shake. He thanks me for coming and I ask “How are things?” and he says “How are you?”. I ask if they’re keeping sane and he says no – and I say “good sign” – he says at least they can all stand to be in the same room together – I ask him to tell them hello from me.

I find the rest of the contingent in the bar, the late comers having arrived. Some people want me to go with them to talk to Jonny and I tell them “go on, do it yourself.” I’d forgotten how they get the shakes in the presence, because I don’t really get that anymore.

His piece in the second half starts noisy then gets rhythmic with slap bass and violins played with picks (like ukuleles). Half the players look bemused and the other half look like they’re enjoying it.

After, we regroup, people get Jonny to sign tickets but I don’t speak to him again. The rest of us repair to the South Bank for drinks.

I stay in London for a few days, see Nouvelle Vague play at Bloomsbury Theatre with a group of boardies and hang out with some London friends. Last time I was in touch with Mel she mentioned that if I was ever in the area I should drop in at the office, so for once having some time on my hands, I catch a slow train to Reading from Paddington so I can visit W.A.S.T.E. HQ.

Mel comes to pick me up in her VW Beatle. I spend and hour and half at Sandbag the merchandising arm of the Radiohead empire, that began as the fanclub newsletter service way back at the beginning. An unassuming industrial unit on the edge of town an estate, it combines warehouse and office from where Mel, an old friend of the band, and her cohorts organise operations.

We chat, drink tea and I pass round my gift of fairtrade chocolates.

Tim’s not here, he’s still working at the studio, but Mel regrets not calling him to tell him I was coming. The only studio gossip I manage to get is that the band didn’t have a good time with the producer Spike Stent. They all agreed it was a rough patch. Mel says it’s been a difficult year.

I offer my theory on the Radiohead creative process, they have to go through the mill it to come up with something new and I mention what Jonny said on Friday about not keeping sane.

As other members of the team pop in, I give a potted history. I’ve been at this Radiohead game longer than any of them. My archive is bigger! I joke with Mel that I need a museum, a “clean room”to keep all my cuttings in. Imagine the box sets, the basement tapes we could compile between us. Mel remembers Tim’s birthday gig, in Reading and tells me about the unused video for Creep made by her ex-boyfriend.

Someone is wearing an Eraser T shirt, I remark that it doesn’t exist to buy. Mel sends him to find one for me. She digs around the filing cabinets, trying to find stuff I don’t have. The only item we come up with is a copy of W.A.S.T.E. newsletter issue one. It’s just tour dates and a doodle of the Trade Muck shirt. There never was a number 3.

Radiohead have the least commercial merch of the any of the artists that they deal with here, which is saying something coming from the purveyors of the Keane Shower Curtain and Guillemots socks.

I ask if they ever see their directors (The Band). Thom only comes here when he’s getting his car serviced round the corner (and, Mel points out, it’s not a Landrover).

We look at some old posters and note that the Greenwoods are the only ones who have not changed since the beginning.

Once all the tea is drunk, Mel drops me back at the station.