Radiohead in 100 (+) gigs

We get down to the site on the bus and wait in the drizzle. I can’t find any stage times and get a bit stressed. They have new Radiohead T shirts on the merch stall. I buy an orange one with “Leisure Is Pain” and a rather situationist list on the back and a Prozac tablet on the front.

Eventually I find a running order and head to the NME tent to see Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, then we have a beer and pop our heads around the dance tent to catch the end of Audioweb covering The Clash’s Bankrobber. Find the little King Tut’s tent and see Drugstore, they are so cool. Isabel says “The best band in the world are on the main stage tonight” and then plays her cover of Black Star. I catch a bit of Mazzy Star but give up, I’ve seen them before and Hope Sandoval refuses to engage with the audience. My brother Jim and his mate Andy have come up from Nottingham for the festival, they go off to see The Prodigy while I find Frances and her little brother. We both need to be at the front, so we push through and end up enduring an hour of Alanis Morrissette. I’m missing Beck and The Chemical Brothers for this, but now I’m here I can’t get out. It will be worth it.

After much cursing and crushing they’re on. Old songs and new songs are hitting the spot. Lift, Just, Bones, Bends, No Surprises (oooohhhhh). I’m not at the very front so I have to move about a lot to keep my spot, I’m sure I’m annoying people, I’m doing a lot of shouting and shaking my hair. The field was full, judging by the look on Thom’s face it was working better than he thought it was going to. He encores with a solo version of Thinking About You for the first time in ages, and it’s beautiful. They all come back on to do a rock starry wave goodbye. Colin is polite and thanks Drugstore for their earlier cover (he must have seen it). Someone says something about going off to get high.

Frances finds me again, she thought it was a good one. We wait as the field clears, persistence pays off in the end as a roadie throws sets of drumsticks our way. Mine are chipped and busted, one has a bloody thumb print on one end.

I drag myself around the festival the following day, bumping into people I know, seeing Super Furry Animals and finding Caffy in the crowd for Mansun. She describes the scene in the backstage bar last night – Thom came in, saw how many people were there, gave a big grin and then disappeared again. I stomp around in a bit of a daze trying to make sense of the Manics, eating bean burgers and being unsure if Pulp suit a crowd of this size…

January.

I spend a lot of time swapping emails and tapes with Roger, a guy who has made a Radiohead website in Canada. Rumours abound that the new album is finished, but it might not be out until June. More rumours that the band have been holed up in a big old house belonging to Jane Seymour.

February.

A letter from Julie at the management – It will take at least 3 months to mix, manufacture and market the record. Exit Music is “staggering” and likely to be on the album. I try compiling a complete gigography for Roger’s site.

March.

My friend and former flatmate JC is living in London and goes to see Drugstore play at ULU. After the gig she phones me, Thom showed up to sing a new song with Drugstore. She was so surprised she can’t remember what the song was. I’m laughing and crying so hysterically (because I’d nearly caught the bus down to go to the gig myself) that my new flatmates are worried about me. I go to see Bax Lurhman’s Romeo + Juliet at the cinema, Talk Show Host soundtracks a character’s angst and then at the end I have to strain to hear Exit Music over the credits, as the cinema is full of noisy teen Di Caprio fans. It has a crescendo that sounds like The Smiths’ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want and it contains the line the killer line “ we hope that you choke.”

April.

The album, now entitled OK Computer, might be released early in Japan. The Canadians have picked up a tracklist – but where are Lift, I Promise, True Love Waits and Man–O-War? According to NME the working title was Zeros and Ones, after a Sadie Plant book… she wrote the Situationism tome that I was so into a while ago. Paranoid Android is 7 minutes long with choral arrangements. I’m frightened! There is a show in Dublin on June 21, K is keen to go and make a trip out of it.
The latest rumour is that Parlophone is going to make videos for all 12 songs and have a tape in the shops by Christmas.

May.

Labour win the election by a landslide. I keep missing Paranoid Android on the radio. Radiohead are in Q magazine. Thom’s got black hair and it’s really short. The Dublin gig is going to be huge. Sekiko sends me a tape of OK Computer, a copy of a Japanese promo, there’s a lot of hiss on it but I sit in the sun and listen on my headphones. It feels like I’m imagining it. I figure out the words to Let Down and No Surprises and feel a bit emotional. Unprompted, my brother points out the DJ Shadow references in Airbag. Paranoid Android still doesn’t quite feel like a Radiohead song. There is a poster for it across the road from my bedroom window with the lyrics in different sized type, “The Yuppies networking- ah, The panic the vomit, the panic the vomit.”

June.

The single goes into charts at number 3, kept off the top slot by girl band Eternal and Hanson’s MmmBop. The album gets a completely mental 10/10 review in the NME. I’m in Nottingham when OK Computer comes out on the 16th. I go into the city to marvel at the window displays and hunt for a cassette…

K and I head to Dublin on June 17th, having booked a B&B close to the venue. We spend three days dodging the rain doing touristy stuff.

The night before the band are already sound checking at the venue. I see Tim but bottle out of shouting to get his attention. We’ve bought tickets. It never occurred to me to ask for a freebie for such a big show.

On the day of the gig, which on the posters around town has been billed as “The Longest Day”, we get up early so K can go off on a jaunt leaving me to get my head together. I go into Dublin and go to the National Gallery of Ireland. It’s still raining, I go back to Mrs Birmingham’s B&B and wait until 3pm. The hordes are already descending. I join a queue but get too jumpy, I so do a circuit of the venue in an attempt to calm down or spot someone I know.

There are kids from all over Ireland in the queue. The doors open just before 5pm. There is a wristband system for the front area and you have to be over a certain height to get let in. I end up in the second row, until somebody who is already drunk needs to get out to puke, and then the front barrier is mine! I chat to some girls from Cork, chew gum and try not to think about how much I need the toilet or some sustenance. The rain stops.

Teenage Fanclub lift the mood, and we clap, sing and smile along with them. Massive Attack groove like a stoned thing and it feels too early in the day to be watching them. “We’re doing it for these guys because they are the best!” The rain holds off until there is five minutes to go and then we get soaked.

Radiohead make a big entrance to Fitter Happier. Lucky rocks into My Iron Lung and then Airbag. Colin doesn’t last long with the sleigh bells on a stick. They mostly play new stuff, some B-sides and Talk Show Host is particularly good. Karma Police has me singing along and contact seems to have been made. I blow a kiss to the stage and wave. I’m in love with it and it’s wonderful again.

It’s their biggest ever gig and they’re number one. Thom can’t think of much else to say. He’s playing up to the crowd and making everybody feel it. Paranoid Android makes sense now, it’s so much better than last time. Creep is pure karaoke and I’m the only person in the place not singing along to it. The only other Pablo song is You, played in the encore. It’s all adrenaline and guitar overkill, I’ve not heard it done like that in a long time. High and Dry is dedicated to the rain keeping off and then, just as the set finishes, it pours down again.

K finds me afterwards, she’s been at the back getting pushed about. Only the front was sectioned off, but the whole crowd would have benefited from more partitions. She got a nip from someone’s hip flask and somehow managed to stay on her feet. I purchase a Gucci Little Piggy T-shirt (all the rest have sold out).

There is a gate leading tantalisingly to the backstage area, but without a pass there is no way I’m getting through it, I keep an eye out for Caffy or Tim but they’re inside. K goes back to the B&B. I get talking to Atsuko, a Japanese girl who has been studying in Cambridge. She went to a warm up show in Belfast on the 19^th. She’s another one of Thom’s pen pals. We bond quickly.

One of the security guys suggests that the bands are all at a hotel near by. We go for a walk to see how far away it is, as standing around here is getting us nowhere. We’re getting cold and wet. It’s not the right hotel. We go back to the exit gate at the back of the venue. A Renault space-vehicle pulls out, Thom’s in the back. I put up a hand to wave, and he mouths “Lucy?!” He’s grinning and blows a kiss. “Where are you going?” I ask, he shrugs. I blow a kiss back and wave as they pull out. It’s all happening too quickly. We run a little way after the car, waving and laughing…

 

Looking back on it, this was the moment when Radiohead went supernova. The moment after which nothing would ever be quite the same again. The Bends had grown slowly, picking up good sales and critical momentum, but OK Computer had been anticipated, it had gained a lot of ground even before it had been released.

Paranoid Android was getting radio play in a way that none of their singles, not even the initial release of Creep, had received. If anything it was a more audacious move: a six and half minute epic in three movements. Don’t mention the P word.

Glastonbury. There had been no festival in 1996 and the BBC had taken over the coverage of the festival from Channel Four. There was huge excitement about the unprecedented amount of coverage that had been promised. I desperately needed a topic for my Film & TV Studies dissertation. I realised that the logical thing to do was use the only material I had in any quantity, a genre that I now had a specialist knowledge of: the coverage of live music on television. The coverage of the festival offered me an opportunity to make a case study. Still on a roll from the Dublin show, I was back in Glasgow riding a wave of end of term hangovers and grappling with my art student flatmates to get control of the shared TV set so I could stay glued to the coverage all weekend; the radio on in the other room with cassettes primed to record as much as possible of Radiohead’s Saturday night headline set.

On TV, presumably due to some sort of licensing deal, the performance was broken up into tantalising sections. Late on the Saturday night, I sat on the edge of the sofa swearing at Jo Wiley as I could hear the band playing in the background while she wittered on, filling in until they could cut live to the Pyramid Stage. Her co-presenter John Peel remained as deadpan and nonplussed as ever. When they finally let us see the band, it was perfectly timed.

Thom, severe and fragile in black shirt, cropped black hair and wielding a black Alvarez acoustic/electric guitar, leans into his mic and addresses his lighting engineer. “Andy, can you turn on the lights so we can see the people, ‘cause we haven’t seen them yet.”

There was a gigantic roar from the crowd. Thom says hello, a little taken aback as the shear scale of this gig becomes apparent. They start Paranoid Android, but something is wrong, he shakes his head like he can’t hear what’s going on. As ever with this band, things don’t go quite now they planned, but the results somehow end up transcending their original intentions.

Stage-right Thom dashes over to speak to a roadie (I think it’s Tree) and misses out a line of the song as they try to resurrect the monitors. Close-ups of Jonny’s Strat distract the unknowing viewer from this niggle, but I remember a feeling of panic, what if it was all about to go wrong on live TV? However, the second “moment” is about to happen. On the other side of the stage, Ed is grinning as he realises he can hear the crowd singing along to Karma Police. A few weeks after the album’s release and everyone knows the words.

Thom catches this too and grins into the crowd. He launches into Creep. It stands out in the new set, for different reasons than it used to. Now it’s even more their novelty song than it was before. This time he’s taking it seriously. Leisure Is Pain, says the legend on the back of his recycled shirt. He stands stock still, arms folded, a shot of the crowd as they sing it back to him, with the lights facing out onto them showing a sea of bodies.

Climbing Up The Walls is an icy hand on the spine, then comes moment number three, No Surprises. For once we get to see Jonny playing the glockenspiel. Thom’s got his eyes shut, concentrating on the song. The camera cuts to the view from the stage and at the other end of the site fireworks bloom in the sky. They pop and fizz as if timed to coincide with the end of the song. The band seem to pause to let them finish before they kick off Talk Show Host. 

Thom’s still looking around for the source of some stray noises and the fireworks continue to detonate. The song peters out as something goes awry, but no one but the band seems to mind. The camera cuts to a wide shot, so I can’t see. Thom comes back into focus, guitar-less for Bones, straining to hear his cue without monitors. It’s a song that always marks an intense point in the set. At the end of the vocal, he nods and takes in the scene with a look that says “OK. It’s on.”

And as if to prove it, the three guitar battle of Just follows on. Ed jumps, Jonny goes for it and the crowd move as one and then the strobes activate and all too soon the live coverage is over.

Later on, Jools Holland introduces more highlights. “This gig means a fucking lot to us” says Thom, and he realises it would be churlish to talk about the technical difficulties they’ve been experiencing and thanks the audience for their patience. They play High And Dry, Ed and Jonny facing off in a rare moment of on-stage interaction.

The final song is Street Spirit, provoking Jools Holland to note that the set has been a highlight of the festival, and in the next few days pretty much everyone agrees with him.

 

Having contacted Caffy and found out I’m on the list,  I get my brother to drive me up to Doncaster, from our parents’ place it takes about an hour to get there on straight roads.

The Dome is a leisure complex in an out of town site with a McBurger, an Asda and a sports field, surrounded by park land with a water feature. It’s like one of my inappropriate gig dreams coming true. (I have different dreams where the band are playing in places where gigs wouldn’t happen in real life. Doncaster reminds me in particularly of one where they were playing at a Center Parcs- like place, I can hear them in the distance but can’t find the stage, then I need the bathroom and have to keep walking in the opposite direction… then usually I wake up.)

After a brief recce, Caffy appears. After some reorientation, like us she can’t quite believe this is the venue, she goes to find Tim and we’re sorted with tickets. When she returns we explore the grassy hillocks behind the venue so she can have a smoke and we can talk. On the press front, it’s getting madder. The Daily Mirror offered the band a double page to do what they like with but they didn’t do it. The Daily Mail, who ran a rather dubious piece with a photos of Abingdon School and of Thom’s rather modest suburban house, had wanted an interview. They ran the sneaky pictures without it when he said no. They don’t talk to tabloids. The Telegraph rang up to ask if they could do a fashion shoot with Thom.. to everyone’s amusement.

All the guest lists on this tour have been full for months and Caffy is putting hacks off until the bigger tour in November. She’d had my name down for this gig already.

When we return to the venue, the queue is already snaking through the entire building and out the front. I manage to eat some bananas and drink some coke, my brother eats cheese balls with Lucozade. He finds some mates from college and then we pile into the ‘sports bar’, the football is on the telly and there are lads everywhere.

Caffy orders her speciality a “Woof Woof” : vodka with Hooch alcoholic lemonade as a mixer. I have a vodka and coke. I am tired and restless. We can’t hear anything from the arena and when we go down at about 8pm we’ve missed most of Laika’s set. It’s packed and it’s going to get sweaty. I leave my bag at the T shirt stall, where dreadlocked Pete remembers me, then join my brother at the edge of the crush, on Jonny’s side.

The dub rumbles on and I try not to say stupid things. I’m in a hole in this unreal place. Fitter, Happier kicks in and the room roars and there’s too much smoke. My brother goes off into the throng and I dodge my way in a bit further, I’m too small to make an impact on this very laddish audience. Airbag, Karma Police, My Iron Lung and onto Banana Co, nearly all the newer stuff. The Rhodes piano on Subterranean Homesick Alien, B-sides Polyethylene and A Reminder. You – the only track of the night off Pablo Honey. I keep trying to be able to see the stage and wiping the sweat off my face with my clothes. I need to be swept up, to feel it, so I close my eyes and let it take me.

Somewhere in there, a stomping version of Talk Show Host, Just, Bones, Paranoid Android, No Surprises, the ‘D major’ chords of The Bends and off beat clapping for Fake Plastic Trees. High & Dry is still the ‘pop song’ Climbing Up The Walls, Lucky is still the tune that tips the balance of the night, Planet Telex goes and goes but Thom forgets a few words and chords fly out and off and it’s not totally there. It’s this place, it’s too shiny, too much of a sports centre.

There are two encores of mostly slower numbers, ending with The Tourist which is for ‘discerning listeners in Doncaster and the surrounding area’ perhaps a reference to the fact that we’re not actually in the town.

Afterwards I’m soaked and in pain. I claim my bag and the bottle of water I’ve been visualising for the last hour. I recover my senses and my feet stick to the floor. My brother doesn’t quite know which way is up. He’s soaked from head to foot apart from a tiny bit at his ankles. I watch the ever growing crew dismantling the PA and become quietly anxious that there’s no one around except for Phil.

Caffy reappears having been back to the bar, watching the show from the balcony. She goes back stage and we wait for Tim. This is not an aftershow as such. He seems a bit confused, but when I tell him we’re cold he let’s us follow him back to the catering room so we can have a sit down. We find some soft drinks and when Caffy comes in she brings us some orange juice. There are two girls who seem to work for Radio 1 Newsbeat, but they’ve finished for the night. Phil and Colin are talking to their friends. I say hello, and Colin asks politely if I enjoyed the show, the same thing he always asks.

We decide to leave and downstairs there is a crowd of fans waiting by the bus. They double-take at my brother, I hear someone call out: “That’s not Phil!” I can’t quite make myself leave yet. I wander about and catch Tim on the stairs, I ask if he can fit me on the list for The Astoria gig tomorrow.

Thom’s already gone. I’ll have to be satisfied with that, it’s been weird and I’m knackered and cold. We try to leave again. Caffy offers me her train ticket back to London, as she might be getting a lift with the crew, but we have to wait while Jim Warren goes to check. It turns out she’ll have to stay in a hotel tonight anyway, but it was a nice thought. I use her phone to call JC (my friend who is now based in London) and tell her that we’re on for tomorrow.  On the notice board by the door someone has written: ‘Tonight – the best band in the world’. Caf takes a picture. Everyone is on the bus and most of the crowd are gone. We have the car heaters on all the way back to my parent’s to dry my brother out.

Trains and tiredness and it’s raining. When I reach The Astoria, the only people there are a group of girls who’ve come straight from school to queue up. I hang around with them for a while until I remember that the guest list will have a separate queue. I duck out and around the other side of the entrance with my umbrella up to wait for JC and fend off the touts.  The guy from Ipswich who does a fanzine and his train-spotter friend are hanging about but I’m not in the mood for their brand of earnest chat today.

JC turns up a bit late and by then the doors are open. Tour Manager Tim’s at the box office and I claim a couple of ‘generic sticky passes’. I put my bag in the cloak room and we find ourselves in the Keith Moon Bar.  The last time I was here was THAT GIG. We go to the balcony, as I’ve convinced myself that I don’t want a repeat of my near-death experience downstairs in the crush.

We spot a few Britpop B Listers in the crowd and a few bigger names, Michael Eavis, Jo Whiley, Neil from Suede. We cram into one of the table seats at the edge of the balcony and when someone wants the space next to us they ask which part of EMI we’re from. I tell him we’re with the fan club. Turns out it was the EMI conference at Canary Wharf today and the employees are here en mass. It feels like the whole company is here and they’re all up on the balcony. We are the only civilians.

There’s no support and it’s head’s down and straight into Airbag (the rest of the set list: Karma Police, My Iron Lung, Banana Co, Paranoid Android, Subterranean Homesick Alien, Just, The Bends, No Surprises, Talk Show Host, A Reminder, Lurgee, Maquiladora, Motion Picture Soundtrack, Fake Plastic Trees, Exit Music and Nobody Does It Better)

It’s a compact little set but the B sides are especially exciting. They play Maquiladora for the first time in ages and Lurgee gets an airing which I’m pleased about.

Thom apologies, but if he throws up on the bouncers it’s because he’s been up since Doncaster with food poisoning, he mimes puking to prove the point.

I rock in my seat but it’s hard to move and my knees hurt. I want to piss off the accounts department or whoever this lot who are sharing our table are. They don’t seem very interested in the gig and keep chatting. I think I manage to convince them I’m nuts by singing along and doing a weird sitting down dance in my seat.

There is a enthusiastically demanded encore. When they come back on, Thom has a stool and he does “One we haven’t really recorded” Motion Picture Soundtrack. Compared to the version I’ve heard on a tape, he’s swapped the lyrics round…“Red wine and sad films, cheap sex and sleeping pills…”  I’m ready to burst.

He does the rest of the encore sitting down. The others come back on. Someone shouts “Jonny you’re a god!” and it throws them. Thom yelps a laugh. The audience take over bits of Fake Plastic and it’s a ‘moment’. A further encore, Nobody Does It Better and he’s dropping words all over the show. When they’re done they’re done. There’s lots of back patting, Ed especially is on a male bonding tip, hugging Jonny then Thom. It was kind of good to get the view from up here but I need to be able to move about and I want the contact you get at the front. I’m very selfish at these gigs.

I struggle through the bar to the toilets, past Zoe Ball and a scrum of EMI hacks. I can hear Caffy and find her to say hi, but don’t see her again for the rest of the night. The place is packed and the bouncer is letting people back up to the balcony and the other bar. We go for beer which isn’t free, much to the EMI staff’s chagrin. We sit with a view of the exits and spot Ed with a table of ladies and a bald guy who might be Stanley. Jonny, his wife, Tim and Colin are on the other side and I find myself explaining to JC who is who. Thom appears and I want to speak to him before we have to leave to get across town but I don’t want to interrupt. Ed passes us and asks me if I enjoyed it, I say ‘not bad’ meaning ‘bloody amazing’ and he smiles.

Thom’s not mingling; we’re trying to ignore the loud group next to us (is that Gary Numan?) There are too many EMI folks. I go to reclaim my bag, and when I come back I realise that everyone else is getting chucked out. I find JC outside in the rain looking a bit damp. I don’t want to leave but she drags me off, we have a night bus to catch. We come around the corner and pass the front door and there’s Thom keeping dry in the door way, seeing some people off. We exchange hellos and a hug, I mumble “See you later” and can’t quite make myself say anything else. I am too shocked. I don’t know if I feel happy or sad.

We drink hot chocolate to keep the cold out until the night bus arrives.

I go back to my parents’ for a couple of days of nothingness and surrealism. And Princess Diana’s funeral on television.

I phoned Caffy at the last minute on the Friday, I need another gig. Blackpool or Stoke she says – I opt for Blackpool as I can split my journey back to Scotland and finding somewhere to stay will be easy in a town full of B&Bs. I caught her just as she was sending the fax through to set up the guest list.

On Sunday I get a train in the afternoon, via Manchester, loaded with my big rucksack full of all the stuff I’d taken home for the summer. When I get there, it’s already dark but I find a B&B for £13.50. I ditch my stuff and go for a wander past the Tower and despite going round town in the wrong direction, eventually find the Winter Gardens.

United Kinkdom, it says on the posters, that is about right. There’s a perverse selection of other shows on at this warren of venues; Jim Davidson is on next door and on the way here I’ve seen every kind of souvenir tat for sale.  I want to eat but find that I can’t face anything that’s on offer. I fall over Frances where she’s sitting in the queue, she says she’s more mature now and not doing a fanzine any more and doesn’t have much to say for herself.

There’s a separate entrance for the guest list, so I hang about there until 7pm when the doors open. When Tim arrives he asks me if I’ve come with a friend, do I want an extra ticket? I decide it would be too complicated to introduce anyone else into the mix now and I just want to get inside the venue. A proper ballroom with chandeliers. I fetch half a lager and position myself about three rows back on Ed’s side.

Laika are all bass and no one seems to appreciate them or the dub intro tape that follows (is the place full of Liverpudlian Cast fans?). There’s a dumb teenager bias in this crowd that makes me feel a bit old and grumpy, but once the band come on and Airbag kicks in, it’s all systems go.

After three songs, I pass my bag forward over the barrier and bail out to the side where there’s room to frug on the edge of the action. They pull in Bishop’s Robes in the middle of the set and Polyethylene again. Lucky gets saved for the encore, I was beginning to miss it. The bouncy floor yields to stomping and we get Nobody Does It Better to end on. It feels like it was a good one, more than the last two did.

I get my stuff, drink my water and linger by the sound desk. Caffy appears shortly, “I’ve lost me journalists!” We wander casually back stage to the catering area with its plastic chairs and bright lights to find her charges already there reading the roadies’ Sunday Sport and staying up “past their bedtime”. Caffy introduces me to ‘Roy from Select’ and a photographer who’s name doesn’t stick, as “Lucy from… all over”. Roy is having trouble with the song titles, he’s written bits of lyrics down and is looking for a band member to fill in the blanks. Caffy passes him on to me and we plough through his notes from tonight and the Astoria.

“The one that sounds like The Ronettes?”

“Maquiladora.”

After that, trying to make simple conversation is tricky, I ask him if he likes the band and I get his full thesis on how he likes OK Computer but not The Bends. I try to open the discussion out but he seems to be pretty ignorant of their other work. I keep trying to show an interest while Caffy goes in search of some beer. They still want a band member to talk to and no one has emerged yet. Caffy returns with Red Stripe for everyone and I move away from the Select guys, who are reading out stories from the Sport… Thom’s in the corner talking to some people about Apple Macs, I don’t want to miss him again. I stay and drink my beer until he’s finished talking and nearly everyone else has left. He comes over and apologies for not talking to me on Wednesday and I shrug as he sits down opposite.

“What was with all those EMI folks?” I ask.

“They paid for it!”

“I was on the balcony…”

“Oh well then!”

I ask him how the tour’s going. Bridlington was ace, a mad place and the Dundee show was in the town hall. We agree that this is the surreal venues tour. I ask him if he’s ever been to Blackpool before (somehow I doubt it). He says they arrived late last night and the first thing they saw was a girl walking down the middle of the street in a tiny little skirt and a fur bra and nothing else, and it was freezing. “You’ve got to admire that really!”

We talk about America, what he makes of all the fuss over the album and if he thinks it will calm down any time soon. “It’s only a record y’know.” They’re working until May, but “we’re getting three weeks off at Christmas, it’s a record, we could even MAKE a record” he jokes.

He says he’s been up and down, he’s been writing but it’s not…

“Not songs?” I suggest.

He shakes his head.

The promoter was trying to persuade them that next summer they should hire out Milton Keynes Bowl and choose all the other bands and make a day of it. No way says Thom, “Wembley Arena (in November) OK, well that’s sold out, and everyone gets there eventually and I’m used to the idea now and we’ve got to do it, but after Glastonbury I’m not into doing festivals again.”

I saw it on telly, I tell him.

“Technically it was the worst gig of my life and I’d been nervous for about three months and then all the monitors went down and the lights were burning out my retinas, we were bouncing the sound off the mud.

“Have you seen any of the TV stuff?”

“Only Karma Police and I don’t want to see any more.”

“Everyone keeps saying how great it was and I was sitting there watching it on TV and I could tell you were shit scared, you all just kept looking at each other.”

“Well,” says Thom, “My friend, who we’ve seen since in the pub, was there, up on the hill and he says it looked amazing…”

“…with the fireworks?”

“…and everyone was really into it – so am I just being selfish because I had a bad time? I’ve got to accept that it’s the ‘event’ that counts. Andy on the lights has got all this mad stuff for the big shows, projections, stuff hanging from the ceiling. It’s cool.”

He wasn’t sure about the audience tonight, “When we played Polyethylene they weren’t getting it.”

“I enjoyed it!”

“Well, you would!” We pause to sip our beer.

“But what about you?” he asks.

“Pah…” I sigh and pull a face.

“That bad eh?”

“Still at Uni.”

“Edinburgh isn’t it?”

“Glasgow.”

And I tell him all about swapping my degree from English to History of Art, which will mean being a student for five years instead of three. When I mention History of Art he says “Dante!” and tells me his girlfriend is doing her doctorate on illustrations of early versions of the Divine Comedy.

I tell him about my subsidised trip to Holland to visit art galleries; he goes off on a art tangent talking about Italy and New York. They didn’t pay me to go to America, I say. “It’s only £260 on Iceland Air,” he says, trying to help…

I dig a photo out of my pocket. I took it in the summer, of the window display in a record shop in Amsterdam. I show it to him. “It’s suppose to be you with radio ears and a rain cloud over your head,” I explain.

“Old hair but… yeah…” he says, taking it and putting in a combat pocket. We talk some more about the art I’ve been studying. We agree that we like modern stuff the best, but he was mad for William Blake in his first year… and then we start on literature and I get a run down of books he studied at University.

“We arrived and in the first class there was this mad guy who told us to take lots of drugs. ‘I’m not expecting you to do any work,’ go and be yourselves. And we were all like “weyhey!”

I decide I must be at the wrong University. He says once he discovered the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton that was it. We talk about books and he remembers being surprised that he got really into The Portrait Of A Lady…

Caffy pops up to say goodbye and gives me her large vodka and orange, she hugs Thom and I tell her I’ll probably see her in November… We talk a bit more until Tim shows up and says it’s time to go. We stand up and realise everyone else has gone and we didn’t notice. We get to the door and we’re going in our separate ways saying ‘See you’; I’m doing my shrugging trick then Thom gives me a big hug and pulls a face. Tim says “See you tomorrow?”

“Stoke?! Erm yeah if that’s alright?”

“Yeah”, they both say, “of course it is!”

“OK then.” Looks like I’m going to Stoke.

I can’t follow them out, so I find the goods exit and eventually I’m in the street again. There are a handful of stragglers near the bus but I walk calmly past them, they don’t know where I’ve been. I get to the end of the road and feel like I’m going to burst, I’m all charged up and suddenly realise how hungry I am. I look up and I’m on the seafront, the Irish Sea stretched before me in the dark. I lean on the promenade rail and let out a scream that at 3am, there is no one around to hear.

 

My full English breakfast is floating in a pool of grease and tinned tomato juice but I’m so hungry I eat all of it. I walk through Blackpool. There are drifts of flowers at every available public monument following the death of Princess Di. The pavement near a war memorial is almost impassable. Before I get to the railway station, I call into a charity shop and by some freak chance they have a copy of A Portrait Of A Lady, one of the books we were talking about last night.

I’ve been to Stoke twice before, once when I was a kid to visit the Garden Festival (highlight: a huge water feature constructed entirely of porcelain toilet bowls) and once to check out a course when I was doing the rounds of my PCAS/ UCA shortlist, (highlight: buying a hat and a PJ Harvey album in one of the shopping centres that the place had got instead of a town centre, so unimpressed was I that I left without going to the interview.) Stoke is not a city but a conurbation of six Potteries towns, more like a project from my Geography A Level than a real place.,

After the train journey, I discover that the venue, Trentham Gardens is not a garden and is nowhere near this part of town. I call into the Tourist Information office, book the nearest available B&B and after what feels like about an hour on buses to find it, realise that I’ll have to go back to get money out as there are no cash points anywhere near the place.

It’s 4pm before I get near the venue, which at this point appears to be mostly comprised of a large car park. I can hear the tail end of the soundcheck. Some space noises and a song that sounds like it might be I Promise, drifts across the concrete. A croaky version of Paranoid Android follows, then A Reminder and Permanent Daylight. Emily the red haired girl and a friend of hers are here and they tell me I’ve missed True Love Waits. They’ve been here all day. When the soundcheck is over they go around the front of the venue to start a queue.

I stay where I am, there are steps to sit on here by the bus and the trucks. I wave at various people as they get on and off the bus. Later on Thom is approached by a couple of people and I hear a loud “No”. Some other kids are hanging about, working up the courage to talk to him next time he gets off the bus, but when he appears they freeze and instead have to listen to our quick conversation about the other bands that have played this venue, how Cast are awful and Ocean Colour Scene are beyond crap. The kids didn’t speak to him, they can’t believe that Thom is real. I chuckle to myself.

After this I can’t seem to shake off my new posse of awestruck teenagers, so I take them around the front of the venue to see if the doors have opened. Inside, I head for the bar and run into Lisa. She tells me she’s finished with zines these days, but R are the only band that really still do it, still give you the shivers down the back of the neck. We feel like the last of the old guard. I tell her about last night and she says I should ask them if I can help with W.A.S.T.E.

She’s with a friend, so I leave them and go off to see if I can get near the front. I end up in the middle and spend the whole gig hyper conscious of making eye contact with the stage. Because I’m in the middle I get absolutely killed. This crowd are mad for it.

“I know we’re in Stoke, but where IS this place?” laughs Thom. In amongst it they do Creep and Banana Co. And finally they play Let Down and despite the fact that they can’t do both halves of it together,  I can hardly believe it and I want to cry, but I’m not physically capable.

At the Rhodes for Subterranean, Thom hears a noise, “What was that? Probably nothing…” a heckler shouts something unintelligible and he drops into a riff from the Smiths song, “William, William…”

I can’t move enough in this crush to express what I’m feeling. I’m overloaded. I feel a distinct lack of dignity and something approaching self disgust. I scream and roar and cheer and stamp my feet. At the end I crawl out. Lisa grabs me and tells me it’s the best one she’s been at in a long while. She hugs me and says she’s thinking of going to the Paris show, and that I must come to the Nynex arena in Manchester on the next leg of the tour and stay with her. We end up in the foyer and I start to wilt through dehydration. I am in no rush to leave, but she’s driving back to Manchester and goes to look for her car. Tim pops up later, there’s no aftershow tonight, all the people hanging about are the crew’s mates. He nods over at a group huddled by the door – tonight’s token celebrity, Mark Owen from Take That, surrounded by hangers on and minders. Tim suggests I ask a local about taxis so I can get out of here. Eventually I find a pay phone and call one. Dead on my feet I find my way out past a throng of kids blocking in the band’s bus. I decide to stop now and go back north, as getting to Gloucester will break the bank and Brixton, like all London gigs, seems like a bad idea.

Another lonely, greasy breakfast. Aching all over, I load up all my gear and head for the train. I buy Q magazine, which has a big feature with Rankin’s photos of Thom in his big shoes and an interview, which is nice but gives nothing away compared to some of the conversation we had the other night…

 

The OK Computer arena gigs in November 1997 are the ones I have found myself talking about as the shows I enjoyed the least. But I was surprised, reading back through my diary, to find that I actually enjoyed the gigs and the band’s performance as much as I ever did. Retrospectively I’ve attached knowledge about what was going on in the life of the band at the time to my recall of events. I didn’t find out about that until a while after the release of Grant Gee’s tour documentary Meeting People Is Easy, which I will write about separately.

I think after the earlier 1997 dates, which were pretty special, where I felt particularly included and where I found myself lucky enough to get to talk with Thom on my own more than I’d done before, everything else was always going to stick in my memory as a bit of an anticlimax. In spite of being able to talk to him occasionally, I still relied on interviews and press coverage for much of my perspective on this person I wanted to feel like I was getting to know. I sometimes think I took things on face value too often, and with dreaded hindsight, I can see that neither version of Thom was the real one.

I’m trying to tell this story as it happened as much as I can, so I’ll try and separate the feelings I had at the time from the ones I had later…

Waiting at Manchester Piccadilly for my brother to arrive from Hull, where he’s gone to art school, his train is an hour and a half late. I drink weak tea and wait. We take the tram to NYNEX and marvel at the sheer size of the place, it swallows up the railway station and a multiplex, all the usual fast food outlets and as many adverts as can be squeezed in. We are told to return for the guestlist at 6.30pm. We go back towards the centre of town, where things are still in a mess near the Arndale Centre, there was an IRA bomb last year and Manchester hasn’t yet recovered. We find a pub full of indie kids and have a drink.

We walk back to NYNEX and confront the guest list ticket booth, I pick up an envelope from Caffy, but there’s only one ticket and one pass inside, I point out that there’s two of us and the guy picks up the phone. My brother panics a bit, the gig is sold out, but I try to stay calm. If the name’s not down… have I got anyone’s mobile number? No. I ask for Tim and the guy winks and tells us to come back in 20 minutes.  As a plan B we try to find out how much the touts want for a spare ticket, and get a bit more panicky. Then Lisa appears from out of thin air and immediately goes off to fetch Tim’s mobile number, she is wearing a ‘working’ pass.

In the meantime we go back to the desk and the guy there swaps my seated ticket for two standing ones and another pass much to our relief. We go inside hyped up, I dock my bag in the cloakroom and we go down the many stairs to the floor of the arena. The Beastie Boys are blasting out, this place is huge and loads of people are sitting on the floor. We get nearer the stage and realise that the DJ is James Lavelle (Mo’ Wax records honcho) playing his own Verve remix. I can’t keep still, I circle around until the kids stand up. Then Teenage Fanclub come on stage. Indie jangle abounds, they’re in their nice blokes incarnation, but the kids don’t move, except to eat crisps and the place is still half empty.

When they’ve gone, we can hear a DJ Shadow tune and it sounds great this loud. It turns out the bloke in the woolly hat on a platform where the sound desk should be is Josh Davis himself on the decks. Beams of light bounce off the walls, but no one seems to have noticed him. We dance about more than anyone else we can see.  My bro goes to get a bit nearer and observe Shadow’s technique (no movement above the wrist). This set fills in the roadie time, and had this been a small club show, it would have been the best warm up they’ve had.

Radiohead come on to Climbing Up The Walls, and every little thing gets a cheers (Thom coughs, “Yay!”, he takes off one of the two layered T shirts he’s got on, “Woo!”) They play a lot of OK Computer stuff. I get the feeling the front row are being very vocal but I’m not close enough. “We’ll be back here if any of you need any sexual favours…” says Thom in response to a heckle. The fast songs finally get this audience moving, Creep goes down well, My Iron Lung even better, it’s different here though, the venue is so large. They do Lurgee and Electioneering… People are talking through the quiet ones, Fake Plastic Trees and Bulletproof. For Exit Music I get stuck behind a guy who just won’t stop talking. I close my eyes and try to block him out, then give up and move. I keep trying to have a freak out and feel something that isn’t going through the motions. The gig takes a while to get going. It’s difficult to have an emotional experience in an ice hockey stadium with no ice and a popcorn concession.

At the end, Thom reads out a letter, the most words he’s spoken all night. It’s from the parents of a brother and sister who were at the last show at the Apollo, the boy had a heart attack shortly after and died. The mother has brought the girl to the gig tonight. They dedicate Street Spirit to them. It is simple yet effecting and makes me think of absent friends.

When it’s all over, we get our passes on and we’re herded into the seats. We find Lisa then get escorted to a roped off area and a kind of indoor marquee with tables, subtle lights and a bar. It feels like a wedding reception. It’s unlikely that we’re going to see much of the band in here. Lisa gets the beers in. We sit down and take it all in. Ed and Phil seem to be hosting their old pals, there’s no sign of the others. My brother is a bit overcome. We’re near Teenage Fanclub, and the Mo’Wax lot are over there.  And that looks like Mark Owen again in the other corner, fergawdsake.

I realise I have to get my bag back, the security people are unusually friendly and Lisa comes with me upstairs to the cloakroom, but I’m too late it’s been moved. We come back down in the lift, with DJ Marc ‘Lard’ Riley and his friends in front of us. After a little confusion, a security guy fetches my bag. We have another beer with Lisa and even though she’s forgotten about offering me a bed for the night, she offers to put us up. We go back to Heaton Chapel and get a few broken hours sleep. She has to get up early but will take us back into town in the morning so we can get a train back to our folks’.

 

 

It’s my birthday today.  I’m 23.

After buying myself some shoes in Nottingham, I get on the Birmingham train with one minute to spare. When I get there I call Caffy. She offers me a plus one for tonight, but sadly today I don’t have a friend in tow.

I go to the tourist information to find a B&B for the night. The woman behind the desk asks me why I’m here and when I tell her it’s for the gig, she says they could have sold all the tickets for it three times over. I take another train out to Birmingham International and from there a taxi to the B&B. I miss being the person who gets a free bed in someone else’s hotel room, £25 for the night is the top end of my meagre budget. Everyone else staying here seems to be here for the gig and when the bus back to the NEC shows up it’s full of likely candidates.

The NEC is huge, with echoing phosphorescently lit halls, like an empty airport with travelators and bright white walls. The Arena itself is separate and enormous. It’s the same guy on the door as last night but he doesn’t do any winking tonight. It’s a long walk from the box office to the performance space, past hot dog stands, beer stalls and merchandise. I buy a plastic-tasting beer and finally get inside. The ceiling is lower than in Manchester so it doesn’t seem so cavernous, but the inertia of the gathered audience in the face of James Lavelle’s DJ set is infuriating. I drink my cup of froth and wait for Teenage Fanclub to come on.  When Norman Blake plays the glockenspiel, someone shouts out “Jonny’s is bigger!”

DJ Shadow sounds more subdued than last night, it’s the shape of the room and the mood of the people. I have a go at moving about, I sometimes wonder if I’m the only person who comes to these gigs wanting to dance.

When the band appear, Thom sings Exit Music and it’s a bit wobbly. It takes 3 or 4 songs but then things start to fall into place and Subterranean is the song that flicks the switch. Jonny in the corner bathed in golden light, its beautiful and I feel lifted; like I’m feeling the feeling again. Even the green lights of the emergency exit signs at either side of the stage look like they’re calling me out of myself. I have space to move about, no one has elbowed me, I’m not being pushed around, no one cares if I dance like a maniac. The crowd have improved, I can feel it all around me, people are getting it.

They play Creep and the karaoke is in full effect, Thom is hamming it up, emoting and playing at being Frank Sinatra, doing all the actions, flashing his skinny body at the right moments. I scream and shout and jive my way through My Iron Lung, Just and Electioneering, there is no crush and I don’t have to fight to stay upright like I would have to in a smaller venue. At the end of Climbing Up The Walls, Jonny hits a weird note and Thom creases up, “What the fuck was that?!” Jonny comes over to the mic, but unable to explain himself he just says “I’ll get me coat.” Fast Show-style.

They play The Tourist, then the rest of the set list is a blur. Maybe I am getting over my need to be at the very front. The stage here is big and too far away for the sort of fan contact you might get at a smaller venue, I stopped worrying about that and let myself get swept away by the music.

When they’re done, I wheel around to the funereal jazz outro tape for a while until I find Caffy and get herded with the other pass holders into the “corporate hostility suite”. I see Tim to say hello to but he looks harassed. I join the Hall Or Nothing table with a journalist each from Melody Maker and NME. There are not many drinks and when some turn up I’m lucky to grab the last warm can of coke. I’m having trouble speaking, I’m not very good at talking to new people at the best of times but here everyone seems to be in the grip of their own in-jokes. They’re all driving back to London tonight so no one goes looking for booze.

There is a flyer for the new issue of Select on the table. Thom is on the cover of the magazine and the strap line says “I was ready to kill.” Caffy is not very happy about this and now is not the moment to talk about it. Jonny and Colin are around but there is no sign of the others. People are filtering away, it’s not really a party tonight, I wanted something to happen but no one knows it’s my birthday.

By the time I’ve found a pay phone so I can order a taxi, the place has emptied and there is nothing stopping me from doing a little exploring. I suppose I was hoping for a happy coincidence or to run into someone. I have to wait for my mini cab, as usual I’m in no real rush to leave, so I have a look outside to see if I can see where the bus is parked, but everything is behind a fence. I like to imagine the band were in there somewhere, having their own after show with the Mo’Wax crew…