Radiohead in 100 (+) gigs

In the morning we find ourselves in a hungover daze wandering around the huge and incredibly well stocked FNAC record shop. It’s a department store sized depository of music with large generically organised sections. I get lost in Funk & Soul and then wind up looking through the further reaches of Jazz. I find the Steve Reid album that has the track I’ve been dancing to at the end of the shows, and some rather natty Studio One compilations. On my way to the checkout I pass Jonny’s guitar tech, the unmistakably tall Duncan, staggering under a gigantic armful of CDs. It would be nice to be able to buy whatever I wanted without having to think about the bill.

Before the show, we take a last wander around the riverside, then Yasuko and I go for dinner. I make the mistake of eating a big bowl of spaghetti and feel like I should go back to the hotel for a nap. When we get back up to the venue, it’s time for the gig to start and I don’t feel like I’m ready to go through it again. Loads of the others are staying on and going to Spain for the rest of the tour and I can’t. I have one more day here after this and then I have to leave. I’m never in a great mood on my last day of a tour and today is worse than ever. They’re going on without me, to beautiful places that I would really love to visit. I have my new job to go back to, and not enough money in the bank to stay.

When I’d told Thom that I was only here for the first part of the tour, he’d tried to console me by saying that at least I was there for the start. I had wondered aloud about coming back for the final show; I could fly into Madrid and go to Salamanca… but he shook his head. I think if he’d have responded with: “Sure I’ll put you on the list,” I would have thrown caution to the wind and come back.

They played a selection of new stuff again and somewhere towards the end, as they hit the encore, Keiko arrived. Her plane had been late and she nearly missed the show completely, but she made it. It was like I was handing the baton on to her. As if to mark her arrival, they unexpectedly played Creep at the end of the show. By the time we found each other we were both in tears.

We staggered out into the foyer, to find Mungo manning the W.A.S.T.E. merchandise stall. Keiko bought T-shirts and chatted to him while I attempted to pull myself together.

Tonight’s mission was making sure Sam and Naz got their interview with Thom. Back in Lisbon, when I’d had his ear, I’d mentioned to Tim the Tour Manager that they were shooting a film about the tour, and that as it was “for and by fans as a present for the band” it would be great if we could pass it on to them. I’d also hinted that if there was any way we could get the band to take part then it would be the icing on the cake. He took the hint and said he’d see what he could do. I’d left it in his hands until now, knowing that there was no use in pestering them into doing it – if they wanted to get involved then they would.

Tonight, when we got to the aftershow, I found Sam and Naz already there. The little back room where the crew catering had been laid on contained a few people sitting on plastic chairs, finishing off the remaining drinks and chatting in a subdued, deferential fashion. Phil and Ed came in and went out; there were a couple of faces I recognised but the band were mostly elsewhere. Tim appeared and invited the French filmmakers to accompany him, leaving the Japanese contingent and myself to the warm beers.

About 45 minutes later they reappeared drinking Champagne from small plastic cups. Thom had granted their interview. He had apologised as he was still eating his dinner, but he’d answered their questions on camera… Naz and Sam were thrilled and more than a little tipsy.

I was pleased to have been able to help set it up, but sad not to be able to say goodbye to the band in person before I left. Outside, round the back of the venue, as the local crew in their special W.A.S.T.E. T-shirts packed up the gear, a few of the die hard boardies were hanging about on the pavement, still reeling from the show.

I stumbled out expecting the familiar reception: hard stares from people as thy deduce that you are NOT one of the band and therefore not worthy of attention. But on this tour most of the people hanging about were now my friends.

In the morning I made a cursory visit to the Port caves on the other side of the river, but I was too tired and deflated to really take it all in. And then it was time to go home.

Back at my new job I spent most of the next 10 days on the RHMB, keeping up with the people who were still in Spain. San Sebastian, Bennicassim and Salamanca. I felt more and more dejected with each set list that got posted up.

On the final night, August 7th, resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going to make that last minute trip back for the last show, I joined Edinburgh boardie Melody Nelson at a DJ Shadow gig taking place as part of an off-shoot of the Edinburgh Festival. It was at the Corn Exchange, not the greatest venue the city has to offer, but my new job had allowed me to get hold of some tickets. It was small consolation, but it was better than sitting at home thinking about a show I couldn’t be at.

After the gig (of which I have no memory whatsoever) I went to catch the last bus back to Glasgow, only to have it drive straight past the stop (already full up – one of the perils of Festival season). With the offer of a sofa at her mum’s flat, I followed Melody back to a pub near her place and then had to go outside to take a phone call from Clarabelle, who like a large group of the boardies, was in Salamanca. The gig there had just finished.

Radiohead had played requests. They played You (for the first time in years). The venue was amazing…
With every bit of news I felt worse. Standing out on the street in chilly Edinburgh, about as far away from Spain as I could be, screaming with something between excitement and despair at my friend as she ran up an astronomical mobile phone bill. It was hard to hear how wonderful the rest of the tour had been. Not being there is still my biggest regret… but at least I’d been there for the first plays of the new songs.

The Radiohead TV/ Chieftan Mews Webcast took place just before Christmas 2002. (The DVD entitled The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time – or as I like to think of it, The Most Chaotic Stocking Filler Of All Time – which came out some time later, contains the best bits.) Drinking along, joining a virtual party, I managed to see the trail of clues and a couple of new songs by commandeering a friend’s broadband. Thom giggles through a karaoke Winter Wonderland, plays a touching first version of Mr Magpie and the heartbreaking I Froze Up.

Thom graced the cover of the first NME of the New Year, inside a feature on the forthcoming album collating all the rumours and possible track names. The LP is slated for June and is mooted as a “return to guitars”. The band claim it has been an easier and quicker album to make than its predecessors. Ed (as ever) throws out a tease saying it’s full of “swaggering” songs, in Q the others put this down to the Iberian tour. I get very wary when Ed starts talking in historical musical terms, “You know like when the Stones got their groove on.” They’re talking like they’re going to push this record. But it’s still not Thom doing the interviews (not yet anyway).

In March the “club tour” is announced and within a week the ticket stampede is a news story in itself. On the Board there was a highly organised chain of people buying for each other, whoever reaches the payment page buys a full allocation, knowing there are people who will need the tickets. There was no question that I wouldn’t try to go to every show with venues this small. I got sucked in, even though I’d shied away from buying a lot of tickets in the past.

I’m part of this caravan now and I can’t really plan a trip if I can’t say I’m going to be able to get into the shows. With Tim not doing this tour, I don’t feel I can ask for freebies and so I let people buy tickets for me and judging by all the WASTE envelopes in the 2003 box I spent a good deal on tickets myself.  It’s becoming more expensive to be a Radiohead fan.

Around the same time, it is announced that Radiohead will headline Glastonbury this year, along with some other European festivals. The comparative smallness of the “club tour” bodes well for more dates later in the year, but for now it feels that like the fans, the band enjoyed the smaller shows last year and are trying to keep the feeling going.

Hail To The Thief will come out at the beginning of June, just after the tour. The press take it upon themselves to focus on the “Anti-Bush Slogan” of the title. There’s another war on and a storm (in a teacup) ensues. (Some American NME readers don’t like it. ) The ticket frenzy also sparks some coverage focusing on the band clamping down on eBay resellers, among the first artists to do so. Glastonbury Festival later follows suit introducing an ID policy for ticket buyers. Ticket touts are no longer just the scary Mancunian blokes you see outside every gig… they’ve gone online and there’s a lot of money in it. This is not the last that we will hear on the subject.

By April, a not quite finished mix of the album has leaked onto the internet. Someone at work (who it turns out is also a Boardie) gives me a copy burnt onto CD, but I don’t want to listen, it feels disloyal. The band are more pissed off about the unfinished version being out in the world than anything else. Of course the NME take the opportunity to print the “spoilers”.

Thom pops up at an antiwar protest at RAF Fairford in April, adding further weight to the “protest album” angle.

In May the NME (about the only print mag I’m still regularly buying at this point as most stuff is online now) runs a Thom cover, “It’s our shiny pop record” (yeah, right ). Again the paper focuses on politics, convinced it’s a protest record, while the band seem to be more convinced of their new energy and optimism. The following week Thom and Jonny give a track by track run down, a new openness perhaps compared to their approach in the Kid A era.

Via an EMI contact I’ve got through work, I manage to obtain a promo of Hail To The Thief (it turns out to be the special “map” edition; that I was sent it without having to beg, plead and send in review copy reflects that this album has a massive promotional budget) I agree with the idea that it is a brighter record; it’s not pop, not rock. But it is a very Radiohead record.

Hearing the finished versions of these songs somehow depletes the live versions I’d got used to. These songs are set now. The production, after the complexity of the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions is less interesting but after repeated listening it is revealed that there’s something else going on, a different quality, different weather.

This is by no means a simple record, but neither is it quite what I was expecting.  Radiohead’s sometimes peculiar blend of anger and humour sit together on this album and it is perhaps more transparent than their “difficult” 4th and 5th records; it does have a powerful energy but not the same kind as they have when they play live. I can never have ears that didn’t hear these songs in Portugal, and I sometimes wonder if I’d have a better relationship with the record if I hadn’t been ‘given’ those songs early. Having said that, I wouldn’t swap those shows for a whole Napster worth of albums…

The most notable thing about HTTT is the influence that having a kid had on Thom’s lyrical outlook. Sail to the Moon, Where I End And You Begin… these are the closest he’s got to love songs, and the whole thing is crammed with children’s book imagery – Bagpuss, Gulliver’s Travels, Chicken Licken.  He remains as wonderfully oblique as ever – if Kid A was “rambling in open spaces” this is walking in cities, it’s windy weather, it’s the empty centre in the middle of the hurricane.

For me, HTTT is a couple of tracks too long. Scatterbrain is too much like REM and should have been a B-side; Go To Sleep never quite works and great as Wolf At the Door can be live, it sort of peters out at the end and finishes their run of great last-on-the-album tracks. It doesn’t quite cohere as a complete listen like even Kid A does. Backdrifts is loose and it works, catching the mood. Go to Sleep remains a battle not to be a rock song. I’m not sure they succeed, as in the process they knock the balls out of it; if this is them being relaxed then I liked it when they were uptight. The subtitles for the songs smack of trying too hard to give us options about their meanings – yet the lyrics are printed on the sleeve for the first time since OKC.

There There was the first single and remains the stand-out track, the one that will stay in the set… it builds and releases, and is mixed so you have to play it on repeat. (Listening now, I find HTTT benefits from being played LOUD.) They’re finding their groove but they’re not quite there yet…

Sure enough in the week before the “club” dates, a series of arena shows are announced for November… but first we have May and a tour to get through…

I found the notebook that I was carrying on this tour, there’s a lot of blank pages left in it. There are a few scribbled lines trying to capture a conversation, hardly anything about the shows and on one page, Thom’s scratchy handwriting, to remind me to listen to a couple of records.

At the back there are some roughly sketched ideas for how to record my Radiohead adventures:

“Like a post-modern pilgrimage, we travel to witness sound and light transfigured into emotional magic. Primal dancing, whooping and screaming. Adrenaline and fears and toothy grins.”

A bit of bad poetry, no doubt written in the middle of a sleepless hostel night.

I’ve been trying to make sense of it ever since.

*

“It ain’t workin’ chief!” Thom’s having trouble with a guitar and he needs Pete “Plank” Clements to fix it. This phrase tickles me, Thom is giggling as he says it, like an on-tour in-joke. We’ll never know if that’s the case for the band, but it certainly becomes one for me and the gang of RHMB regulars that have turned up in Dublin for these dates at the Olympia, a theatre-sized venue in the centre of the city.

This is a smaller show than they have played for a while, about a tenth the size of the last UK/Ireland shows in the 10,000 capacity tents and the tickets tonight are like gold dust. We, the faithful, however, are used to this.

One friend from London has been camped outside the door since 5am, dressed in army surplus gear. A concerned and intoxicated passer-by has already offered him some food. “It’s OK,” he reassured them, “we’re waiting for Radiohead.”

“I’ll pray for you.”

The queue for these shows is a serious business, a lot of people have come a long way to be here, have gone to great lengths to get these tickets and they want the best vantage point possible once they get inside.

Personally I go through enough turmoil before a gig and standing in the cold all day is not something I enjoy. The first few people will hold their places all day and get the positions on the barrier that they desire. Much as I love that spot, I don’t have the energy, the patience or the kind of will power to make it something I can do without the help of friends.

Tonight there is a system giving wristbands to those with standing tickets so they can stand in a segregated area (“the pit”) at the front.  In theory this cuts down on crowd surges and makes it less dangerous to be nearer the stage; people don’t need to push each other around as much. In a venue as small as The Olympia it makes a difference, one of the main reasons to be on the barrier (for me anyway) is to support yourself when everyone behind you is pushing. I get quite near the front but not on the rail as I’d not been prepared to join in with the queuing hierarchy.

Four Tet is once again the support, and once again I picture Kieran Hebden on stage behind his laptop, emailing his nan.  In other circumstances his music would be engaging and I’d be dancing, but tonight we’re preserving our energy.

The drums are out on either side of the stage and There There, already an anthem, kicks off the show.  It’s a more open song that we’ve been used to from the Kid A era. The reviews talk about Radiohead being emotionally cold, as if you can’t have feelings unless you’re strumming an acoustic guitar, personally I think this is bollocks. Straight into 2+2=5, which is probably one of the songs that had the more orthodox listeners reaching for the their rock dictionaries again, as if Kid A was an aberration.

The press reviews of this show seem to concentrate on the difference between this new material and the old stuff, neglecting to notice how each time Radiohead return to the live arena they bring all their material into line. The new stuff – Where I End And You Begin – segues into Airbag and Lucky and then there is a straight run of HTTT tracks until Just gets an airing near the end of the main set. The band are still quite loose, this is the first show and things are still falling into place with the new material. Thom is playful, but when Jonny lets fly on the noisier songs, he and Colin look on with some bemusement.

The promise of an “intimate atmosphere” has brought people from around the world to these shows, with American fans making a larger than usual showing. Realising what a great time we had on the Iberian tour, and that for the foreseeable future all the US is going to get is stadium shows, compels people to fly in for these dates.

The NME canvassed the queue before the first Dublin show. Some people get a bit carried away and seem to think they’re speaking for everyone, that turning up at 6am makes them special; they obviously get a kick out of it. I’ve met a lot more of these people now, in person or online, and I have friends to hang out with, but as with the rest of my life, I’m not entirely convinced I fit in. I’m less shy than I used to be, more prepared for what being on a tour will take out of me. I know now to travel light, with adequate shoes for hours on my feet; an eye-mask and earplugs to make sleeping in hostels bearable. When it starts to become about the gang of people more than about the band, I get uneasy.

In terms of aftershow, I don’t see anything in Dublin. I take it as read that the band are off into the network of tunnels beneath Dublin that connect Bono’s many properties (I had to do something with my time in the queue, so inevitably I came up with a fiendish scheme about U2 owning the city).

The NME the following week has a quick catch up with the band after the first night. They were a bit shaky, the first one is always unpredictable, it will take a while to bed in the new songs. They’re going to change the set every night as they have so many songs to fit in. Colin, as ever, comes across as the biggest Radiohead fan of them all, “I’ve got a great job.” They’re even talking about how much fun they’re having!

Something is afoot with the people in the queue. There is an atmosphere. It turns out the people who arrived first, and one American in particular, have started their own system. They are giving people numbers, drawing on people’s hands with a felt tip pen. Don’t they understand? We are British (and Irish…) and we know how to queue.

I dislike the compulsion to start a line unnecessarily early before a gig, but this imposing of control on people who are, let’s face it, here to enjoy themselves, puts a serious kink in my day.

I am pretty psyched up before the show and it takes a lot for me not to go completely berserk. My first instinct is to find whoever is responsible and give them a piece of my mind, the thing is, other people are going along with it. I don’t remember the details (the red mist descended) but I remember saying to the queue at large, as I took up a spot at a reasonable time after lunch, “This is my thing, how dare you spoil it!”

Inside, the band are into it, the set list is different, as promised, with the song Kid A making a live debut. Thom turns it into something altogether more sprightly than it is on record, hopping around a small keyboard. He has to dash between mic and piano during Sit Down Stand Up, adding a slapstick element. The piano has a photo of Sid James wearing a crown taped to it , another band in-joke no doubt.

They throw in a few oldies including Talk Show Host, usually a sign that they’re feeling funky. How To Disappear with it’s line about the Liffey sets the home crowd into raptures and they make a fair stab at the slow hand clap of We Suck Young Blood.

We left Dublin, but I recall few details. Clara, who was touring with me, remembers leaving the envelopes with ALL the tickets for ALL the rest of the gigs in the hostel and having to go back for them. The rest of us had taken the train to Belfast and she had to follow on the bus.

We arrived at our hostel en mass, the lady at reception asking, “Are you here for Westlife?” (The Irish boy band, the complete antithesis of our boys, are playing at the Odyssey Arena, next door to tonight’s venue.)

We make it to the Waterfront in time to discover that the queue has once again started early. An ever expanding group of rabid enthusiasts hell-bent on imposing a bureaucracy on fans of a band that have songs entitled 2+2=5, who sing about the debilitating effects of the daily grind, fail to see the irony in what they’re doing.

Tonight they have selected a red pen so that last night’s numbers in black will be rendered invalid. Melody Nelson, another boardie who is with us, pulls out her lip liner pencil and applies low numbers to the backs of our hands. I am pulled inside the venue with Dublin boardie Stooge and Astral Chris, who flank me in the crowd as the girls head for the barrier, I’m just behind them, we’re all in the crowd together for once.

This venue is weird, though smaller than the neighbouring Odyssey, it’s still an arena, a concert hall for orchestras. After the Olympia, which had a dilapidated grandeur, it is rather soulless. There are a couple of technical issues on stage and Thom can’t quite find his groove, a member of the crew gets a tongue lashing mid-set. Other than that the gig is a flurry of new songs.

Keiko is here and she has passes for this evening. The others all leave to go for drinks and she finds me, attaches a pass and we get herded away once the arena is cleared. The new tour manager is a friendly Frenchwoman called Hilda, she leads us through the bowels of the building into what looks like a hotel lobby.

Soon we are sitting on the floor sharing wine and Guinness with Thom. Keiko asks after his family and he tells her that they’d been in Dublin at the shows.  He’s obviously smitten with his toddler son, talking a lot about being woken up early and the cute things that he says…

I ask how the shows have been so far; we talk about the setlists and how the second night’s array wouldn’t have worked here. They lost their nerve but The Gloaming was good. I tell him I liked Kid A with the one finger keyboard playing. Keiko keeps pouring more drinks. Yasuko arrives. They ask if they’re going to play in Japan anytime soon, “Summersonic” says Thom. The contingent try to explain that it’s the wrong festival! Thom writes something on a piece of paper for Ya to add to her website.

We talk about music – The White Stripes – how come if everything is recorded on pre-1968 gear its still available on CD? If this is the new future of rock ‘n’ roll then why don’t they just let it die and let someone who uses samples get through? But Q love them… Q is a bad subject; it seems Thom is not the biggest fan of the current editor, even though he’s on the cover again.

He says the John Peel show is still essential listening. We decide Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Kills are just retreading PJ Harvey – “Better get Polly on the phone.”

We talk about shoes (he’s got white Clarks shoes on, that look like leather Cornish Pasties to me, as he was looking for something British made. “You have to take what you can get”). He mentions what he’s listening to and I ask him to write down the names – The Black Keys (“Not the ‘Blackies’, there two of them like the White Stripes… but…”) and B-Pitch Control (the Berlin label that he likes more than anything else at the moment).

We talk to “Big Colin” the head of security, he seems to know who we are and he knows the score with some of the more fervent admirers who are still waiting outside. I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I don’t care if I make enemies if I have friends like these. We get asked what shows we are going to. “All of them,” Keiko replies. She promptly gets put on the guest list plus two for the rest of the tour.

Hilda says it’s time to go. “Let’s not,” says Thom. We agree with him, but we’ve all run out of drinks and they really have to leave. He cracks his neck, “I really should have got it seen to before the tour.”

Keiko, Ya and I stagger outside into the night, we’re nowhere near where we went in and it takes a while to get our bearings. I somehow make it back to the hostel, where there are several rooms taken up by rival factions. Other people have better recall of who was where and who said what to who, who got off with who, who fell out with who. I begin to remember why being social on these trips is hard. I don’t want to deal with ordinary things. I don’t really care about the petty politics and I don’t understand why anyone else does.

A travel day. It’s Melody’s turn to rescue the tickets, which once again get left in the hostel. This is getting ridiculous, at least we realise in time to alert her and she is on a later flight…

We regroup in Glasgow and are joined by Dop from Belgium and Pocki from Sweden, who are going to stay the night at my place.

On the day of the show we get a bus through to Edinburgh. We meet with Melody, go for a pub lunch and sort out the envelope full of tickets.

I have a love/hate relationship with Edinburgh. As a Glasgow-dweller I dislike the wind, the tourists, the transport, the snootiness and the venues. Why, when there are so many great places for a band play in Glasgow, they have chosen to play the only Scottish date in this barn of a place? The Corn Exchange seems more suitable to conferences and expos than an “intimate” evening with a band, but still the queue has formed early and the Americans seem to be in charge.

The Japanese contingent are here in force too. By the time we arrive there are plenty of people who know each other from the internet who are getting to meet “in real life” for the first time. Some of them will end up being close friends in the future. Some of them will be flatmates. Some of them will even end up married.  Everyone will have different reasons to remember this gig.

Sometime in the afternoon, a member of the crew emerges from the venue with a notice, copies of which are distributed among the queue. Word has got back to the band about the queue numbering, via Big Colin (Official title: “Head of Security”). Apparently, in Dublin, the queue system involved a couple of young lads wrongly being led to believe that their numbers would guarantee them a place at the front. They were sadly disappointed and complained to the venue. The band have got wind and are not best pleased.

The whole queue thing is just winding me up. The already numbered ignore the polite request and the struggle to get to the front continues. Reports from those who made it to the barrier describe a mad rush to get in, people running and slamming into the front board. One boardie whacked her knee and spends the whole gig in agony (and the next three weeks barely able to walk.) It’s a measure of the power of this band that even while injured, people choose to stay at the front rather than leave the show.

I don’t even try to get close to the front and hang back near the sound desk. I had to wait for an old friend from Glasgow to give him my ticket (as I’m now Keiko’s plus one) and people had been so hostile to folks joining their friends in the queue and thereby outdoing the system that I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle. Back here I can dance and not worry about trying to see the stage (I’ve been to gigs in The Corn Exchange before and I know it’s a pointless exercise). A lot of people at the front are convinced they’re getting eye contact with the band, that they can’t enjoy the show unless they’re at the front. I’ve been there and done that, at better venues than this one.

In spite of trying to make the best of it, I spend the show in a fug of annoyance. The setlist gets tweaked again and Like Spinning Plates gets an airing. Someone shouts out a request for the football scores and Thom says something about half time oranges. (Ed might have chipped in with something more realistically footy-related). I dance it out of my system. I need a fair amount of space when I get going, Sit Down Stand Up in particular sets me off, flailing frantic and fast.

Afterwards, Keiko finds me with a pass. We have a bit of a problem with a security man and my mood still hasn’t quite stabilised. I have a heated exchange with a jobsworth who kept asking us if we didn’t have homes to go to. Liggers and bouncers, oil and water.

I remember pulling someone through a door as it was closing and going down a long corridor, like something from one of my weird dreams. A back stage room with the usual remains of the crew catering and a few beers in a fridge. I flop into a chair and try to regain some composure. I am sweaty and thirsty. Big Colin approaches to tell me there is a girl outside who says she’s a friend of mine. He tells me her name, M, one of the Americans who was in Portugal. I tell him that I have met her but that it’s his call who he lets inside the after show.

I am surprised, a few moments later, to see her arrive in the room. She thanks me as if it’s my doing, she is fairly vibrating with excitement. I tell her to be cool, get a drink, sit tight, don’t get in anyone’s way. I can almost feel the disapproval radiating off my other friends. In the end, she confines herself to staring rather intensely at Jonny when he arrives. The hard thing is to know whether to behave like you belong here and mingle as if you were at a party, or to remain too overawed to say anything to anyone and risk looking like a potential nutter. I include myself in this, hell only knows how I look to anyone who doesn’t know me.

I passed the stage of caring a long time ago and after rehydrating myself, I wander over to Thom, who is being accosted by local music journalist and radio personality Billy Sloan. As I approach, Thom is politely but firmly refusing to have his photo taken in Sloan’s customary “friend of the stars” pose. Thwarted, Clyde Radio’s finest wanders off, but he won’t find any other celebs to pester at this party. Thom greets me and introduces me to some of his Glasgow friends (a former flat mate who now runs an art gallery and a couple of other people).

It’s tricky, in different circumstances – an art opening such as I often attend through work or a regular party – I would probably feel able to talk to these people. As it is, Thom introduces me thus: “This is Lucy. She’s seen us everywhere, forever.” And his friends don’t quite know how to talk to me, I am put firmly in the fan category.  I find it hard to think of anything intelligent to say about the Glasgow art scene at this moment, even though I write listings about it for a living. Thom’s presence makes me feel too self conscious. I’m not going to make any new friends tonight.

The afters peters out, so it’s back to the pub near the station. This has been a more relaxed gathering than the one I’ve just left. The rest of the gang are all here and have been joined by my old mate who by now has missed the last train home. I find myself directing him to follow the group who are staying at the hostel and they let him kip on their floor. I join the girls and to go back to Melody’s flat for a fitful night on the sofa.

A ramshackle bunch of us roll up to catch the train to Manchester from Edinburgh in the morning. Some more hungover than others.

The gig is at The Apollo. I’ve not been here since 1996 when I came down for the T in the Park warm up show, Manchester has changed a lot since then. We didn’t arrive early enough to queue, but there is room to dance near the sound desk and a bunch of us prefer to stay there rather than brave the crush.

The intro of Where Bluebirds Fly heralds the band’s arrival on the stage – there’s no Four Tet tonight.

Despite being a “small” venue, the shape of the Apollo (old cinema with a high ceiling and wooden floor) gives a weird hollowness to proceedings.

There There is a fixture as the opener on this tour. There is already singing along. Jonny has developed a way of slinging his guitar across his back then twisting it back just in time for his climactic solo.  2+2=5 goes by fast; The National Anthem, Orwellian voices from Jonny’s radio then rumbling, muttering moaning. I do my head down shuffle and shake dance.

“Alright?” Thom speaks and gets a cheer. Morning Bell, propels me into more dancing. Lucky’s intro is all chills. Backdrifts is introduced as a new song. I have to remember that for most people these songs really are new. It skitters into life and Thom’s vocal floats over the top, it ends in some twisty guitar. “This is a hopeful song. We’ve got lots and lots of hopeful songs haven’t we boys?” Sail to The Moon with its piano and space guitar, gentle, soothing, almost soppy.

“C’mon kids!” I shout – wanting to hear Kid A again, “Please switch on the machine” says Thom in a funny voice and the chatter of the crowd becomes the twinkle of Sit Down Stand Up. People keep talking through the quiet before the storm. Some of us are braced because we already know it’s not just another piano song. There is a shriek when it kicks off. That might have been me. Thom flips out after “the raindrops” as the drums kick in. It seems shorter than the earlier version. Thom sings the opening line of Scatterbrain a capella but stops and they start the song, to loud cheers. “Did someone say run to the hills then?”

I shout again and get Kid A. People clap along, almost in relief at a older song, but stop when the rumbling drums begin, it’s almost all drums with a little bit of one finger keyboard and I love it. Thom breaks it down to a refrain, at the end, “C’mon kids”.

No Surprises get the biggest roar of the night so far and more clapping (vaguely in time at least). Thom throws out an unaccompanied “leave me outta here” as an afterthought, then Myxomatosis, is twice the volume of anything that came before, all treated guitar and raunchy moves.

“Another new one, this involves clapping, but it’s very special clapping, where you’re not really there, you wait for the beat, then ten minutes later it arrives. If you don’t wanna clap, that’s fine, see if I care.” We Suck Young Blood.

Thom is downright chatty, Paranoid Android reminds me of the last time I heard it in this building and it gave me the fear. The crowd singalong turning it into a gormless chant, but as usual I wait for the twitchy bits. As with many Radiohead songs, the bit when Jonny breaks in and tries to ruin it is the best bit. I still hate the “rain down” chorus, mainly because no bugger can ever sing it in tune.

My Iron Lung further ups the pace, provokes some more clapping and out of tune singing and Thom howls the last “it’s OK” like he’s falling down a well.  Idioteque,  the opening sample more sinister than usual ends with the room whipped up into a frenzy. Everything In Its Right Place prompts overenthusiastic clapping that soon dies out as the bass kicks in, and fails to get back on track for the off beat at the end (which always irks me). The fade out lasts for ages as the band leave the stage.

“It’s Philip’s Birthday” Thom says in another silly voice as they come back on, and it gets sampled… the crowd pick up an out of time chorus of the appropriate song. The Gloaming rumbles into life, the spooky sample coming back at the end.

A rattle of tambourine and I Might Be Wrong shimmers into being. I am dancing again. It staggers and stutters a bit but Jonny pulls it back into shape with some rumbling guitar.

From out of nowhere they play Just and it feels like the liveliest thing of the night.

“This is from our third record, now we’ve done six. That makes us old. This is called The Tourist.” Not one they play very often, it seems to suit the mood of the evening. So much of HTTT is dark and sinister sounding but without the action of the Kid A era stuff. There have been none of the ostensible “rock tracks” from the album tonight, more of the atmospheric ones, some quite dirge-like.

The encore’s encore finally arrives with Talk Show Host, which has already had several airings on this tour, it’s slinky in a more direct way than the newer stuff.  Almost like a reward for the crowd’s patience, they play Fake Plastic Trees last. It has karaoke qualities. But Thom rescues it with his occasionally aired “crumbles and burns” glissando. The end sounds triumphant and grand  – which for a song about defeat is pretty impressive.

When the band are gone, the ska compilation wafts through the room and I am left dancing on the spot, trying to compose myself. My regular companions know to leave me alone for a moment now, to absorb the show, to come back to earth, but M, who had been so keen to join me in Edinburgh, doesn’t seem to realise that I need some space. She is everywhere I look, trying to get in my eye line. I spin around, not able to cope with anyone in my face right now. She doesn’t take the hint and follows me as I try to dodge her. She wants to know if I’m going to the afters. I’m Keiko’s guest so it’s not up to me to invite anyone else, it is not in my power and I don’t want the responsibility. But she’s still there. I snap. I’m not proud of it, I might even have told her to “fuck off”.

Next thing I know I’m inside a back stage bar with Keiko. It’s busy, there are a lot of people here, Manchester always seems to have a party going on after a show but it’s not one I feel part of. There is no sign of any of the band, they’re probably celebrating Phil’s birthday in private. Yasuko is still outside and Keiko goes to fetch her. But we don’t have a spare pass, nor can we find anyone to ask for one. She tries to leave and come back in but a bouncer has got wise to her plan to bring another person and won’t let her return. I go over to argue with him, protesting her lack of English, asking him to fetch a manager, but he chooses this moment to exercise his little bit of power and escorts us both outside. Karma.

Out in the cold I am fuming, angry with the bouncer, angry with the others, angry with myself. I avoid people from earlier, not wanting to join those waiting for the band by the bus, but unable to leave.

Eventually I end up back at our hotel with Clarabelle and Magnakai (I’m going to keep using people’s Borad handles, deal with it), who has nowhere else to go, sharing a generically branded room. I am in a foul mood which I can’t properly explain to the others.

This band, this bloody band.

 

Another day off and we travel down to London. I stay in Bow with Clarabelle and have a rest. I go for a walk in the West End and into Hamley’s toy shop. I have a memory of going there with my parents on a sightseeing trip long ago, not being allowed to buy anything. I wander around the soft toy department imagining what the younger me, enamoured of anything cuddly and panda-shaped, would have bought if I’d had enough pocket money. The toys are all very expensive. I stumble upon a rack of Mr Men books, still pocket money priced. I buy a copy of ‘Mr Worry’, he reminds me of someone.

*

Between Shepherd’s Bush tube station and the venue there are signs tied to railings and lamp posts, Hungry? Sick? – lyrics from We Suck Young Blood. We’ve already started making up parodies. It’s a bit disappointing when all you get when you call the number is previews of the HTTT tracks. We pull some down to keep.

Across Shepherd’s Bush Green outside the venue there is already a queue. I meet a few more people from the message board and do a recce of the place but I don’t queue up myself, I’ve had enough for this run. I don’t want to see certain people today.

I run into Tim, who I’ve not really been in contact with since Portugal. He is still working for the band, looking after their studio, he’s looking after the guest list tonight and offers to put me on it. This means I now have an extra ticket, so I call Kim, who just has enough time to make it over from the other side of the city before the show starts. By the time we get inside we can fit in one drink before kick off, then find a place to stand near the back, just under the balcony (which rather dampens the sound.) The show has a coherence tonight, in spite of London nerves, and it genuinely feels like a small venue.

Kim reminds me of Val in a lot of ways: she’s a bit older than me and knows her music; I love listening to her punk war stories and she has a filthy sense of humour. She knows how to enjoy herself and she understands. She “gets” the band in a way that makes sense to me. I have a more relaxed time of it and the band are more on it, like the other shows have been a warm up for this. There There and 2+2=5 are once again the openers, but then The National Anthem and Morning Bell make an appearance. A few of us are still persisting with the flamenco clapping for the latter. Scatterbrain remains my least favourite of the new songs, but then Thom has his tiny keyboard brought on and someone screams. There is a joy in the way he sings “C’mon kids” at the end of Kid A, it’s been my favourite thing about the whole tour. The rest of the show sounds like Jonny’s: Go To Sleep’s defragged guitar breakdown; the radio detuning into Climbing Up The Walls; the tension sustained into a dark Backdrifts.

Thom’s voice has benefited from a day off. “Smile Thom!” someone shouts,  “How big do you want the smile? Happy, happy,” he chants. Sail to the Moon floats by. Sit Down Stand Up is for “all the people with free tickets,” (there are industry people here, as ever at a London show, it always creates an odd vibe). No Surprises follows, finding its place as a come down. Talk Show Host. Where I End And You Begin. Paranoid Android. Idioteque. There is certainly more pace tonight. Everything In Its Right Place has a great bass break in it and we almost get the clapping right.

They go off for what seems like a long while. I Might Be Wrong’s riff grinds and they’re back, all tambourines again. The Gloaming. Myxomatosis. The bass is dirty, the audience is better. Lucky. The cheering lasts a long time.

Fake Plastic Trees “Still seems sort of relevant somehow.” It starts, guitar drowned out by singing along to make it almost a capella. Thom has his voice back, melts the “crumbles and burns” line again. The rumble is loud for How To Disappear, it makes the room shake. Six shows out of seven, by now the set list feels well honed.

Kim comes with me to the afters, as she’s never done one before. It’s a split level bar, we hang about and drink beers. It’s busy but I have some things in my bag for Thom and with a little Dutch Courage I approach him between conversations, I just want a little more time before the tour is over. I present him with a Hamley’s bag, my gift for Noah – “Mr Worry, because he doesn’t have to.” I have also brought a CD of Rob Newman’s political comedy (he’s made something of a come back and I’m a loyal fan…) Thom pockets it and tells me that Mr Newman is supposed to be introducing them at Glastonbury (sadly in the end this doesn’t happen).

We talk briefly, I mention I’m thinking of going to the Italian shows in July and Thom says he’s looking forward to them, is bringing the family. A lot of people want his attention so I go back to Kim and my beer. I want her to be able to say hello, there are plenty of people here getting autographs, which is unusual, it would be nice to take advantage of the mood. Thom passes us and she says “Hello gorgeous!” in her own inimitable fashion. He giggles.

Later on I find a piece of artwork in my bag, given to me by my assistant at work (who also happens to be a Boardie…) I present it to Thom, but he assumes I want him to sign it, so does so and gives it back. I am about to explain that he can keep it, when a boy with a vinyl copy of OK Computer in his hand hoves into view. “Sign this for my mate who you told to ‘Fuck off’ in 1997!” We exchange face pulls and I get out of the way.

MTV are filming tonight’s show and someone has the idea that I should make a T-shirt for the occasion. Clarabelle takes a marker pen to a plain grey shirt and soon my chest bares the legend “Radiowho?” It’s an in-joke for us as members of the band’s Message Board where mentioning said band often sparks cries of derision from the regulars.

We travel into central London to meet more of the regulars and find something to eat. Trying to please everyone, we end up in a pub near the embankment with some sort of vegetarian Greek platter of humus, olives and pitta bread. There is something dodgy about the olives but we wash them down with a beer. The group makes its way to Shepherds Bush again, intent on a good time. But by the time we arrive at the Empire, Clara and I both have to make a beeline for the toilets in the adjacent pub, there really was something dodgy about those olives.

All thoughts of joining the queue are sacrificed to dealing with our health crisis. The worst is past by the time the doors open, but we are so late and I am so keen to get inside, that I neglect to check the ticket desk. I have a bought ticket for tonight and have not seen Tim again, Keiko and friends are already inside. I am still not feeling well.

The gig is being filmed and the cameras, one on a large boom across the middle of the crowd, are distracting. I can hardly seen anything from where I’m standing and I feel angry and ill. I’m not really enjoying myself anymore, maybe this is a gig too many.
I don’t remember any more than vague impressions of this gig. The MTV videos, which I got to see sometime later, and which are now on You Tube, don’t help fill in the gaps. The filming style anticipates the band’s own later use of CCTV, the gig had minimal lighting and despite the large cameras and booms at the show, most of it is shot in grainy close ups of hands and instruments. This was not the experience of an audience member, footage is shot from behind the band on the stage, perhaps trying to be immersive but failing to capture what it was like to be there.

The MTV special doesn’t cover the whole show, just a few songs interspersed with interviews. Thom appears on his own, he is the opaque, emotional centre of the band; Jonny and Colin are interviewed together – Jonny is musically analytical, Colin talks as if he’s the band’s biggest fan. Ed and Phil form the last group. Ed the band’s politician, presenting his version of what the new material means and Philip polite and diplomatic as always. I find myself identifying the most with Thom’s version, even if it’s not the most factual; he likes to mess with people’s expectation and even says in the clip that he likes to put things in the wrong place.

The most pertinent thing he says here, when asked about the fans who have travelled to see them on this tour, feels like a message for the gang of people I have got to know over the last week, “The people I know that do that (follow the tour) enjoy the fact that sometimes it goes wrong anyway. I tend to talk to people about that, I mean, they really don’t care. It’s kind of like a hanging out thing.”

That interview must have taken place before the gig, and I didn’t see it until weeks later, but he seems to understand why we’re here.

My notes are all about what happened afterwards. As I failed to check with the box office before the show, I have no pass. I go back once the show has finished but of course by now there is no one there and the list is long gone. I am ejected from the venue. I go round the block looking for anyone I know. Big Colin is too busy minding the door. I find a step at the bottom of a fire escape and sit down to wallow in my own stupidity. This was not how I wanted to end up, I’m cold and ill and fed up.

A while later, Hilda, the tour manager, who I have not seen a lot of at these shows, finds me. I have a card for Thom and I try to give it to her. I tell her I’m looking for Keiko, she will still be here somewhere unless the band are gone. Hilda drags me inside and up a lot of stairs. I pull myself together and try to act normal.
I had cracked up a little while I was outside, it wasn’t a good gig for me, it’s the last night of the tour. I’m angry at myself and other people and things I can do nothing about. We reach the upstairs bar and people are already leaving, but Thom is still there, signing Keiko and Yasuko’s posters. I arrive complaining about the cold and realise in that moment that I would have been on the list tonight, if only I hadn’t been puking before the show, why did I doubt it?

Thom pulls a face at me. They’ve been here for a while and he’s a bit drunk.

“Have you recovered?” I ask, meaning from the show.

“No,” he says.

“Is there any drink?” I’m parched.

“No I’ve drunk it all. All of it.” He’s not joking.

I give him the card, I’ve written down every thing I wanted to say. Tim joshes me to get out of the way, there are other people around trying to get things signed, I have posters in my grasp but I don’t want him to sign anything else. I just want a hug and we get a one-arm-each huddle. There are too many people and he’s too drunk and I’m tired and cold. “Italy’s not cold, see you in Italy.” And off he toddles leaving Keiko talking to Nigel. Tim says, “Email me.” He wants updates from the European tour…

The following night (May 26), Bjork is playing a rare live show at the same venue. A couple of our group have already got tickets and between us we score some more off people who are selling spares. (I rendezvous with a girl at Waterloo Station and buy her spare, she’d also been at Radiohead last night).

I am so exhausted that even though at any other time I would be quite enthusiastic at the prospect of the pride of Iceland in action, I find myself a spot to sit down towards the back of the Empire and don’t have the energy to stand up for most of the show. Consequently I have very little memory of it. Sometimes there really is one gig too many.

Back to real life. Having decided that we are definitely going to Italy, I only have just over a month to plan the trip. Over the summer I start attending a night-class, provoked by what was basically a dare from a friend, I become part of a stand up comedy workshop. I write a short set for my debut performance in a room above a pub. By the end of June I have done a few very short gigs. On the night of Radiohead’s Glastonbury headliner in June, I was on stage myself, delivering a tense 5 minutes of observations and fumbling my punch lines due to nerves.

The Hail to The Thief reviews, interviews and general press overkill continues (considering the band’s resolutions not to get caught up in the promo melee again, there is a surprisingly large amount of it.)