«fridge
buzz now»
// Raygun,
March 1998
by Dean Kuipers
RADIOHEAD'S
SOARING, ANXIOUS AND BRAINY ROCK MUSIC HAS STRUCK THE AMERICAN NERVE,
WEIRDLY RESTORING FAITH lN NOT ONLY POP MUSIC, BUT THE HUMAN SPIRIT.
DEAN KUIPERS DIGS FOR THE HEART THEY KEEP HIDDEN FROM THE HYPE.
__________
Nothing is more difficult than the present. Who
can really live in it? This whole place - planet Earth, I mean operates
by modi that come in two flavors: one, look what they did to me; and
two, please god let me be ready for what's going to happen next. Maybe
I've just revealed my terminal American-ness, and life in Rangoon
or Quito is made up of infinite shades of now-ism ... but I doubt
it. These are, after all, the last two years of the American Century.
In a recent interview, William Gibson, the godfather of so-called
'cyberculture,' told me that no one wants to accept his books as anything
but futuristic. "But I really do think of myself as somebody
who's trying to write realistically about the present!" he chuckled.
"Which is something that's scarcely been done, because the present
has become so unthinkable it already falls so far outside the parameters
of the traditional toolkit of naturalistic literature." The present
is unthinkable because we don't have the tools to think about it.
Even Gibson had to make it act like sci-fi to help people get it
Radiohead have written The Present into an album
of rock music. OK Computer feels so right because it is the tool you
previously lacked that would tell you what you are right now. Or what
right now sounds like, anyway. And even - if we still lived in a world
where album covers became icons what it looks like. And since what
it looks like is a terribly complex schizoid lonely suicidal mess,
where media-inflected future-anxiety is the frisson du jour and our
sense of place and identity have lost meaning, Radiohead made OK Computer
hauntingly beautiful. Just to remind us that we, like the present,
like the music that defines a moment, have no choice but to transcend.
'We were worried," says Radiohead guitarist
Ed O'Brien, looking unslept and road-worn in New York's Soho Grand
Hotel, in town to do MTV's "10 Spot" program. "We'd
been told by the record company that this album had big potential
to go over people's heads and for people to miss it completely.' Radiohead
singer and character center Thom Yorke looks up from the beginnings
of a last-minute Christmas list. 'Yeah, we were kind of resigned to
the fact that it would,' he says.
By now, Radiohead are resigned instead to the absurd
things their album has done to people's heads. It's sorta beautiful
that the February '98 Q readers' poll called OK Computer the #1 album
of all time. Wrongheaded, but beautiful. Like watching films of girls
screaming at the Beatles is beautiful just for the purity of their
desire. Radiohead were also Spin's Band Of The Year. Rolling Stone's
critics poll said they were the best band, and the readers poll had
them at #3 (behind, uh, Sublime? More proof that democracy produces
inferior product). They got a Grammy nomination for Album Of The Year.
They were #2 for 1997 (behind Spiritualized and the Verve) in the
UK weeklies Melody Maker and NME. #1 in Mojo and Vox. In every writer's
1997 top ten list everywhere. Etcetera, ad nauseum.
Thom Yorke: It was really
confusing, because there was no intention of being obtuse when we
were doing it and the next thing you know, people are saying, 'Oh
it's a really difficult recording.' I didn't really get that, I thought
it was a pop recording. But once you've finally finished it, you just
don't fucking know anymore anyway, and you just have to release it
and see what happens. Then you can move on to the next thing. We spent
a long time doing it; we were extremely confused by the time we finished.
I was.
Ray Gun: Will it change your opinion of the listening
public to know that something that everyone predicted was going to
be difficult actually hit?
Ed O'Brien: Of course
it does, particularly in America - and it's getting more so in in
the UK and Europe - the taste makers and programmers, they underestimate
the general public completely. The trouble with a lot of the music
in this country is the radio stations. Modern rock is such a stale
format. As far as I can work out, and we can work out as a band, the
music that they put on the stations is not for the people, it's to
satisfy the advertisers. It's completely reactive as opposed to proactive.
Thom: There's a line
in 'Karma Police," about "he buzzes like a fridge,' and
when you're driving around and around, and you have the alternative
stations on in the background, or in your hotel room, it's just like
a fridge buzzing. That's all I'm hearing. I'm just hearing buzz. It's
really odd. You just have to laugh, 'cause -
RG: Well, the one song that you had that was really
embraced
Thom.- Yeah, that had
the fridge buzzing in it.
RG- - by the modern rock format --
Thom: Yeah.
RG: - was 'Creep.'
Thom: That was a good
fridge buzz.
__________
Above the fridge buzz, OK Computer extends the
leap of faith that was their lovely second album, The Bends, to cut
a line that's high and clean, a visionary burn. They've blackened
a universe of bald "I'm an alienated youth' anthems and horrible
fourth-generation ska with the searing light of music that dares to
be gorgeous, quiet and towering, not ironic at all, not retro, forward-leaning
to the point of being progressive, and still (or because of this)
mounting up as an epic of postmodern alienation. Yes, like U2 and,
yes, even more like REM, but without the feelgood concessions and
without the baggage. And if you still hear a buzzing, that'd probably
be your nerves. Perhaps neurotic times call for a music (and a spirituality)
that somehow openly references neurosis. Yorke's inspired lyrics and
choir-boy vocalese make OK Computer quite possibly the most accurately
and electrically neurotic rock album of the decade.
It peels open the mad, slippery cacophony of The
Present like a Sonic Youth joint or the epilepsy-inducing twitch of
the Aphex Twin, but it somehow also draws out the saccharine and peace
(however arch) of an early prog rock like Pink Floyd. It is the sound
of deeply personal fears not bogged down in deep sentimentality. But
mostly it's just plain tense. Electrically charged. Fearful. Yorke
and the boys letting loose little trills from their, (our) humming
anxieties.
'Airbag' sets the tone by probing Thom's fear of
death by car crash (which is mirrored by "Lucky," which
is about his fear of death by plane crash). In it, his character sees
himself "In the neon sign scrolling up and down, I am born again."
He is an "intastella burst.' (All lyrics copied here directly
as they appear in the CD liner notes.) The second track, 'Paranoid
Android,' ups the volume as he tries to 'get some REST? from all the
unbornchikkenvoices in my head?" Later, there's "the dust
& the screaming/the panic/the panic' and 'the yuppies networking/the
vomit/the vomit.' "Let Down" rings in with "motorways
& tramlines. starting and then stopping. taking off and landing."
By then, the album is raging, full of 'panic buttons,' "climbing
the walls,' "open up your skull i'll be there,' "this man
talks in maths he buzzes like a fridge has like a detuned radio,"
and, in 'The Tourist," sometimes i get over charged thats when
you see sparks. they ask where the hell im going?? at 1000 feet per
second."
And, of course, the capper, the electronic android
voice of "Fitter Happier" running down a list of vaguely
menacing self-improvements to finally arrive at: 'like a cat/tied
to a stick/thats driven into/frozen winter shit/calm/fitter, healthier
and more productive/a pig/in a cage/on antibiotics."
My understanding, from reading a lot of Harpers
and the Journal of the American Medical Association and other smart
stuff, is that crisis makes people feel they're really living. Because
being alive now is about living on the edge of breakdown. And the
number one problem in the world is loneliness. Radiohead's is a world
where intellect and soul are vulnerable to technology, fascism, ignorance,
homocidal martiacs, and just pure separation from self. So, here's
your album. But, from the very first instant that Thom's voice appears
in 'Airbag," we are also seduced by lovely melodies and the sheer
rightness of the voice. There is some truimph amidst the menace: 'In
an intastella burst I am back to save the universe!"
What does that line mean, surrounded by a poem
about surviving a crash in a German car? I don't know. Maybe only
that street reality and cartoon reality can and do co-exist in the
hypertextual Now. Also, melodiously winding out as the first chorus
of the album, it seems to announce that fun, super-heroic, big-question
stuff is about to happen here, however buried in character. And by
the time we're halfway through track two, "Paranoid Android,"
Radiohead have seamlessly segued from distorted-guitar-driven paranoid
ravings ('When I'm king you will be the first against the wall') to
a melt-in-your-mind vocal chorus ('come on rain down/from a great
height") so angelic you just never want it to end.
And so on, the juxtaposition of perfectly-chosen
sensations. By the time you get to track three, "Subterranean
Homesick Alien,' you understand it's more than beautified neurosis.
There is compassion for a fractured, deconstructed human condition.
Though Thom's character wants the aliens to come and take him away
from his 'up-tight" countrymen, "all these wierd creatures
who lock up their spirits, drill holes in themselves and live for
their secrets," he's somehow at peace with their ignorance: "I'd
show them the stars and the meaning of life. They'd shut me away.
But I'd be alright I'm just up-tight." I suspect that people
cannot help but interpret this rare synthesis peace with neurosis
- as something spiritual.
__________
Thom: There was a really
mind-blowing thing for me when we did the Tibetan Freedom Festival.
At the end of that, I was sort of in a bar, and it was really late,
and it suddenly dawned on me that actually, for whatever fucking reason,
people had basically given us the message that we could - people were
prepared to tolerate us expressing ourselves. I know that sounds really
stupid, really basic. But since we signed on the dotted line, it's
not been like that, you know? We've never genuinely felt 100 percent
that we were allowed to express ourselves in a way that we saw fit.
And then suddenly, there it was, as well as that feeling that we won't
be blackmailed into being that again. I'd much rather shoot someone
than be blackmailed into that again, because it's an impossible situation:
you've got nothing, because you give up all the other things in your
life, and then to have that given up for you as well.... So that was
a real moment for me, personally.
Ed: People in the music
industry, or people in entertaiment, they don't trust bands. They
think if they give them freedom, that they're gonna go off and make
really obscure records.
Thom: Which of course
we're gonna do now.
Ed: Which we will, you
know...
Thom: We're gonna fuck
ourselves up completely now.
Ed: But we should. It's
like Neil Young, he went off on ... what's his electronic sort of?..
RG: Trans.
Ed: Yeah, he had to
get it out of his system
Thom. You have to be
allowed to do that.
Ed: Yeah, you have to
be allowed to make mistakes.
Thom: Because otherwise
you've been blackmailed into a corner. If you're a painter, and someone
would say, 'You can't start doing that' - painters don't get told
that, you know? Only fucking people in the music business, and only
by people who have a vested interest. But it could all get blown out
of the water. I got to the point now where I don't have a problem
with it, really. If we want to go off and do that, then that's what
we're gonna do, and that's fine, at least we aren't producing the
noises of fridges.
RG: Suddenly, people are reacting to your music in
a totally different way, embracing Radiohead with a sort of yearning.
I think you're giving them something that they're really hungry for,
and you just hit it, maybe even by accident.
Thom: I think it will
wear off. That sort of thing wears off.
Ed: On [Radiohead's
first album] Pablo Honey, and certainly when we came over to America,
if there was like a commercial-versus-artistic decision to be made,
we would often veer towards the commercial, because we were told,
'America's a different beast; you don't understand it.' So it's like,
'Airight, you know, whatever,' and then we thought, 'We don't feel
comfortable with this." This did our heads in, so when it came
to The Bends, it's like, 'Okay, I know this might not be culturally
correct or whatever, but we've got to do what we feel comfortable
with" -
Thom: Otherwise we'll
kill ourselves, or kill other people.
Ed: Yeah so it all started
again.
RG -. People are hungry for that; they're being treated
like formula and they don't want the formula. What they want is something
honest; you came forward with something honest and they just surged
forward.
Thom: I don't think
that's utterly true. I mean, You've still got your steroid Pumping
four wheel drive -
Ed. But you've got those
guys everywhere in the world.
Thom: You've got to
be aware that that's what's happening to us at the moment. It's not
pure, you know, and that's cool. And when the bubble bursts that's
cool, too. 'Cause it will. Bursts on everybody
Ed: Yeah.
__________
This sounds enlightened and all, as though Thom,
Ed, drummer Phil Selway, multi-instrumental-guitaristand-keyboardist
Jonny Greenwood and his bassist brother Colin Greenwood are prepared
to have their 12 years as Radiohead, burn out right here and drift
off on a Puff of rancid electrical smoke. So long, and thanks for
the nervous tics. But the album says otherwise. As loaded as it is
with psychotic fictional characters, like the paranoid android or
the killer in 'Climbing The Walls" or even the twitchy uncharacterizable
narrator of 'Karma Police,' Radiohead are clearly sweating it.
The loose talk about bubbles bursting seems related
to the emergence of big picture consciousness. Which has colored OK
Computer with bits of nascent but fairly acerbic social critique.
The aforementioned 'yuppies networking' seem judged when surrounded
by 'the crackle of the pigskin," and the facetiousness of "the
vomit/the vomit/god loves his children, yeah." Politicians get
a cynical lashing in 'Electioneering": 'riot sheelds./voodoo
economiCks./its just business./cattle Prods and the IMF/i trust i
can rely on your vote," "No Surprises" says, 'bring
down the government. they dont. theydontspeak for US." All of
"Fitter Happier" seems a condemnation of the contemporary
health-conscious, therapy-driven, hyperconsumer lifestyle, but particularly
the lines, 'concerned (but powerless)/an empowered & informed
member of society (pragmatism not idealism)," which indicate
a caving-in to empty magazine-brand activism. I doubt whether Radiohead
could be so unfiltered as to ever be overtly preachy. But the Tibetan
Freedom Concert also solidified the importance of the big picture
in their lives as artists.
RG: That Tibet show must make you change the way you
think about your music. That was a very activist role. Have you ever
been involved in any any type of activist event like that before?
Thom: I don't think
we had.
Ed: Not musically.
Thom: Regardless of
the performance element of it, it is a really good idea, because there's
nothing more likely to wind up the Chinese government than being embarassed.
That's what they hate more than anything.
RG: When Jiang Zemin came over here that was very evident
that he had been shamed.
Thom: Yeah, and it was
really mindblowing in the sense that there was like a genuine spirit
at the show which I'd never, never, never experienced before. And
I don't know whether it was the prayers the monks said or the little
cards in the tents saying, Please leave your ego at the gate,' but
there was just something going on. I don't cry at shows, I don't get
emotional when I go to live shows at the moment. For some reason.
And I was crying for a long time, you know, I was an emotional idiot.
I just couldn't stop ... there was just something going on. And ultimately
that experience gets handed back to the politicians,
RG: I think that's really effective. That's the kind
of thing that changes hearts; anybody who was there will remember.
Thom: They will, but
the fuckers that we need to get to are the people that are the purchasing
power, you know? The corporations. Governments are totally ineffective;
anybody who believes that governments are in control of the world.
Political framework is a fucking idiot. It's so obvious that people
like Clinton, he's powerlesss, man, he's completely fucking powerless.
RG: There was something awbout that Tibetan concert
that made people pick up on a sort of spiritual aspect.
Thom: Yeah, even really
weird things about it - KRS One starts singing the national anthem
or something, he's like blurring the words and there's something about
the way he did it, you hear it on tape and it's really spine-chilling,
it's really mad. And then when Lee Perry does that thing about goverment
at the end it's like, "Fuck!" You know? And there's no one
else who gets in front of a camera, except dodgy old pop stars and
actors occasionally who are able to actually express a opinion contrary
to the party line.
RG: Is it a legitimate role for you? You feel comfortable
with that?
Thom: No, it's not.
I don't think it's a legitimate role, I think it's fucking ridiculous
that we're the only people allowed to do it.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: I think it's a
fucking farce, man, because we're not that informed, you have to make
such a huge effort. Surely You would think someone who gets paid to
be a Politician would be better informed than you. But it's in their
interest to keep you uninformed. That's fucked, man. I mean, it's
great to talk about records and stuff, but when were at home for three
weeks you have the old Kyoto Environmental Conference going on, and
the double-think going on there was just fucking mind-blowing, man.
Ed: And then they wonder
why there are low turnouts in general elections
RG: Low turnout is a symptom.
Ed: It's indicative
of people disillusioned with politics.
Thom: People aren't
stupid, but radio programmers and the producers of CNN just genuinely
believe that the general public is 100 percent fucking retards, and
treat us as such. And in some ways, it sounds wanky, but a lot of
the album was about that.
Not being stupid, that is. And not being victim
to fears or the music industry or the double-think or The Present.
There is a steady, constant plea for salvation in this music, a hope,
a yearning for release. More than that, the yearning becomes a promise
that there is a salvation for all this urban angst. Radiohead think
it's ridiculous to ask this kind of thing from musicians, in the same
way it is ridiculous to ask them about political policy, but we ask
it anyway, and their only response is the music itself. Which is,
of course, the right answer.
A funny thing happened on my way to writing about
Radiohead. I began listening compulsivelv to a series of albums, chosen
unconsciously and, I thought, at random, which now seem picked because
they reflect on this solution that Radiohead are hunting: Miles Davis'
Bitches Brew, Pink Floyd's Meddle, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, and
Gang of Four's Entertainment have been jammed in my player for two
weeks on constant rotation, and nothing else seems to sound as good.
People at Ray Gun finally irritated by these albums will tell you
it's true. I think now it's because they are all experiments in which
musicians used rock-solid beauty to cobble together a sort of unified
field of their particular moment in Western politics, world events,
racial identity, rock music sounds, Zeitgeist, gestalt, collective
spiritual tenor and whatnot, and it happened to work, it happened
to scream "breakthrough." By happy accident. And the only
'salvation' any of us manage to glean from these history lessons is
the act of driving through space in the car (or wherever), with friends,
listening to those albums and that unity they hold.
Thom: That's what the
"I am born again' lyric was about in "Airbag," was
me lifting all the things that I simply can't handle day to day, you
know I'm utterly obsessed by people dying in car accidents; I'm utterly
obsessed by the way that people will worry about smoking or they'll
worry about fucking what's in the water or how much cholesterol, yet
they'll get in the car everyday and drive to work, and how many people
just get killed or paralyzed and everyone just takes it as, "Oh
well, you know, you can't think about it.' Well I can't not think
about it, it absolutely does my head in, I can't get away from it,
and 'Airbag' was a way of putting it into music to make it feel alright.
And the, 'I am born again' thing was sort of -- you're gonna die,
there's a million different ways to go, and you have to have a sense
of humor.
RG: You see, the content
of that means a lot. It's revealing a little bit of your fear, but
it's also enveloping it in a big solution, even if it's just a musical
solution.
Ed: Cool, at least someone
gets it.
Thom: But ultimately,
what we do is pop music, and I don't mean that in a bad way.
RG: Like Hanson?
Thom: It's songs, and
sort of not having a problem with that. It's a good thing; it's sort
of throw away and it's sort of not.
Throw away in the sense that Thom can edit out
songs that other people would die to write just once in their life.
Like 'Let Down," the most straightforward and emotionally devastating
song on the album, with that aching, horrible chorus, 'Let down and
hanging around/crushed like a bug in the ground.' He wanted to cut
it because it was too personal. He's going for something so universal
that maybe the rest of us don't even understand it yet.
Ed: Simon Raymonde,
from the Cocteau Twins -
Thom: - Ah, he's nice.
Ed: He's a lovely bloke,
bass player, I met him and he was saying when he got into the album
after about three or four listens, he played 'Let Down" 30 times
in a row, and - I'm not kidding - he said, 'I played it all one afternoon,"
and he said he was in tears a lot of the time.
Thom: This is a track
that nearly didn't make the album.
Ed: You genuinely didn't
want it on the album.
Thom: Yeah, I was this
far away from, yeah.
RG: When you get to the lyric "hysterical and
useless," that's it: you've just summed up the total experience.
When you write the album that sums up the total experience, accidentally
or not, everyone wants it to keep on happening. A god-awful amount
of ink has been wasted on the subject of how Radiohead will stay on
top. I mean, the best album of all time? Shit, what now? This subject
comes up without my even asking. It is Christmastime, and they are
coming off the most intense year of their lives, and the decorations
in the Soho Grand are abuzz with family and home and tradition, and
the fact that theirs are in flux (if not tatters) makes them suddenly
very angry.
Ed: There seems to be
a certain tradeoff that maybe we're not entirely comfortable with,
like the more successful you become, the less of a human being you
become. And there are obviously exceptions that we've seen, like touring
with REM, but you can see how on the whole, that is a rule, and to
be honest, I don't want to be 50 and a fucking asshole.
Thom: When we did the
arena shows, I was starting to get sucked into that, and I was concerned
for my mental well-being. I suppose we've had the REM/U2 model, because
we're really big fans of those bands, and now we've got to the point
where we can follow it blindly or we could get a life and work it
out for ourselves. I mean, fuck's sake, the Beatles did Shea Stadium
and that was it, you know?
Ed: '66.
Thom: Because of what
the Stones did and all that - they've become this selfperpetuating
popcorn and bullshit industry which leaves me not just cold
Ed: Yeah, no.
Thom: - but positively
fucking angry.
Ed: Absolutely, yeah.
Thom: What really upset
me when we were doing the shows in Britain was all the other artists
who were coming on afterwards, and it makes really fucking depressing
reading, 'cause you just go down the list and every single one of
them has fucking lost it completely. And if they ever had it, the
haven't got it anymore, and the [teleprompters] set up and shit, and
you just think, 'Who's fooling who here?'
Ed: People are scared
to break up. They think, "Well it's got to this stage; there's
so much money involved we would be foolish to do it any other way.'
But you don't have to.
Thom: No. I've heard
the live albums of the Velvet Underground, and I don't think we've
ever felt we have to entertain. They just do an amazing "Pale
Blue Eyes," and it's just like, "Fuck, you're out of it,'
not saying anything, next song, fucking great.
Ed: Like the Pixies,
really.
Thom: I can go out and
get a life, I can do something else then who's won, if you do that?
They've got the back catalog, what have you got?
RG: In this record these fears are there, bubbling
under the surface.
Thom: Definitely lots
of fear. Bubbling up? Shit scared. Yep, we got ourselves into this
isolated place, but all that stuff was there, and we tried to push
it out of the way, you try to lock it in the cupboards or whatever,
but you can't get away from it.
RG: So you do feel better now?
Thom: Oh yeah, yeah,
yeah.
Ed: It's not nearly
as bad as all that.
Thom: Yeah, we do tend
to go on, you know --
Ed: About everything.
Thom: Actually, we're
having the time of our life, and all this has been bullshit.
