Cross - Radiohead: the secret history

Its tough to avoid becoming a one-hit wonder. You can be a hot band with just one good albumor even just one good songand then suddenly, youre forgotten. It wasnt always this way.

In the old days, a group developed and evolved over a series of albumseven three, four, five or six records. Success was slow to come and it took a lot of patience and fighting to keep things together. More often than not, it paid offjust look at U2. Or R.E.M.. Or Blur. Or Depeche Mode. Or Nine Inch Nails. None of these bands were what you would call immediate hit it out of the park-type successes. Each group was allowed to build a career the old-fashioned way: slowly and carefully. And most importantly, they were allowed to make mistakes along the way.

Oh, you know who we missed in that list of bands? Radiohead.

Radiohead started slowreally slow. Theyve made a bunch of mistakes. Theyve conducted a lot of experimentssome successfully, some failed. But because someone had faith in the groupand because the guys in Radiohead believe in themselves and each otherthey have grown to become one of the biggest, most important and most revered bands in the world. This is how they got there.

Radiohead is one of those rare bands that come along just a couple of times in a decade. They are a group that captures the imagination of the world with their music, live performances, image and mythology. Everything they do and say is documented down to the tiniest detail.

Not only are they critical darlings, but they sell millions of records, even though the band refuses to stick to any tried-and-true formulas. Heck, they dont even sell their records in the usual ways anymore. Leave it to Radiohead to come up with a completely alternative business model, which still results in millions of copies sold.

Radiohead doesnt have fans so much as they have disciples. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. says the band is so good that theyre frightening. Bono and The Edge of U2 say that theyre amazing.

Quite simply, Radiohead is one of the most important, influential bands in the world, on an artistic, performance and even business level. But who are these guys? Weve all dissected the music, the videos and the concerts. But what is Radiohead made of? What are the actual personalities and synergies that go into making Radiohead who they are? Im here to put everything in its right place.

The guy most people know is Radioheads singer, Thom Edward Yorke, so lets start with him. Hes from a tiny English town called Wellingborough. His birthday was October 7, 1968.

Thom is a delicate, little guy, who stands about 5 5. Hes always been kind of skinny and sickly, which was of concern to his father, who was not only a chemical engineer, but a championship boxer. He once gave Thom a pair of gloves, but whenever he tried to box, hed just end up face down on the canvas.

Then theres the eye. Thom was born with a paralyzed left eye. His eyelid was fixed in the down position and at first, everyone thought it was going to stay that way. But then Thoms parents took him to a specialist who figured a way to graft in a muscle. The first four operations went very wellit was the fifth one where they screwed up. As a result, Thom grew up with a droopy eye and his vision decreased about 50 percent on his left side.

For his first couple of years in school, Thom had to wear an eyepatchand you can imagine how awful that was. Because he was so pale and thin, he picked up the nickname salamander. The singer ended up in a lot of fights over that, and even the boxing lessons didnt help that much.

Heres a classic case of someone retreating into music because everything else in his world seemed so difficult. Thom got his first guitar at eight, but became so frustrated with it that he smashed the thing into pieces during a big temper tantrum. He got his act together a few years later, forming his first band at age 10, and later joined a punk band called TNT. Thom ended up being the singer because no one else wanted to do it. When he wasnt in class, he could be found hanging out in the music room.

Thoms first song was a nuclear holocaust track called Mushroom Cloud. (He got all freaked out by Cold War documentaries on TV.) His first guitar hero was Brian May of Queen. Thom still loves the guitar solo in Bohemian Rhapsody.

Bass player Colin Greenwood is from Oxford, England, and played in TNT. His brother Jonny is a couple of years younger. (And if this makes any difference, Jonny is colorblind.) Thanks to an older sister who was into bands like Joy Division and The Fall, the two brothers got into music in their early teens.

Ed OBrien is also from Oxford. Hes the tall one. In fact, when he was 14, he had a nice little gig going as the provider of porn for the rest of his class. Ed was the only one tall enough to reach the top shelf where they kept the dirty magazines at the local newsstand. That made him very popular, until one of the guys at his boarding school left a copy on his bed and ratted him out.

Finally, theres drummer Phil Selway. He comes from a family of academics.

Thom, Colin and Ed met at the same private school in Oxford at a place called Abington. They started playing together in their final year, forming a lineup of three guitarists and a bad drum machine and called themselves Dr. Rhythm. Their first gig was at a friends birthday party. This would be sometime in 1982, which means everyone was about 14 years old.

Drummer Phil Selway was drafted from an Abington group called Jungle Telegraph to replace the drum machine. By the way, Phil is also a decent tuba player. His nickname is Mad Dog because he used to be prone to big temper tantrums. (I just thought Id throw that in.)

As it turns out, the only day the guys could rehearse was on Friday, so the band became known as On A Friday. Thom, Phil, Colin and Jonny couldnt tell their parents what they were doing because their families all disapproved in this dabbling in rock and roll.

Colins younger brother Jonny attended practices not to play, but so Colin could keep an eye on him. And after hearing him whine about wanting to do something, everyone gave in and made him a part of the band. He was about 13 at the time, while everyone else was 16 or 17.

At first, On A Friday were all over the place. Jonny played harmonica and sometimes the recorder; Thom played keyboards. At one point, On A Friday featured an all-female horn section. At another time, there were three saxophone players in the band. The band wasnt very good, but at least they were having a good time.

Between 1987 and 1991, On A Friday went on an extended hiatus as all five members went on to different colleges.

Ed OBrien went to the University of Manchester. Colin landed a hard-to-get spot at Cambridge where he studied English Literature. Phil also studied English at the University of Liverpool. When he got out of high school, Jonny Greenwood enrolled in both the music and psychology programs at Oxford.

Thom decided to take a year off before university. He spent some time selling mens suitssomething that he hatedand then got a job in a mental hospital before going to Oxford.

The band all had part-time jobs in school. Ed worked in a pizza parlor where physicist Stephen Hawking was a regular customer. It was weird because Professor Hawking ordered his pizza through his computerized voice device. Ed later worked as a bartender, and then in an old-fashioned tea room. Phil had a job as an editor at a publishing house that produced textbooks and academic works, and did some teaching. Thom supplemented his income working as a DJ at the campus pub. His regular night was Friday and he attracted a thousand people, or more.

It was here that Thom connected with a bouncer named Shack. They formed a band called The Headless Chickens that ended up playing dozens of gigs before evolving into something called Flicker Noise. There were other bands called King Of Thailand and Shindig. Meanwhile, once a month, all the On A Friday guys would get together and rehearse. They were there to plot what they might do together once school was out of the way.