Radiohead

Radiohead biography

The release of OK Computer was followed by the "Against Demons" world tour. Grant Gee, the director of the "No Surprises" video, accompanied and filmed the band, releasing the footage in the 1999 documentary Meeting People Is Easy. The film portrays the band's disaffection with the music industry and press, showing their burnout as they progressed from their first tour dates in mid-1997 to mid-1998, nearly a year later. The film is also notable for documenting earlier versions of songs that were never released or were not released until years later, such as "How to Disappear Completely", "Life in a Glasshouse", "I Will" and "Nude". During this time the band also released a music video compilation, 7 Television Commercials, as well as two EPs, Airbag/How Am I Driving? and No Surprises/Running from Demons, that compiled their B-sides from OK Computer singles.

Kid A, Amnesiac and a change in sound (1999-2001)

Radiohead were largely inactive following their 1997-1998 tour; after its end, their only public performance in 1998 was at an Amnesty International concert in Paris. Yorke later admitted that during that period the band came close to splitting up, and that he had developed severe depression. In early 1999, Radiohead began work on a follow-up to OK Computer. Although there was no longer any pressure or even a deadline from their record label, tension during this period was high. Band members all had different visions for Radiohead's future, and Yorke was experiencing writer's block, influencing him toward a more abstract, fragmented form of songwriting. After nearly 18 months, Radiohead's recording sessions were completed in April 2000.

In October 2000 Radiohead released their fourth album, Kid A, the first of two albums from these recording sessions. Rather than being a stylistic sequel to OK Computer, Kid A featured a minimalist and textured style with less overt guitar parts and more diverse instrumentation including the ondes Martenot, programmed electronic beats, strings, and jazz horns. This success was attributed variously to marketing, to the album's leak on the file-sharing network Napster a few months before its release, and to advance anticipation based, in part, on the success of OK Computer. Although Radiohead did not release any singles from Kid A, promos of "Optimistic" and "Idioteque" received radio play, and a series of "blips", or short videos set to portions of tracks, were played on music channels and released freely on the Internet. The band had read Naomi Klein's anti-globalisation book No Logo during the recording, and they decided to continue a summer 2000 tour of Europe later in the year in a custom-built tent free of advertising; they also promoted Kid A with three sold-out North American theatre concerts.

Kid A received a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and a nomination for Album of the Year in early 2001. Yet it won both praise and criticism in independent music circles for appropriating underground styles of music, while some mainstream British critics saw Kid A as a "commercial suicide note", labelling it "intentionally difficult" and longing for a return to the band's earlier style. Yorke, however, denied that Radiohead had set out to eschew commercial expectations, saying, "I was really, really amazed at how badly Kid A was being viewed ... because the music's not that hard to grasp. We're not trying to be difficult ... We're actually trying to communicate but somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical."

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