The pressure was on for The Bends, Radiohead’s second album. By 1995, it was the band's moment in the spotlight, following the success of "Creep," a track that had already worn them out. This record became a pivotal point, pulling them out of the early '90s self-loathing and launching them toward the iconic status they now hold. With The Bends, they crafted a cohesive collection of songs, blending disquieting lyrics with soaring guitars, and signaling a new, emotionally charged direction that would evolve in OK Computer and beyond. It's clearly a marvel and we've also put together a fun list of facts to help you appreciate The Bends even more.
The Bends is Radiohead's second album, arriving at a time when the band were deemed not much more than a one-hit wonder. Their debut single - 'Creep' - was on heavy rotation on MTV as the band started touring in 1993 and the grunge foundation of debut album, Pablo Honey, had them being described as "Nirvana-lite" and they nearly broke up due to these initial pressures of sudden success. It housed six huge singles, reached #4 in the UK (and #23 in Australia), scored them a nomination for Best British Album and now is touted as one of the greatest albums of all-time.
Tensions were high when initial recordings began, as the band felt smothered by both the success of 'Creep' and the large expectations for an even better follow-up. The band had looked for a change of scenery, touring Australasia and the Far East in an attempt to reduce the pressure. However, confronted again by their sudden popularity, Thom Yorke became disenchanted at being "right at the sharp end of the sexy, sassy, MTV eye-candy lifestyle" he felt he was helping to sell to the world.
At the beginning of 1994, Radiohead began working on song arrangements for The Benz (they'd later drop the car reference). Every morning, Yorke would brew some tea and start a four-hour solo piano workout. “New songs were pouring out of him,” recalls album producer John Leckie. “He’s an early riser, and at the time he had a lot of energy. You’d avoid interrupting him.” Over time, as tensions pin-balled and sessions dragged, these private moments kept Thom sane. The band were encouraged by both the new material and producer of choice. He had produced The Stone Roses' debut but Yorke wanted him for his work on Magazine's anxious 1978 art-rock classic Real Life. However, the success of 'Creep', along with a nine week deadline issued by the label, were crippling them. “They were under intense pressure,” Nigel Godrich recalled. “That they had a lot of material, a lot of good songs, and they were being pushed in a certain direction. I think that maybe they didn’t want to become this sort of pop band that the label would have them be. People from the label would visit, and it got very uncomfortable.” With the record company breathing down their necks as young musicians in the fraught situation of having to follow a big hit, Radiohead descended into what Yorke would describe as “a total fucking meltdown” for two months. They had plenty of tunes. The difficulty was doing them justice on record. Producer “After those first nine weeks, every song was on the line,” producer John Leckie would tell NME. “Creep was getting less radio play, and they didn’t have a follow-up.”
Early in 1994, Radiohead moved in to RAK studios in St John’s Wood in north London to start developing arrangements for the songs that had appeared on ‘The Benz’.
The 1994 EP My Iron Lung, featuring the single of the same title, preceded The Bends by six months and was Radiohead's reaction to the pressure, marking a transition towards the larger depth they aimed for on their follow-up. It was their forceful reaction to 'Creep', the cutting lyrics are self-referential and use an actual iron lung as a metaphor for the way 'Creep' kept the band alive, but also crushed their true spirits as artists yearning for more adventurous sonic territories (“This is our new song / just like the last one / a total waste of time / my iron lung”).This was a miniaturised detonation of an old song, whereas Kid A, years later, was an orchestrated dismantling of their discography thus far. The latter move opened a pathway to true reinvention every time they released something new.
Unsatisfied with their studio recording of 'My Iron Lung', Radiohead recorded the instrumentation live at the Astoria in 1994 with Yorke's vocals overdubbed and the audience removed for the final you hear on the album. Leckie said: "Considering it was recorded in the back of a truck outside the hall – not the best sound to get something from – we did quite well."
The Bends marks Radiohead’s first collaboration with Nigel Godrich, who worked under head producer John Leckie. Godrich is widely considered the unofficial sixth member of the band as his presence is so critical to their unmistakable sound. He would go on to co-produce the band’s enormously successful masterpiece, OK Computer, and has been involved in every Radiohead album since. While the complex, multi-segmented and intricate textures of their future albums are not yet cognisant on The Bends, there are radical hints to a broadening of sound and scope, beginning with the mosaic layering of the opening track, ‘Planet Telex’.
'Planet Telex' was originally called 'Planet Xerox' until the copyrighted nature of 'Xerox' threatened potential issues.
Thom Yorke admitted in Jason Thomas Gordon’s book The Singers Talk that he cried when he first heard ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ played back to him. With Yorke at his lowest and most depressed, he was having a lot of trouble recording the song and couldn't get it to work, describing its first incarnation as bombastic and pompous, "like Guns 'n' Roses' 'November Rain'." On a particularly difficult evening with the song, they skipped the studio and went out to see a Jeff Buckley show. After the mind-wallop of the show, the band went back to the studio and Yorke completely changed the way that he was singing and used that falsetto. Thom said seeing Jeff Buckley live helped him embrace and get comfortable with his voice: “When we were doing the second record, I went to see Jeff Buckley before he died. And it reminded me of this vulnerable part of me that I was choosing to hide. I remember I recorded ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ on my own to begin with. Then, when we came together to listen to it, the others said, ‘We’ll use that!’ and I was, ‘No, no, we can’t use that, it’s too vulnerable. That’s too much me.’” When asked whether he really cried when he first heard it played back to him and why, Yorke responded: “Yeah, absolutely. Because when you record, you’re going through one set of feelings, but the one thing you’re not really aware of is you. You’re not aware of your own identity, so it’s like meditating."
As for the 'Fake Plastic Trees' video, it's "an allegory for death and reincarnation" according to director, Jake Scott. The dystopian imagery of Yorke being pushed around a supermarket with an unshakable forlorn expression throughout. Shot in Los Angeles, look closely and you'll spot an early appearance from actor Norman Reedus, before his breakout performance in The Walking Dead while working as a model.
The Bends is named after the affliction that scuba divers may suffer from if they resurface too quickly after diving without depressurising. In this case, the song uses it as a metaphor for rising too quickly in fame, and becoming unstable, however the song was written in 1992, predating their debut single and ubiquitously uncomfortable, 'Creep'. It was even selected as a potential follow-up to 'Creep' but the band decided to shelve it for their second album. Yorke explained in a 1995 interview that it was "one of those songs I was rambling around and just poured all this rubbish out into the song. Then it all started happening, which was a bit odd. I was completely taking the piss when I wrote it. Then the joke started wearing a bit thin."
Another hint at future directions, the closing song, ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, foreshadows the direction Radiohead would take in their subsequent albums. Its blend of melancholy and introspection and emphasis on atmosphere and mood would become defining characteristics for the more experimental and emotionally charged sound of OK Computer and beyond. It was the band's first UK top 5 hit and also their self-confessed "saddest song" due to its lack of resolve. "Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them," Yorke explained. "It's about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes. And knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he'll get the last laugh." Yorke has said it’s inspired by R.E.M. and 1991 novel The Famished Road by Ben Okri. Interestingly, the single’s b-side is ‘Talk Show Host’, a song that would become one of the band’s most popular appearing on Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet soundtrack and is their first dabble with trip hop.
The origins of ‘High & Dry’ trace back to Thom Yorke’s late '80s, short-lived pre-Radiohead band, Headless Chickens. [WATCH]
Yorke demoed 'High & Dry' with Radiohead in 1993 but dismissed it as “too Rod Stewart,” though EMI pressured them to include it on The Bends. Sensing early on that the high-pitched angst could backfire, Yorke reluctantly agreed, later publicly distancing himself from the track. According to one story, upon hearing Coldplay’s 'Yellow' for the first time, Yorke sighed, put his head in his hands, and whispered: “What have I done?” A few years later he and Radiohead’s long-standing producer Nigel Godrich had a proper falling out when the latter agreed to produce The Man Who, by Travis. The track has been credited by the British press as creating Coldplay and influencing the more “airbrushed post-Britpop” including Travis, Muse, Snow Patrol, Elbow, and countless others.
Yorke has allegedly said 'Black Star' is "about sex in the morning. It's the best time to have it. Especially if you have brushed your teeth before".
'Sulk' was the last song Radiohead completed as Yorke was anxious the track's original lyric ("Just shoot your gun") would seem like the band were 'cashing in' on Kurt Cobain's death.
According to Yorke, ‘Just’ was the result of a competition between him and Greenwood to see who could fit the most chords into a song. The final version of the song has over 12 different chords. The enigmatic music video for the single gave actor Dorian Lough a dodgy wrist "for about 7 years" after they had to film numerous takes of him tripping over. Lough maintained to Q that he's stopped by Radiohead fans to this day, desperate to know what was said in the video.
One of the best stories from the making of The Bends centers on the origins of the eerie album artwork. Radiohead were post-university twenty-somethings at this point, fooling around while they created the artwork for the single 'My Iron Lung.' Yorke and long-time artist collaborator, Stanley Donwood, went to a hospital to capture footage of an actual iron lung but quickly realised they weren't actually very interesting to photograph. Instead, they filmed a CPR mannequin, which Donwood described as having "a facial expression like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony, simultaneously". To create the cover image for The Bends, the pair displayed the footage on a television set and photographed the screen. Despite being lo-fi, it worked out and Donwood upped the ante with every Radiohead album cover after that.
The Bends was released right in the middle of Britpop, a term the band largely rejects. But while it was Oasis vs Blur in England, it was Radiohead vs Suede in Israel where both bands were massive. It transpires that ‘Creep’ had a supernova effect on Israeli army radio station, Galei Tzahal and DJ Yoav Kutner, Israel’s answer to John Peel, would blast it three times an hour.
All's well that ends well and The Bends was eventually a success. While American audiences appeared disgruntled at first by the lack of a 'Creep'-sized single, 'Fake Plastic Trees' led the way, further distancing the band from the 'Creep'. Eventually, word of mouth hammered it home with interest from influential musicians such as R.E.M. vocalist Michael Stipe, combined with several distinctive music videos, helped sustain Radiohead's popularity outside the UK. 'Fake Plastic Trees' was used in the 1995 film Clueless and is credited for introducing Radiohead to a larger American audience. Colin Greenwood wrote later: "I spoke to so many music writers who'd received The Bends as a promo, left it to gather dust on top of their PC tower, and hadn't bothered to play it until word of mouth nudged them." By the end of 1996, The Bends had sold around two million copies worldwide. In the UK, it was certified platinum in February 1996 for sales of over 300,000, and was certified quadruple platinum in July 2013. They toured North America, Europe and Japan extensively, first in support of Soul Asylum and then R.E.M., one of their formative influences and one of the world's biggest bands at the time. A pivotal performance at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas concert at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, alongside Oasis, Alanis Morissette, No Doubt and Porno for Pyros has been described as a "key stepping stone" for Radiohead in the US. Still in cycle in early 1996, Radiohead toured the US again and performed on The Tonight Show and 120 Minutes. In mid-1996, they played at European festivals including Pinkpop in Holland, Tourhout Werchter in Belgium and T in the Park in Scotland. That August, Radiohead toured as the opening act for Alanis Morissette, performing early versions of songs from their next album, OK Computer. Morissette said later: "It was really grounding for me to be with such bona-fide-to-the-bone artists. It felt really validating because the industry was very wild and patriarchal, so to be on the road with such true savants was a gift for me."
It was, and still is, easy to mock Radiohead as navel-gazing sad sacks, but critics who cried "misery guts" upon The Bends release missed the point. If Yorke's lyrical outlook skewed apocalyptic, it also slammed the self-satisfied cynicism of so many weekend intellectuals. “I want to live and breathe/I want to be part of the human race”, he sings on ‘The Bends’, the flipside to songs like the broodier ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. The record endures because it doesn’t just reject fame, commodification and “fake plastic love” but also cynicism itself.
To fully catch the band’s drift, you need to wade into the murky world of capitalism. As the Israeli prophecy of all-consuming fame came true, Radiohead knew their huge success funded one runaway beneficiary: EMI. Getting heard by millions, the band grumbled, meant joining a dirty system, in which every record sale fuels and funds further exploitation – of the manufacturer, the environment and the invisible victims of corporate greed. It’s an impossible reality, and it complicates and deepens songs like ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, which tackle superficial consumerism – the way we mindlessly buy stuff to cheer ourselves up, blanking out the consequences. ‘My Iron Lung’ even conceded that Radiohead itself is a similar kind of commodity.
Problem is, even if Radiohead did manage to smuggle some healthy scepticism into the nation’s living rooms, corporate interests were way ahead. In this postwar era, capitalists cleverly reinvented modern protest using alternative lifestyle marketing. Keep eating meat, they’d reason, but go free range; keep consuming but recycle; keep visiting supermarkets but go organic. EMI’s mantra would be: keep buying music but go Radiohead. These minor acts of rebellion actually hindered real structural change, because it made consumers feel like they'd already done their bit.
Shortly after ‘The Bends’ charted, Thom told NME he’d be noting down “happy thoughts” to prepare for LP3, an as-yet-untitled juggernaut that promised to annihilate their rep as sulky outcasts, he claimed. Quizzed months later on his progress, however, he playfully conceded something of a lapse. “Nearest I got was writing about the colour of the sky in LA,” he grinned. “That particular day, it had rained the night before, and you could actually see the sky.” Disappointed, the interviewer asked if that was all. “Yeah,” Thom responded, chuckling. “That’s as happy as it’s got, so far.”
By Ben Preece
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