Radiohead is arguably the most important and iconic alternative rock band to emerge in the last 30 years, famous for radical innovation and consistently breaking new musical ground. Its stellar reputation was established by its second album, The Bends (1995), but it is the band’s third album, OK Computer, that is widely regarded as its magnum opus.
Released in 1997, OK Computer was so adventurous and pioneering that it separated the world of rock into a before and an after. The album inspired several generations of rock musicians, and its influence continues to be felt to this day. OK Computer gave Radiohead its first Grammy Award, for Best Alternative Music Performance, and it regularly appears close to or at the top of Greatest Albums of All Time lists.
The centerpiece of OK Computer is the song “Paranoid Android,” which was released as the first single from the album, despite being almost six and a half minutes long. “Paranoid Android” has a similarly central place in Radiohead’s oeuvre as “Bohemian Rhapsody” in Queen’s or “Stairway to Heaven” in Led Zeppelin’s.
“Paranoid Android” embodies the experimental spirit of Radiohead more than any other song. The band itself described it as a cross between “Bohemian Rhapsody” and The Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” “Paranoid Android” consists of four sections, and features changes in key, time signature, tempo, textures, and styles, that underpin lyrics that describe the alienation and violence of latter-day capitalism.
In a sign of the band not taking itself entirely seriously, Radiohead called “Paranoid Android” “ridiculous” and stated that they felt like “irresponsible schoolboys” while making it. The title of the song is inspired by Marvin, the paranoid robot from the science fiction comedy books and movie Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
In this blog, and our video on YouTube, we will look at the making of “Paranoid Android,” in the context of OK Computer. We examine the ingredients that went into it, why the band’s American record company considered the album “commercial suicide,” and what makes the song and the album so great that it is considered one of the most significant achievements in the history of rock.
ICONIC
Radiohead was formed in the late eighties. Despite the band members’ posh backgrounds, a spirit of rebellion led them to form a rock and roll band. Called On A Friday, the band signed with EMI on December 21, 1991, and at the request of the label, changed its name to Radiohead, after the song “Radio Head,” from the Talking Heads’ album True Stories. [1986]
The line-up of Radiohead has remained the same, and consists of lead vocalist Thom Yorke, who also plays keyboards and guitars, Jonny Greenwood on guitars and keyboards, his brother Colin Greenwood on bass, Ed O’Brien on guitar, and Philip Selway on drums. Their first release was an EP called Drill, in May 1992. The album showed only glimpses of Radiohead’s potential, and was a commercial and critical flop.
The band’s first proper album, Pablo Honey, was recorded at Chipping Norton Studios in Oxfordshire, and engineered and produced by Americans Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade. The song “Creep” was released in September 1992 as an advance single from the album, while Pablo Honey came out in February 1993. Following an iconic performance on MTV in the summer of 1993, “Creep” became a major international success, and pushed the album further up the charts.
FOUNDATION
Around this time, Radiohead was often described as a grunge band, and the British Nirvana. Determined not to be categorized, the band recorded an EP called My Iron Lung at RAK Studios in London with John Leckie, and RAK assistant engineer Nigel Godrich engineering, and producing one song. Containing eight songs, My Iron Lung was released in September 1994.
The same sessions also yielded material for the band’s second album, The Bends,. The Bends saw the band experimenting wildly, exploring new musical directions, and pursuing its own musical identity. There were additional sessions, engineered and produced by Leckie, during which Radiohead felt under such pressure that bassist Colin Greenwood called the sessions “eight weeks of hell and torture.”
The eight weeks of “hell and torture” paid off spectacularly when
The Bends was released in March 1995. The album was immediately recognized as a masterpiece, and Radiohead called it “a turning point” in their career.
In the summer of 1995, Brian Eno invited Radiohead to contribute to a compilation album to raise money for the War Child charity. They recorded their contribution, a song called “Lucky,” in five hours, with Nigel Godrich engineering and co-producing. The session laid the blueprint for the approach used for OK Computer.
Godrich remarked that doing sessions fast, with a sense of having nothing to lose, was “most inspiring. We left feeling fairly euphoric.”
Radiohead appeared to have gotten a taste for working quickly, because around this time the band and Godrich also recorded and mixed the song called “Talk Show Host” in just four hours. Soon afterwards they recorded another song, “Exit Music (For A Film),” which was included on OK Computer, with Yorke commenting that it was another foundation for the album.
MAGICAL
At the beginning of 1996, Radiohead took a break from touring to focus on writing and recording for its upcoming album. Their label, Parlophone, advanced them £100.000 to buy recording equipment.
The gear was first installed in a shed at a fruit farm near Didcot, Oxfordshire, that Radiohead and Godrich had converted into a rehearsing and recording studio, which they called Canned Applause.
Godrich recorded the basic tracks and most overdubs for four songs at the shed: “Electioneering,” “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” “No Surprises,” and “The Tourist.” He said, “Eventually the shed became quite a difficult space to work in, so after a month’s gap, we moved to St Catherine’s Court, a huge Tudor house near Bath that belongs to actress Jane Seymour.”
“We set the studio gear up in the library and the band in the ballroom. The gear was set up exactly the same as in the shed, except that we now had Pro Tools. We learned that it’s good for fixing a bad mistake in a magical take, but if you try to put your whole drum take in Pro Tools, it’s like anti-music.”
“Studios can be like doctor’s surgeries in comparison to a beautiful place like St Catherine’s Court. We could stay up all night and do amazing takes by candlelight. It was a really magical time. Some of the most moving moments of my career have been in that place, in the middle of the night listening to them play.”
WEIRD STUFF
During the making of OK Computer, Radiohead decided to step away from the guitar rock of The Bends, and instead referenced classic albums like The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (1966), Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison (1968), Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew [1970], Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On (1971), and also songs by Elvis Costello [“I’ll Wear It Proudly”], R.E.M [“Fall On Me”], PJ Harvey [“Dress”], and The Beatles [“A Day In The Life”], plus the music of Can, Ennio Morricone and Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
In the words of Yorke, “atonal, weird stuff. Bitches Brew was the starting point of how things should sound; it’s got this incredibly dense and terrifying sound to it. That was the sound in my head. The only other place I’d heard it was on a Morricone record. I’d never heard it in pop music. It wasn’t like we were being snobs or anything, it was just like, ‘This is saying the same stuff we want to say.’”
“Paranoid Robot” is arguably the most radical example of the band’s radical approach, and the high-level thinking that went into both the music and the lyrics of OK Computer. The song was wholly recorded at St Catherine’s Court. Like most songs on the album, each section of ‘Paranoid Android’ was recorded in single take, and with a guide vocal, or vocals that were done very quickly.
The band combined three different songs for “Paranoid Android,” and ended up with a first version that was 14 minutes in length, with a long Hammond XB2 organ solo by Jonny Greenwood. Yorke mockingly called this version “a Pink Floyd cover,” while Godrich referenced Deep Purple for the organ solo, again not in a very complimentary way.
The song eventually was edited down to six and a half minutes, with the organ solo entirely removed. The final version starts with an acoustic ballad in G minor for the first 2 minutes. The acoustic guitar is an Yairi-built Alvarez DY88 that Yorke used on much of the album. This section segues into A minor section still centered around the acoustic guitar, with Greenwood on Fender Rhodes, and it has a big electric guitar riff entering at 2:46. It ends with a distorted guitar solo, played on a Fender Telecaster Plus.
Starting at 3:36 there’s an atmospheric section written by Jonny Greenwood, that has extensive multi-tracked choral vocals, and a Mellotron, and melodies and harmonies influenced by Baroque music. Finally, at 5:42, there’s a return of the second section, with another guitar solo by Greenwood, using a Mutronics Mutator.
MAJOR IMPACT
Radiohead wanted “Paranoid Android” released as the first and rather unlikely single from OK Computer, as Colin Greenwood remarked, “it’s hardly the radio-friendly, breakthrough, buzz bin unit-shifter radio stations have been expecting.” Reportedly, the band’s UK record company took it on the chin, although their US company was not impressed.
However, “Paranoid Android” was a major critical and commercial success, reaching to number three in the UK charts. The song was released in May 1997, a month before OK Computer. In addition to the single’s video, a performance on Later … With Jools Holland on the BBC on 31 May also had a major impact.
The album went to number one in the UK and 21 in the US, and has sold at least eight million copies worldwide. Critics and fan continue to laud the album, and on the BestEverAlbums.com, which compiles 52.000 greatest album charts worldwide, it’s ranked as the Best Album of All Time,
The success of “Paranoid Android” is a microcosm of OK Computer. The song was nominated for Best British Single at the 1998 Brit Awards, and also regularly appears near the top of Greatest Songs of All Time lists.
OK Computer, with “Paranoid Android” at its heart, was a defining moment for Radiohead, and for music in general. If ever there’s a modern album that can lay claim to having changed music, it’s OK Computer.
© 2024, Paul Tingen,
