In its pursuit of intelligent, imaginative, inspired music, Radiohead won six Grammy Awards, sold 30 million albums, and was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. Today, Radiohead continues to be admired as one of the few bands that continues to innovate and renew itself. It almost single-handedly has kept rock relevant in the 21st century, when the genre has largely gone out of fashion.
Radiohead’s stellar reputation is to a large degree based on the band’s most famous albums, their third, OK Computer (1997) and their fourth, Kid A (2000), both of which won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album. It is less well-known in the US that it was in fact the band’s second album, The Bends, released in 1995, that launched Radiohead’s experimental side and established their ambitious new musical direction.
The Bends was Radiohead’s Big Leap Forwards into unknown musical territory, and also distinguished them from the Britpop movement. The song writing is incredibly strong throughout and is enhanced by striking arrangements, extraordinary sonic landscapes, and a majestic production, courtesy of producer John Leckie. The Bends is Ground Zero for what has been called “the Radiohead aesthetic.”
PRESSURE
So how did Radiohead manage to make a masterpiece with their second effort? By all accounts, by the middle of 1993, the band found themselves in an odd place. They’d enjoyed some minor success with their debut album Pablo Honey, which had been released early that year, but lead single “Creep” had bombed in their homeland, as it had been declared “too depressing” by the BBC and was excluded from radio playlists.
Following an iconic performance of “Creep” on MTV in the summer of 1993, the song became a hit in several countries, and even gained popularity in the US as a “slacker anthem,” similar to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and Beck’s “Loser.” EMI re-released “Creep” in the UK in September 1993. It promptly went to number seven.
As a result, the pressure was on for Radiohead to capitalize on the success of “Creep.” The band did not feel comfortable with this at all, and after a cancelled concert, Thom Yorke stated, “Physically I’m completely fucked and mentally I’ve had enough.”
TRYING TOO HARD
Pablo Honey had been engineered, mixed and produced by Americans Sean Slade and Paul Q Kolderie. For the new album, Radiohead chose British producer John Leckie to work with, who by 1993 was a big name in the UK alternative rock scene, having worked with XTC, Be-Bop Deluxe, Simple Minds, The Fall, Dukes of Stratosphear, The Stone Roses and countless others.
Radiohead and Leckie started work in RAK Studios in North-London in February 1994. Helping Leckie out was RAK tape op Nigel Godrich, who went on to produce all future Radiohead albums. With Radiohead resenting the pressure to create a hit, tensions grew high. Sessions were not working out, the band’s manager at one point nearly quit. Leckie concluded that they were “trying too hard.”
The sessions could easily have broken down or yielded substandard material. However, despite the stressful circumstances, progress was eventually made. Leckie had set the band up in the huge live room of RAK Studio 1, which is a former ballroom, with tons of space and daylight. The band members were separated by sliding doors and baffles.
COLLABORATIVE
Leckie remembers that the microphones on the drums involved were: on the kick AKG D25, AKG D12, Electrovoice RE20 or Sennheiser MD421, on the snare Shure SM57 or Neumann KM 84, on the toms Sennheiser MD421, on the hi-hat Neumann KM84 hihat, overheads varied between pairs of Neumann U-87, KM-84 or U-47, Coles 4038, AKG C414’s and C451’s. The bass was recorded via DI, and using an AKG D12, Electrovoice RE20 or NeumannU47. Guitars were recorded using a Neumann U67 and a Shure SM57, recorded without EQ and the final sound being a balance between the two mics. Some of the outboard that was used include compressors like the Urei 1176 blackface and DBX160.
Bassist Colin Greenwood used a 1972 Fender Mustang, and occasionally an Aria bass, going through an Ampeg SVT. Many reports state that a lot of time was spent on getting the right guitar sounds, with different guitars, amps and effects. Nevertheless, guitarist Jonny Greenwood eventually went back to his tried and tested Fender Telecasters. He used two Telecaster Plus models, one with a Tobacco Burst finish the other in Ebony Frost, going through Bluesbreaker and DigiTech Whammy WH1 pedals and a Fender Twin Reverb amp.
Ed O’Brien played a guitar that he had made with the band’s guitar tech, Plank. The guitar was appropriately called the Plank ED1, and his amplifier was a Mesa Boogie. Acoustic guitars were recorded with a Neumann U67 and maybe a Neumann KM84, no DI, but using the API’s EQ.
The band later recognized that Leckie had taught them “how to use the studio, and how to get the best out of our material.” Using the studio as a musical instrument became a major part of their approach. There also was a shift in their song writing, which until then had been more or less the domain of Thom Yorke. On The Bends it became a much more collaborative effort.
In addition, they had worked out a labour division between the three guitar players. Whereas on Pablo Honey the tendency was for all to play similar parts, creating a wall of guitar sound, on The Bends Yorke started focusing more on rhythm guitar, O’Brien on textural, effect-laden parts, and Greenwood on lead guitar. Greenwood also extended his palette to playing keyboards and synthesizers, and writing string arrangements.
CONFIDENCE
The sessions were halted in May and June with the album still incomplete, because the band went on tour, in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand. It also appeared at several summer festivals, including Glastonbury and Reading in England, and Roskilde in Denmark.
Radiohead and Leckie, without Godrich, reconvened in July at The Manor, a residential studio with an SSL, located close to Oxford. The sessions at The Manor lasted a mere two weeks, but were extremely productive, because the band had enormously gained in confidence during their world tour, and had worked out new arrangements for many of the songs.
It has been widely reported that “My Iron Lung,” was based on an MTV live recording by Radiohead at the London Astoria, on May 27th, 1994, released on VHS in 1995 and on DVD in 2005 as Live At The Astoria. Leckie explains that it in fact is a combination of live and studio recordings.
Following the Manor sessions, Leckie and Chris Brown went to Abbey Road Studio 3, where they started mixing the album. Reportedly because EMI felt that Leckie was taking too long over the mixes, the company decided to have the songs mixed by Pablo Honey producers Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie. Leckie ended up with a mix credit on just three songs.
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The Bends was finally released on March 13, 1995 in the UK, on Parlophone Records, and on April 4 in the US, on Capital Records. Featuring artwork by Stanley Donwood, it was immediately successful in their homeland, spending 160 weeks in the UK album charts and reaching to number 4, but it was much less recognized in the US.
The reviews in the UK also were overwhelmingly positive, with The Guardian writing that Radiohead had “transformed themselves from nondescript guitar-beaters to potential arena-fillers.” Q magazine called the album a “powerful, bruised, majestically desperate record of frighteningly good songs.” And the New Musical Express praised it as “a classic” and “the consummate, all-encompassing, continent-straddling ’90s rock record.”
The Bends put Radiohead on course to become the biggest and most influential rock act in the world. The band itself recognized the album as a “turning point” in their career, and were aware that it had an immediate impact on their contemporaries.
The legacy of The Bends continues to shine. In 2006, it was included in a list of “50 albums that changed music,” that was published in the prestigious British newspaper The Observer. Today, twenty-six years after its release, many regard it as Radiohead’s magnum opus.
A review in Allmusic concludes, “What makes The Bends so remarkable is that it marries such ambitious, and often challenging, instrumental soundscapes to songs that are at their cores hauntingly melodic and accessible. With The Bends, Radiohead have reinvented anthemic rock.”
Written By: Paul Tingen
Watch the video below to learn more about Radiohead and ‘The Bends’!
