Happy 10th Birthday, OK Computer

Let us take a few moments to solemnly recognize the best album of all time. No, for once I'm not being sarcastic. Here are some highlights from a Melody Maker article entitled "The Making of OK Computer":

The band began recording the first bits of the album during the summer of '96 in their rehearsal studios, a converted apple shed. In September, Radiohead rented actress Jane Seymour's mansion, St. Catherine's Court, moved in all their equipment, and began recording there. Things went well. At first.

"It was heaven and hell," Yorke says. "Our first two weeks there we basically recorded the whole album. The hell came after that. The house was..."--Yorke pauses for a quarter of a minute--"oppressive. To begin with, it was curious about us. Then it got bored with us. And it started making things difficult. It started doing things like turning the studio tape machines on and off, rewinding them."

The house was haunted?

"Yeah. It was great. Plus, it was in a valley on the outskirts of Bath, in the middle of nowhere. So when we actually stopped playing music there was just this pure silence. Open the window: nothing. A completely unnatural silence--not even birds singing. It was fucking horrible. I could never sleep."

Radiohead finally finished recording and mastering in February of 1997. After they got some distance from the record, they were a little startled by it. "At the 11th hour, when we realized what we had done," Yorke admits, "we had qualms about the fact that we had created this thing that was quite revolting."

The people at Capitol Records felt the same way at first, especially since they didn't hear anything on OK Computer that sounded even remotely like a single, let alone like "Creep." But now, everyone's settled down a bit. Capitol's president Gary Gersh, when asked about Radiohead, has even said this: "We won't let up until they are the biggest band in the world."

(Spin, january 1998)

"Karma Police" on Letterman:

Q: The irony is the fact that you set out to make a straight-laced pop record.

Ed: Yeah. We were saying, "Let's do it really straight ahead, let's not fuck around and spend ages analysing the material." And we ended up doing 16 versions of 'No Surprises' and then went back to the first one. The problem is, we get bored very easily.

(Select Magazine, december 1997, Interview from late october in Florence)

Q: So how do you call time on the whole thing? That must be the most difficult thing in the world.

A: Well that's exactly what we had to do. In the end we just called time. It could have gone one for another year. Jonny came in, in January, into the studio one morning and said, 'Right, that's it. We have to stop now. We have to finish what we've done and stop.' So we wrote down what we'd done, and went, 'Yeah. OK.'

Q: Does that mean there are glitches on there?

A: Oh yeah. Fuck, yeah. I'm actually amazed it got the reaction it did. None of us fucking knew any more, wether it was good or bad. What really blew my head off was the fact that people got all the things, all the textures and the sounds and the atmospheres we were trying to create. I figured that it wouldn't happen like that.

I was really amazed about the way the people described how it sounded as well. That was I really thought was great. I suppose that was the bit that was really exciting - doing something you've spent so long on and really agonized about, really having this sound in our heads, like the sound of Ed's guitar on the beginning of 'No Surprises' or the way 'Airbag' starts. One sounds like a car accident, the other sounds like a child's toy.

(Select Magazine, december 1997, Interview from late october in Florence)

"No Surprises" on Jools Holland:

"One of the satisfying things about doing OK Computer was that I felt we'd gotten to a state where I didn't have to get emotional about what I was doing. The best vocal takes I did were usually first takes where I hadn't gotten into it yet. So I wasn't trying to be emotional. It seems like the most overtly emotional things now tend to be adverts and gospel music."

(Alternative Press, april 1998)

Q: What got to you about Bitches Brew?

The first time I heard it I thought it was the most nauseating chaos. I felt sick listening to it. Then gradually something incredibly brutal about it and incredibly beautiful... you're never quite sure where you are in it, it seems to be swimming ar nd you. It has that sound of a huge empty space, like a cathedral. It wasn't jazz and it didn't sound like rock'n'roll. It was building something up and watching it fall apart, that's the beauty of it. It was at the core of what we were trying to do wit OK Computer.

(Q Magazine, october 1997, Interview from day off between Atlanta and Washington)

"I don't think it's pessimistic," Yorke says, politely defensive. "I put the stuff in the songs because I can't say it elsewhere. If you write it down on a sheet of paper it may sound like that, but it's actually the lyrics to a song so it's redemptive its own way. Anyway, it's compassionate, not condemning."

(Rolling Stone, october 1997)

Yorke said he had written a collection of songs for Radiohead's third album, the follow-up to The Bends.

He said: "I've talked to the record company and the managers and stuff and just basically said I don't think we're going to finish it until we finish it. It could take us a good year. That doesn't mean we'll spend a year in a studio, we'll probably only spend a month in the studio, but I'm not going to write anything unless it's coming out."

"The big thing for me is that we could really fall back on just doing another moribund, miserable, morbid and negative record lyrically, but I really don't want to, at all. And I'm deliberately just writing down all the positive things that I hear or see. I'm not able to put them into music yet and I don't want to just force it."

Guitarist Ed O'Brien added: "I think the third album will be celebratory and maybe not so inward-looking, that would be great. I think thinking is a good thing but there are times when you say Fuck it. We're allowed to make mistakes".

(NME, november 18th 1995)

Listen to "Lucky":

[Download the MP3 Here]