The greatest live band of all time, according to Dave Grohl
The legacy of Dave Grohl in the music industry is a steadfast one. Carved into the face of rock itself, Grohl’s position in two of the formative groups of their day, being the drummer in Nirvana and singer in Foo Fighters, has meant his word on certain subjects is taken as gospel. Simply put, there isn’t too much about rock music of the last 40 years that Grohl can’t school you on.
Grohl has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything music-related, but few artists have touched him in the way Radiohead have over the decades. OK Computer is Grohl’s favourite moment from their career, and he believed that the album would cause a “revolution musically”. Whether it had the seismic effect that the Foo Fighters leader imagined is somewhat questionable, largely because most people would point to Radiohead’s Kid Aas their most truly revolutionary record. However, it’s undeniable that it did change the direction of the wind.
In 1997, British music was in a state of flux. The power of Britpop had burned brightly, but now it started to fade and become tiresome. Neatly summarised by Noel Gallagher joining Tony Blair for a “cool Britannia” photoshoot, the shine of a previously rebellious movement had been lost. It was clear that something new needed to come along to shake up the applecart, but nobody expected OK Computer.
They still maintained Britpop’s postmodern affluence. The sardonic swells and finger-in-cheek pointillism were still there for all to see, but they threaded them with a third-person narrative and a detachment that only Radiohead can truly pull off. They invited science fiction into the action movie world and came up trumps.
Thanks to the speculative narrative structure, Yorke is possibly at his peak lyrically, using his storytelling skills to invite the audience to participate in the sci-fi frolics. Along with hits like ‘Paranoid Android,’ the album truly relies on the duality of marrying both their rock roots and their evolutionary ethos. It is a masterpiece.
Radiohead’s experimental sonic approach, combined with Thom Yorke’s storytelling instincts, was able to create an album incomparable to anything else released before it. Understandably, Grohl believed that this would become the new normal for contemporary music. However, while countless artists have attempted to have their own OK Computer moment, its sheer originality is almost impossible to reproduce. It landed at the perfect time, and its arrival proved that music didn’t need to be primitive to be popular.
Speaking to Jools Holland earlier this year, the former Nirvana drummer opened up about his love for the album. Grohl said, “This is a pivotal moment not only in Radiohead’s career but, I think in the history of music. When they made the OK Computer record, I honestly felt like that was the beginning of some kind of revolution musically.”
But perhaps his greatest compliment came when he suggested that it was on the stage, not in the studio, were Radiohead truly shined: “Of course, as a live band, they are one of the greatest live bands of all time. Performing this song that was challenging the audience to join them in this crazy revolution, and ‘Paranoid Android’ live, it’s not exactly like the record, but it’s better because it’s happening. Of course, I really do think that record changed the landscape of popular music for years to come.”
Considering Grohl would likely call heavier rock outfits like Led Zeppelin and Queens of the Stone Age his more cherished bands, it feels slightly at odds that he would cast Radiohead as one of the great live acts. But he isn’t wrong. Grohl neatly captures the fact that Radiohead, for all their introspective intellectualism, also know how to put on a great show.
Following OK Computer, there’s no doubt that it became more common for more avant-garde records to earn mainstream acclaim. The blending of electronica and rock music on this scale was unprecedented before Radiohead’s third album. Experimentalism was rewarded once more, and a new dawn was seemingly on the horizon.
However, as much as Grohl hoped it would cause a “crazy revolution”, that’s not what Radiohead intended to spark. For them, it was just an expression of creativity that caused an unlikely seminal cultural moment and inadvertently became an unattainable benchmark that anything they’ve produced since gets compared to.
