“Not enough glamour”: How Los Angeles brought the best out of Radiohead
Throughout Radiohead’s history, they have tended to record in places you might expect from them, such as haunted houses, Paris hideaways, or even their own homemade shed studio, which they called Canned Applause.
All of that matches up. Overwhelmingly, the setting in which the album was made perfectly matches the end result. For a perfect example, look towards OK Computer. As the band grappled with the existentialism of the modern age, painting a dystopian future in a state of panic about everything from technological advances to the classic fear of death, it makes sense that they went into their own little world.
The majority of the record was made at their own studio in Didcot. Canned Applause is just a converted shed. It was probably cold, built originally to store apples, but they brought in all the equipment they’d need to rehearse and record the core of the record right there, in their own little bunker away from everyone else. Even when they did finally go out into the world for the final details, the decision to head to Church Studio and record in a 1850s old gothic church also matches the record, providing that old school fear that runs as an undercurrent to the album.
It’s a perfect match. Typically, it always is with the band as they sometimes dipped around Europe but mostly stayed in their own spaces in Oxfordshire. But when that suddenly stopped working in 2002 as they tried to start on their sixth album, they switched things up in a baffling way.
They could have gone anywhere: Berlin, France, or back to some remote old estate. Instead, from the entire map, Radiohead strangely chose to decamp to Los Angeles.
Out of every city in the world, LA feels like the least Radiohead place they could be. London has the grit, Tokyo has the isolation, and New York has a darkness. Los Angeles, meanwhile, feels too sunny, too artificial, and too tied to the entertainment industry. Given that the band have never cared much about celebrity, it seems odd that they would choose its epicentre.
However, in their eyes, that’s exactly why it worked. They were alien there, and because of that, and because of a slight desire to get home quick, they got their heads down. “We were like, ‘Do we want to fly halfway around the world to do this?’ but it was terrific, because we worked really hard,” Yorke told Rolling Stone. With nothing else to do in the strange City of Angels, they found a weird sense of focus amidst the bright lights, adding, “We did a track a day. It was sort of like holiday camp.”
But the band weren’t too shy to admit that there was definitely a side of LA they liked. While they might pretend to be all angst all the time, Yorke held his hands up and said there was some joy to be found in the glossy world of the city. “We went to a couple of glamorous parties, which really helped. We don’t have enough glamour in our lives,” he said, adding, “Too much news radio, not enough glamour.”
All of it led to Hail To The Thief, and I guess that matches up too. American politics floated into the lyrics, but even in the sonics, there is a boldness and brightness to this record as the setting seemed to seep into the instrumentals and their growing interest in electro sounds over their typical guitars. Removing themselves even further from the rock world that birthed them in Britain, they found inspiration in the most unlikely place.
