How Jonny Greenwood attempted to ruin Radiohead’s hit song ‘Creep’
The love-hate relationship between Radiohead and their 1992 debut single ‘Creep’ is widely acknowledged. While the song brought the band immense success, paving the way for their illustrious career and subsequent seminal works like OK Computer and Kid A, Radiohead themselves are often noted for their disdain of the song. It’s commonly believed that as the band evolved, they sought to distance themselves from the sound of ‘Creep’. However, it’s now known that their dislike for the song existed even during the recording process.
First released in 1992, it was not until the year after that the world was finally ready to accept the vibrant new sounds of Radiohead, reaching number seven in the UK singles charts in 1993. Admittedly, ‘Creep’ hardly has a ‘hit song’ atmosphere about it, with lyrics about an obsessive stalker interspersed with oppressively loud bursts of distorted guitar. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why Radiohead never intended to release the track as a single. In fact, the first studio takes of the song were recorded without the band knowing.
Guitarist Jonny Greenwood explained the unexpected quality of the recording process to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch back in 1993, saying, “We were asked to play some things to check the levels of the tape, and we just did one that we liked best from rehearsing it the day before.” That track just so happened to be their future debut single ‘Creep’. “We’d only written it the week before,” Greenwood continued, “And we were just kind of very keen to play it for each other, and they happened to record it.”
In the end, ‘Creep’ was only released after producer Paul Kolderie convinced EMI that it had hit potential. If it had been up to the band themselves, it’s likely that ‘Creep’ would have been, at best, a forgotten album-only track. Radiohead were not overly keen on the song, with Greenwood, in particular, taking every opportunity to make his feelings known. In fact, the iconic guitar bursts of distortion that give the track much of its grunge-era appeal were first played in protest of the song’s mellow quality.
“I didn’t like it,” Greenwood once explained. “It stayed quiet, so I hit the guitar hard – really hard.”
The resulting noise is the ear-splitting guitar bursts that are now so synonymous with the song. His protest against the song, somewhat ironically, gave it the potential to hit the charts and become a massive hit for the band.
Fellow guitarist Ed O’Brien was less flattering about Greenwood’s efforts, affectionately recalling, “That’s the sound of Jonny trying to fuck the song up. He really didn’t like it the first time we played it, so he tried spoiling it.”
He added, “And it made the song.”
‘Creep’ proved to be the perfect track to bridge the gap between the defiant American sound of grunge that would define the early 1990s and the guitar-led Britpop revolution that would dominate the charts in the middle section of the decade. It certainly put the band on the map, albeit against their will, earning them an audience who, for the most part, stuck with them through their development into more mature and proficient artists.
