The Radiohead performance that changed Bradley Cooper’s life forever: “Thom Yorke is my hero”
Rather like his hero and often co-star Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper is known for completely immersing himself in any role he takes on, and with 2023’s Maestro, he blurred the lines between art and reality, writing, producing, directing and starring in a film, which proved an exhausting process.
Cooper had already proved his commitment to musical movie storytelling with massive success back in 2018 when he teamed up with Lady Gaga for the A Star is Born remake, singing and playing his way through the tragic tale that he also directed, raking in almost half a billion dollars at the box office and earning a ‘Best Actress’ Oscar for Gaga.
But five years later, Maestro was on a different level altogether. In order to tell the story of the legendary Jewish-American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein as effectively as possible, Cooper went on an emotional, physical and creative journey, risking cancellation, burn out and potential ridicule in pursuit of what he felt would be the crowning moment of his career thus far.
In the end, his dedication paid off, with Maestro receiving seven Oscar nominations and four Golden Globe nominations, with Cooper’s performance and directing attracting considerable acclaim from critics.
Some indication of just how important music of many genres was and is to Cooper came in the early stages of when he was planning to begin the Bernstein biopic, which had already been stuck in development hell for some time before he took it on. He told the Golden Globes, “Music was always in our house. My mother is Italian, her parents from Napoli and Abruzzi and in the family, we all had a love for opera and music. I remember Radiohead playing Saturday Night Live with the Kid A album. I remember watching it on television, thinking that my life just changed, and I never heard anybody sound like that. Thom Yorke is my hero.”
The performance Cooper is referring to is likely from the year 2000, when the Oxfordshire band took to the SNL stage and played two songs from Kid A, which saw its released in October of that year. It is a full-on exhibition from a band obviously ready to unleash a new record onto the world, and from the first moment, singer Thom Yorke seems almost possessed, losing himself to the monstrous fuzz-bass of ‘National Anthem’ and sounds being wrenched from the keyboards by Jonny Greenwood as scattered beats were stop-started by drummer Phil Selway.
Kid A was a new journey for the band, moving away from their traditional rock background and fully embracing the electronica that had been hinted at with the towering OK Computer three years previously. Despite initially proving divisive it has since gone on to be recognised as one of the finest albums of the early part of this century.
Cooper, meanwhile, is attracting more good reviews for his latest, Is This Thing On?, a film about a divorced dad trying out stand-up comedy starring Will Arnett and Jurassic Park’s Laura Dern. Perhaps surprisingly, the movie is loosely based on the life of Scouse comedian John Bishop, although thankfully he doesn’t do any comedy in it.
