“Really proud”: The botched gig Radiohead that reduced children to tears
No matter how much the world of manufactured, cookie-cutter pop annoys me, the fact is, it’s a necessary evil in music. Jedward is the yin to Getdown Services’ yang, just as the powerhouse of One Direction pulled in the opposite direction to Radiohead.
Because ultimately, counterculture is nothing without something to counter against. And while the 1990s was undoubtedly a heyday for music authenticity, championing greats from all genres, be it Oasis, The Prodigy, or Roots Manuva, it was also a time of booming commercialism. Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia gave way to an appetite for fame not yet seen in modern Britain, and every finance-driven label executive was sure to cash in at any opportunity.
Dramatic music videos and pensive album covers came flooding to the masses, in a bid to sell picture-perfect products and artists. But because music was distributed in a more analogue sense, there was a greater opportunity to financially support more alternative artists, which ultimately created a more level playing field than the one we experience now. There wasn’t the disparity between mega stars and independent artists like there is now.
As such, shows like Top Of The Pops meant the landscape of televised lip-syncing was reserved for pop bands only; it would be a stage for the alternative. However, the idea of these commercial platforms was indeed ludicrous to the more credible artists, and they would look to satirise it at any given opportunity. Take Oasis, for example. They famously mocked Top Of The Pops’ lip-syncing policy by switching Noel and Liam’s on-stage roles during their own televised performance.
So when an opportunity arose for Radiohead to poke fun at the brave new world of glossy pop, they grabbed it with both hands. In 1995, the band were invited to play alongside pop titans Boyzone, Take That and East 17 for the Smash Hits Pollwinners Concert in London.
When the Oxfordshire band were given the stage, they ripped into a bouncing rendition of their track ‘My Iron Lung’, a song with an outro that gives way to a mild level of handbanging to the initiated, but a frightening amount for the wide-eyed teenage fans of Take That. When Thom Yorke recalled the night, he said, “What a proud moment that was.”
He added: “It was a joke, we thought it was funny, and it was going out live and we were standing there at the side of the stage and it suddenly dawned on me how utterly stupid it was… We played ‘Iron Lung’, and little children were crying – yeah – and you should have seen some of the parents, it was wicked! It was great. I was really proud we did it.”
It was a formative moment for many fans that day. Some may have had two feet firmly in the pop camp, but there would have undoubtedly been those curious teens who had one foot in the alternative, waiting for a spark to ignite their curiosity. And to see Yorke and co ripping into one of their greatest hits, it would have undoubtedly tipped the first domino in a journey of music exploration.
