One of the most influential bands of the 90s, Radiohead was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

We interviewed the band's Ed O'Brien (guitar and backing vocals) in 1995, upon the release of their second album, "The Bends."

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
It's a terrific new album. Did you feel a lot of extra pressure, because of the success of "Creep"?

ED O'BRIEN:
I think that inevitably, with the second album, we could forget it, if our sophomore effort wasn't worthy. We knew we had the songs, because of a lot of these songs were kind of written on the road. And we knew they were great songs. The pressure actually came from recording it, doing the songs justice and basically finding the direction that we wanted to go.

When you go into the studio, there are obviously things that you seek out to do. For instance, I think we're always trying to push ourselves on an album and experiment. And it means going out on an extreme sometimes and then working from that and coming back in, if you know what I mean. To be able to get anywhere and do something kind of new, for yourself, you have to be able to take it to extremes and then bring it back in.

So it was mainly a case of really finding our direction. And what happened was, we had initial recording sessions that lasted about 10 weeks. And we went out on a limb and things weren't actually working and it was a bit frustrating. But we had these touring obligations -- touring Japan and Australia, etc., etc... and Europe for two months. So we went out on tour and played these places. And played, half the sets on these dates were new songs. And we came back and re-recorded, basically recorded the album in about two weeks.

PCC:
Did the band relish having new songs to introduce during the tour?

O'BRIEN:
I mean, for our own sanity, I'm afraid we're kind of quite selfish like that. We couldn't play a full "Pablo Honey" [their debut album] set, having rehearsed and played like 22 songs for the previous three months. The morale would have been completely done. We actually really enjoyed playing the new songs. And it worked out really well. We were putting like six songs in the set each night, changing it around a bit. It was great.

PCC:
Now that the album is completed and released, what do you see as being its direction, the connective threads in the songs?

O'BRIEN:
I don't know really. I think, in a way, we found out the best way that we record, which is fairly quickly... with accidents. I think a lot of the album is a string of accidents, happy accidents that happen and they're kind of pulled together.

But lyrically, the album's a lot more together. Thom had a lot longer to write the lyrics and actually to focus on them, because I think on "Pablo Honey," one thing he wasn't prepared for, -- as a band we weren't prepared for selling a million albums on your first album -- he wasn't prepared for the scrutiny under which his lyrics were placed.

And a lot of them were like one-off, sort of throwaway... "Anyone Can Play Guitar" is a statement. And a lot of them were sort of statements, really. And the lyrics were written around that. But the lyrics are obviously quite dark on this new album.

And musically we pushed ourselves. The performances were much better. And we just really tried to get away from gratuitous guitars, which we had on the first album and loved, because that's what we wanted to do. We wanted like eight tracks of f-cking loud guitars. On this one, we realized that you can have two, three guitars and it can be just as effective.

PCC:
The fact that there is a darkness to the tone on this album, does that reflect the band's response to that initial rush of success?

O'BRIEN:
Yeah, I think so. I think in a way that we weren't prepared. Like in titling the album "The Bends" and that song itself, that whole idea of the bends, the diving condition, that you go from one environment to the next very quickly and you don't have time to adjust -- there is a parallel there with what we went through.

It was amazing at first. But of course, when you have a song like "Creep," it is very difficult to follow it up. And particularly when you have a song like that and it's your first single in America and it does amazing things like that and if you don't have a song that follows that up....

The first album is a collection of our greatest hits as a band over the first four years, as an unsigned band. Initially there was the excitement and the feeling of "Oh, this is so wonderful." But then you see the cynical side of people and people basically want to write you off, because the nature of bands that have a song like that on their first album is that they disappear, fade away.

It kind of got a bit tired, to be honest, the people leveling this at us -- Radiohead, they're just one-hit wonders and who are they? It's the "Creep" band.

PCC:
So the phenomenon of "Creep" has been something of a mixed blessing?'

O'BRIEN:
Absolutely. I'm not going to knock it, because we've had an amazing time and we've been able to tour around the world. We did like a four-week tour of Mexico. We were the first Western band to play out in the provinces and stuff like that. I'm not knocking that.

But, at the same time, it's been discussed as the blessing and the bane. The downside of it, you're touring for 18 months and by the end of that, you feel you've become a bit of a musical jukebox, when all you wanted to do was tour for a certain amount of time and then record a new album. There's an impression that the second album has to be great and you know it's going to be so scrutinized. So it took us a while to get over that.

PCC:
For pretty much every rock musician strapping on the guitar for the first time, there's that fantasy about the big hit record and the tours. How does the reality differ from the fantasy?

O'BRIEN:
Well, you know, our fantasy was never that. Our fantasy was, we figured that if we wanted to have a hit, hopefully it would come by the fourth or fifth album. We talked about it for years -- we wanted to come over to America, get in a van and do about 20, 30 dates, get back in the van, sleep on people's floors and just build it up slowly. We wanted room to maneuver, room to change and stuff like that. So the hit comes on the first album, which we didn't want. That wasn't in our game plan.

It was great, but I think the downside of it is that a lot of people get into the band who only get into the band for one song. And I think the great thing about the tour we're doing at the moment is that we're doing clubs and doing less numbers than we did on our last American outing, but they're real Radiohead fans. And that's the important thing, rather than people who come to hear "Creep."

PCC:
Is there almost a temptation to eliminate that from the set?

O'BRIEN:
No, not at all, partly because we love the song a lot. I think we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot, if we did that. We don't bitch about the song. We love the song dearly. The weird thing about it now, it's a bit like doing a cover version. We go around the world and it's a bit like doing Frank Sinatra's "My Way." So it's fun. I think a lot of people have expected us to actually drop it. But no, we're really proud of that song.

PCC:
Why do you think it did strike such a universal chord?

O'BRIEN:
The lyric, it's like a love song. All the great love songs, I think, are kind of love songs, but they've got twists in them. It's a thing that people understand and know, but there's a twist to it. "I'm a creep." And then of course, the guitar hook. There's an explosion of the loud guitars.

It was interesting that "Loser" came out after that and people were saying, "Oh, you're a slacker band." I'm not so fond of these tags. But that's how we always felt. That's how we were as a band. For a brief moment, what we felt at the time, and what Thom was writing in the lyrics, struck a chord with a lot of people.

I'm 27 now. We're all 26, 27. And our teenage years, our formative years, were in the Thatcher/Reagan era. I think a lot of people younger, in Britain, have never known a left-wing government. They've always known a right-wing Tory government. The Conservative Party has been in since 1979.

And I think that whole 80s ethos -- the greed, the Yuppie thing, the go out and get it, get it if you can and it doesn't matter if you shit on other people -- it's like you can do whatever you want. And I think a lot of people have become really disillusioned in the 90s. And that whole Generation X is evidence of that. And I think that it doesn't matter if you're in the UK or America, there's a very similar sentiment in the youth of both countries.

PCC:
But now you see yourselves moving beyond that "slacker" phase, into something else?

O'BRIEN:
Well, we're not slackers out and out, but there's always an element, there's a similarity in the lyrics. There's a dark side to the lyrics and that's something that we can't get away from at the moment. It's something that Thom simply has to write. It's something that he feels he has to write.

I just hope that, as a band, we don't get pigeonholed. It's really important that we do the unexpected thing. I think we've done the unexpected thing in the sense of bringing out an album that's not necessarily sort of loud guitars, but it's concentrated on good songwriting and different textures and stuff like that. So I just hope that we continue to do things differently and try to progress on each album, rather than rest on our laurels and stick to a sound or a formula. We're very anti-formulaic.

PCC:
Didn't you get stuck on the road a lot longer than you expected with the success of the first album?

O'BRIEN:
Yeah, a lot longer. Before we had the success in this country, we'd already been on the road for about a year-and-a-half. So it ended up being like two-and-a-half years on the road.

PCC:
Not expecting that lengthy a time on the road, did that put a strain on the band?

O'BRIEN:
Yeah, it did. There's a certain part of you that wants to go back into the studio and do the next album. But another part of you is saying, "Hang on a sec, we're on a roll. Let's just ride this wave. We may never be able to go to Thailand. We may never be able to go to Mexico again. Let's do it. Let's do the shows." I mean, it was a problem. It was a strain at times.

PCC:
Some bands have an easier time dealing with struggle than success. How did this band handle it all as a unit? Did it draw you closer together? Or did things become strained?

O'BRIEN:
Yeah, it did draw us closer together. What we've got, that a lot of other bands don't have, and a lot of people don't realize this, but we'd been together for 10 years. We were at school together. And I think one of the things that we've always underestimated, up till last year, was our friendship. And your friendship can pull you through a lot of things together. We basically get on very well. We're a tight-knit unit. And we work very well as a band. And we're a very good team.

There were times last year when relationships were kind of strained. It's inevitable, I think. It is like a marriage. So I think that we realized the friendship was important, as important as trying to make good music.

PCC:
So you were together since high school, essentially. Was it a conscious decision to wait a while until you launched into recording? Or was that just the way it worked out?

O'BRIEN:
We all wanted to go off to college and study, which we did. I read politics at Manchester University. You know, it's very easy to be in a rock 'n' roll band, age 19, and that be your only experience or that be the center of your life. Having gone off to college and lived off of virtually nothing and lived in terrible housing and had a lot of fun and studied and talked rationally and learning about politics, for me was a very important part of my development.

I think that the trouble with a lot of bands is that, when they have success young, when they start out, their characters kind of don't develop or they become a bit stilted in their ways. But we are five very different people. And there were things that we had to do and wanted to do. That was always part of the plan. We carried on playing while we were at college. We all went to different colleges. We used to come back to Oxford during vacations. And we weren't really doing gigs. We were just playing for ourselves.

But we thought it was as good, if not better than the music we heard on the radio. And we thought, "Let's go and see what we can do" and started gigging in Oxford, where we come from. And within a few months, we were signed up. So yeah, it was very important not to rush things, to do things at our own pace. In a band, if you believe in yourself... and there was this feeling within the band that we would get signed. There was a confidence. We don't take things for granted. We work really hard. We rehearse and things like that. But there was an inevitability almost, like "We have to get signed." And I'm sure a lot of bands feel like that, that are in that position.

PCC:
Having had that opportunity to broaden your horizons, is it more difficult to maintain that now, with the demanding schedule of a music career?

O'BRIEN:
You find ways. I mean, obviously, this is the main thing in our life. But I think it's very important to devote a lot of time to reading. Personally, on the politics side of things, it gets difficult to keep up. But it's something I'm still very interested in. The great thing about this life, when you're touring and stuff like that, you've got so much time. There's so much waiting around. If you're willing to go out and find it, you can do things and you can broaden your mind, if you like.

PCC:
Do you hope ultimately to have some sort of political impact through the music?

O'BRIEN:
Politics and music's a really difficult one. I was very young -- I was born in 1968 -- so I don't remember the impact of music on politics in the 60s. Music and politics, in England, was a bit like the Live Aid thing. And there were lot of bands around that time, bands like The Redskins, who wrote great pop songs and they were very left of center, with very cool lyrics. But the trouble is, politics and music...

I would say one thing, I think comedians can do it a lot better. I'm a real fan... Comedians can draw you in. If you can win people over with a laugh, you've got them, I think. And that's why comedians are so much better. That's why our whole attitude is like, "Leave it to the comedians." But it would be nice.... Like R.E.M. wrote a song like "Orange Crush," which is a political song. And I think Thom's quite into it, because it's a new form of songwriting for him. And I think he finds it quite hard. He's said before, "Without it sounding mid-80s Live Aid-esque, I'm trying to find ways of being political."

PCC:
You have other interests, so why did music have such a strong allure for you?

O'BRIEN:
A big fan of music, since I was a small kid. My dad had given me a tape of The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's" and things like that.

PCC:
How old were you?

O'BRIEN:
I was six [laughs]. It kind of went over my head, "Sgt. Pepper's," really. I was like, "I want to hear 'Please Please Me' and 'Eight Days a Week' and 'Day Tripper,'" things like that.

I think really, you come to a stage when you want to do more than listen to music. You think you can do something. You've got tunes or melodies going around in your head or whatever. And then you form bands and it becomes like, this little gang, if you like. And it's kind of like your revenge against the rest of the world.

Whenever anything's down, when your girlfriend's ditched you -- you've heard these reasons given a thousand times. It's no different from Keith Richards wanting to be this kind of like cowboy figure with a guitar. Us a bit later, not being cowboy figures with guitars, but being different from other people, going off and rehearsing in little rooms and festering away there for hours, working on something, coming out with something that hopefully sounds pretty good. So it's the whole love of music combined with the idea of trying to do something new and having the confidence to give it a try. I think that's the prime motivation.

PCC:
Is there an inner conflict between wanting to have some sort of alienation present, while desiring mass acceptance?

O'BRIEN:
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, all you can do -- and we've gotten back to this, for a while, we were going down another track for two or three months -- but we've basically always believed that we write for ourselves. We write for the five of us. We've never written for anyone else, in the sense that you cannot second-guess what people want. Otherwise, you get into realms of formulaic songwriting, which is very easy to do.

You see a lot of music out there which strikes you as being incredibly formulaic and it would be very easy to do. But it's not something that appeals to us. We get bored very easily, basically. So we have to be into the music first and foremost. You hope that other people will get into it, of course you do.

There's a great feeling when a song that you love and have recorded and have nurtured through the recording process is played on MTV or is played on the radio. It's a wonderful feeling. At the end of the day, you cannot write for other people. You have to write for yourself.

Once you've recorded it and are pleased with it, then you can take it out and once your album's released, it becomes like personal to other people. And when you're doing the shows, you're playing to an audience, as well. But when you write and record, you have to have to focus in on what you like and what you believe is right for that song.

PCC:
With all of the critical acclaim, does it matter to you whether you have a future single that has that magnitude of popularity that "Creep" enjoyed?

O'BRIEN:
No,. I think we'd be a lot better prepared for it now. I don't think it'll happen on this album. I don't think there's a song like "Creep." Who knows? You can never tell. Some of the songs that are huge over here, I don't get, for some reason. And others, which aren't, I think should be massive. But yeah, I think we'll be a lot more prepared for it. And also, we'll have, if you like, paid our dues. We'll already have like a hardcore fan base.

I think the problem was, we were deemed to be a kind of a bit of a one-hit wonder, lightweight pop band. And I'm a great fan of pop and there are pop sensibilities in our music, but we're definitely not a one-hit wonder. And we're definitely not lightweight.

It's just a case, in America, of pretty much starting again and reaffirming to people who know what Radiohead is and have seen us live, know what we're about. And to others who have been suspicious or have written us off, for them to find out what kind of band we are, that we're not how they see us to be.

PCC:
I read a quote saying the band was sort of the antithesis of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. How does that display itself in everyday existence?

O'BRIEN:
I think that when we said that, we were pretty naive and we thought that we weren't like a lot of other bands, in the sense that we were much more concerned with putting on a great show in the evening and not going out and partying 24 hours a day, etc... and all those things that you see go hand-in-hand with rock 'n'roll bands being arrogant, treating people like shit. That kind of thing didn't really appeal to us.

When we made that statement, we thought we were kind of unique. But we've met so many bands similar to ourselves who do like a drink, they do like to have a few drinks or whatever, but the realization that in this business, you do not have to be an asshole to get somewhere.

There are lots of great bands who treat people with respect. And we didn't really know about these bands and people who just concentrate on the music, rather than the lifestyle. So there are plenty of people, many of bands that we've met who are like that. So I think we're not the antithesis of rock 'n' roll. We're like a lot of other thinking rock 'n' roll bands, if you like.

PCC:
There are a lot of pitfalls that are easy to fall into. You can get caught up in the whirlpool. Do you find it more difficult than you thought it might be to avoid all of that?

O'BRIEN:
Uh, well, I don't know. I think it's a frame of mind thing that you enter in it. I just see myself as a regular guy. We all go back to Oxford. We all have friends there and we all live there. These are friends we've had for the past 15 years. And they're the ones who will tell you, if you're becoming an asshole and are getting your egos inflated. I mean, of course you have to have an ego to get up on stage and to make the music. There has to be an ego to make you want to be in the band in the first place.

But I think we're pretty skeptical, I'm definitely very skeptical of the sycophants, the bullshitters that you find in this game, which there are a lot of. But you take them with a pinch of salt. And that's okay. You just make sure you surround yourself with good people. We've got a great crew, we've built up slowly, been with us now for about three years. There is the thing about trying to be some kind of extended family, when you're out on the road.

For the latest news on this band, visit www.radiohead.com