Even more than “Creep,” which had only blown up Stateside, Kid A was now their big hit.
And when they released Kid A-the album meant to chart a new course away from the rock-star treadmill-it became their first-ever album to simultaneously top the U.S. When they went in to record OK Computer, Thom Yorke declared confidently that they were about to make their first “positive” record. They wanted to, as the song title had it, disappear completely.Ī Radiohead axiom is that whatever the band set out to do, they usually wind up accomplishing the exact opposite. Their new music, whatever else it might be, must accomplish that singular objective: All rock-band gestures were to be isolated, rooted out, and erased. When they began the fitful, labored studio sessions that would produce both Kid A and Amnesiac in late 19, Radiohead knew very little about what they wanted, only that they did not want to be “rock stars” anymore. They were getting more successful, and it felt awful: Watch the 1998 documentary Meeting People Is Easy and you’ll see what rock stardom felt like to Yorke’s nervous system-dull, pointless torture, like being detained for eternity by airport security. Six months into the long, punishing tour for OK Computer, Thom Yorke had briefly slipped into catatonia. They had been touring, more or less continuously, for the past seven years. At the time, avoidance of all rock-star gestures had become something of a survival mechanism for the band. The band separated the two releases because they wanted to avoid releasing a double album, that most tired and bloated of rock-excess beasts.
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