Situated near Glastonbury, UK, it is the largest outdoor music festival
in Europe and it includes not just loads of bands playing over the course
of three days, but also theatrical productions, alternative medical and
technological exhibitions, craftwork displays and on-site constructions
and so on and so forth. This year it was attended by 90,000 people
camping in tents for three days, not including those who climbed over the
fence! It also has various spiritual, mythical and religious connections
to do with legendary King Arthur and Jesus and the Holy Grail, but you
can no doubt read about those somewhere else. Rumour has it that some
people take drugs while they attend the festival, but I saw no evidence
of that(!). The audience consists of a wide range of people although it
is probably fair to say that they are mostly teenager/university
studends/recently graduated (that's me) in their early twenties. This
year all the tickets were sold out extremely quickly without there being
*any* publicity or *any* notice of what bands would be appearing. This
year was also remarkable for the fact that it rained very heavily on the
Thursday beforehand, turning the whole site into a muddy quagmire, but
the people still persevered anyway, exhibiting the so-calleed 'Dunkirk
spirit'.

So then: Radiohead.

Radiohead were headlining the main 'pyramid' stage on Saturday, one of
the three most prestigious spots in the whole festival (the other two
were held by The Prodigy and Steve Winwood, although he dropped out and
was replaced at the last minute by Ash, which is a bit of joke really).
Of all the people I spoke to, everyone bar one expected the Radiohead
performance to be the main highlight of the festival. This turned out to
be the case. This was also their first gig in the UK for roughly a
year and only their fourth in two years, and thus the first since OK
Computer came out. I have to state now that I had taken a herbal ecstasy
tablet before the set (it's perfectly legal, by the way) and was
therefore more than slightly overblown by the whole thing, but I hope to
provide a balanced account of the whole affair.

(track listing may not be in correct order)

One of my reasons for taking the ecstasy was that I caught most of the
Chemical Brothers' set on the second stage on the same evening, and
wanted to help the dancing along, which it did. I left in good time
before the end in order to get to the main stage. However, loads of other
people had the same idea, so the was a bit of a squash at a bottleneck on
a bridge. However I navigated that safely and, running through the mud,
made it to my tent (which was by the main stage) to drop my jacket and
jumper off as I was no longer cold after all that dancing. I then still
had time to work my way through all the crowds and to manage to get about
15 yards from the front, standing on a little hill, so I could see
everything and could refer to the video screens if I wanted to see, for
example, if Ed had a capo on the 12th fret during No Surprises (he did).
They came on and there was a huge cheer. Jonny came out a stood directly
in a spotlight and loooked out at the crowd in a very cool fashion while
the others picked up their instruments. Phil tapped at a symbol, Ed made
a faint screeching noise on his guitar, Thom walked on and they broke
into Lucky - it was amazing. It's kind of an odd song to start with, it
doesn't have that kick in the chest factor that something like The Bends
would have, but the crowd went mad anyway. I was dancing along (that's
the ecstasy) and belting out the lines which, to my surprise, did not
annoy anyone else. By complete chance I must have been in tune. Another
thing was that they were all pretty much dressed in black or near
equivalents (and all their instruments were mainly black), except for
when Colin took off his jumper halfway through to reveal a white t-shirt,
all in all it was a very gothic dress code. After Lucky, Ed got out his
E-Bow and as his guitar emitted a ominous drone Jonny cracked into the
opening riff of My Iron Lung, which got a huge cheer from the crowd. Thom
gave a great performance, really pained, but it was after this song that
I noticed something was wrong. Thom kept of signalling to the right of
the stage to the soundman about something. As the songs progressed, this
continued and it seemed as though Thom got more and more pissed off.
Despite this, they ratteled off effortless versions of Planet Telex (but
without Jonny playing guitar and keyboards simultaneously), Airbag (with
Colin on jingle bells), The Bends, Exit Music (From A Film). Thom hardly
said a word until he came straight out with, 'Andy, can you turn the
lights on the crowd, we haven't been able to see them yet.' This happened
and everyone let out a cheer, to which Thom replied something like, 'Oh,
there you are. This is called Paranoid Android.' This featured more
percussion from Colin (and thus no bass over most of the first section)
as well as Ed grinding what looked like a pepperpot into his microphone,
although you couldn't hear it. Following more hand signals, the soundman
came on during this song and switched round Ed and Thom's microphones,
which meant that Thom missed the whole 'You don't remember' section,
although it didn't seem to matter. Ed was truly remarkable for singing
the backing vocals in the 'Rain down' section and sounding as good as
Thom. They continued with an effective Nice Dream, before surprisingly
playing Creep, which understandably didn't sound like it was the song
that made them famous, in fact it didn't sound any more special than any
of the other songs. It felt like they had finally out grown the weight
that that song used to apply to them, as in they don't have to play it
and they don't have to not play it in order to stop themselves from going
mad. It was quite a revelation, for me at any rate. An epic Karma Police
followed and 'For a minute ther I lost myself' rang especially true.
Climbing Up The Walls, perhaps one of the most difficult songs to pull
off live was dragged out in its full glory, with Colin on keyboards
substituting the bass (recognise the similarity to Grant Lee Buffalo's
Bethlehem Steel, anyone?) and Jonny on, erm, what looked like a remote
control car handset. The frustration that Thom was having on stage
manifested itself during Talk Show Host and the 'If you want me, fucking
well come and get me' line seemed entirely appropriate as he ordered the
other members to finish the song early (as far as I could tell, as I
don't know the song that well myself). Thom ended standing with his arms
covering his eyes, clearly in some distress. Ed, Jonny and Colin all
walked up to him quickly and had a quick word, whereupon he returned to
the microphone and after a muttered 'OK', Jonny sliced into Bones. This
was followed by No Surprises, a frantic Just and Fake Plastic Trees - a
strange song to end the first part with, which leads me to think that
they ended this part early.

Only a few minutes later they all returned with Thom pointing to the
front of the stage and issuing the frank threat, 'Right, fucking turn
these lights off now and don't turn them back on or we won't do the rest
of the show. They've been blinding me all the time and I can't see a
thing.' With that Ed started up You, the only other Pablo Honey track in
the whole set, as has been the case with these recent shows. After that
Thom explained what had been going on, saying that they'd been having
problems with the equipment and speakers had been blowing up onstage and
so on, not that we cared [apparently] but thanks for being patient
anyway. They then played the next three songs straight: High And Dry, The
Tourist (which has Thom playing the mini-solo in the middle of that song)
and ended with Street Spirit, probably the song that most people were
waiting for. Throughout the show Jonny would turn his attention to
various keyboards scattered around his end of the stage, most notably in
Karma Police but also in other songs such as Exit Music (For a Film) and
Climbing Up The Walls.

And that was it. It's my secong time seeing Radiohead live, the first
time was when they were supporting R.E.M. at Milton Keynes, so this was
my first time seeing them headline. Roll on September when I get to see
them headline again in what will probably be their last tour of small
venues in the UK. Third time lucky? It's gonna be a glorious day.

Charles Reay-Smith