

That’s not to say that the band didn’t try to re-record the album’s dream-like final single again, but they ended up going back to the first time for the cut that made the album. It ended up as a storming piano ballad, but the title ‘Karma Police’ began life as an in-joke between members of Radiohead, who would warn each other that the "karma police" would get them if they didn't behave. ‘Karma Police’ started out as a band in-joke… No wonder the crowds weren’t all that lively. The band tried this version out during their tour with Morissette. The first edit was over 14 minutes long and included a long organ interlude performed by Jonny Greenwood. The final version of the band’s sprawling masterpiece clocked in at a hefty six minutes and 27 seconds, but the original recording was much, much longer. The first edit of ‘Paranoid Android’ was a proper epic… While the lyric stuck around, the title was understandably slimmed down to just ‘Airbag’. When it was first written the LP’s opening salvo was named ‘Last Night An Airbag Saved My Life’. The LP’s opener was originally named something much longer… OK Computer had two different working titles, the first was Your Home May Be At Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments, the second was the more chilling Ones And Zeroes. The album had a couple of very odd working titles… Morissette was riding very, very high on the success of Jagged Little Pill at the time and attracted a very young fanbase, a fanbase that Radiohead had a very hard time with. Radiohead were a few weeks into sessions for the album when, under pressure from their American record label Capitol, decided to put things on ice and head out on tour with the Canadian songstress. The band roadtested the album as they supported Alanis Morissette…
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The series was a favourite of the band’s as they listened to it throughout their tour in support of The Bends.
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The title OK Computer is taken from the 1974 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, in which the character Zaphod Beeblebrox speaks the phrase "Okay, computer, I want full manual control now". The title is taken from Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy…

Most of the album was recorded in the house of a British acting legend…Īfter they were initially unhappy with Canned Applause studio near their homes in Oxfordshire, the band decamped to St Catherine's Court, a historic mansion near Bath owned by actress Jane Seymour, star of Live and Let Die, East Of Eden and much, much more. In the end Nigel Godrich, who’d engineered the band’s earlier work, was brought in to help out and ended up co-producing with the band. The band turned down a lot of big names producers…Īfter completing The Bends with The Stone Roses/Simple Minds producer John Leckie, the band decided that for their third effort they would self-produce, turning down offers from big-name producers, including Scott Litt, the man who’d been brought in to add a radio friendly sheen to Nirvana’s In Utero and had been at the controls for R.E.M’s iconic Automatic For The People. To celebrate its re-release, we dug through the archives and brought together 10 things we reckon you probably didn’t know about OK Computer. You can get full details of the reissue here. Today, the same day the band headline Glastonbury for a third time, the album celebrates its 20th anniversary with a lavish re-release, complete with three unreleased tracks and eight B-sides, all newly remastered from the original analogue tapes. It was bold, it frightened label execs, but it proved very fruitful, selling over four and a half million copies of an album that remains one of the best ever to be produced by a British band. Instead they delivered an album full of experimentation and boundless invention, tracks that varied from six-minute epics to short interludes, strings, glockenspiels and strange electronics were thrown together, all set to Thom Yorke’s lyrics, which were full of paranoia and panic. But the Oxford fivesome had no interest in doing either of those things.

Their label Parlophone were expecting another round of rousing indie anthems to capitalise on the all-conquering success of Britpop and handed the band a big recording budget.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About… Radiohead’s OK ComputerĪll the talk before Radiohead unveiled their third album OK Computer was about whether they could top The Bends.
