I first saw Radiohead live at a leisure centre in Reading. It was September 1997 and I’d just turned 17 — spots on my face, fake ID. I went to the gig with friends and, while we planned to talk to girls at the bar beforehand, we couldn’t get served, so ended up throwing stones in the Thames instead. I lost my trainer in Paranoid Android, found it again during No Surprises, and would go onto see Radiohead at least 15 more times, from Wolverhampton to Chicago. It was a glorious day.
That turnaround is precisely what the band achieves for so many die-hard fans. First, lift them out of any gloom they might be feeling; second, turn them into slightly dreary obsessives — Hiya! — who just don’t understand why everyone isn’t sitting around talking about B-sides like Cuttooth.
Anyway, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway are back — for 20 dates in the UK and Europe this winter, their first for seven years. Tickets go on sale on September 12 and, well, good luck to the original ’Heads like myself, because something has changed with Radiohead fandom since that mid-sized gym in Berkshire.
Superfan Jonathan Dean in a Radiohead T-shirt
Thirty years ago, received wisdom said that Radiohead were for teenagers not confident enough for Britpop but who wanted to learn about existentialism. Now? Oxfordshire’s finest have long shed the nerdy label to become cool, in the process changing preconceptions that have plagued them since the 1990s.
Because, back then, everyone thought they were miserable. The jibes started with their breakthrough hit Creep and, to be fair, any song that goes “I wish I was special” is pretty bleak. Naysayers can have that one.
Then, though, Radiohead fans had to deal with Clueless (1995). In the high-school-set film, Josh (Paul Rudd) listens to the band a lot, leading popular girl Cher (Alicia Silverstone) to call them “complaint rock”. Ouch — such ammunition to wags who make hyper-original wrist-slitting gestures whenever you mentioned The Bends album.
However, consider the evidence. Not only does Josh end up dating Cher, but Rudd became his generation’s sweetheart — not a creep, not a weirdo, but a hunk.
So Radiohead fans were right. They were correct in their 1997 decision to say quietly that OK Computer was, perhaps, better than Oasis’s Be Here Now. And the band’s innate coolness only blossomed at the start of the century with Kid A’s release in 2000. Faced with a future filling stadiums, Yorke et al opted instead for electronica — and created their best music yet: rhythmic, elegiac sounds so far from being depressing that they are essentially aural Prozac.
What’s more, while it is one thing to be inspired, as music of the 1990s was, by the Beatles, our parents grew up with them. Not cool. From Kid A onwards, however, Radiohead introduced me to Aphex Twin, Sigur Rós and Autechre; plus old-timers Miles Davis and Scott Walker, because that was the music seeping into their new songs. If it weren’t for Kid A, I would be listening to the pub rock of Britpop dregs Menswear. Curiosity, frankly, is cool.
Thom Yorke on stage at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas in 2016
GARY MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
• My dream Radiohead setlist for their 2025 comeback tour
As is telling everybody to buy Naomi Klein’s anti-corporate book No Logo, as Yorke did in 2000. (I have read 30 pages in 25 years.) Also, it was cool to offer their 2008 album, In Rainbows, for free. And yet what is perhaps coolest of all is that every anti-commercial move has backfired. On Spotify, Radiohead boast 40.7 million monthly listeners; nine million more than Oasis, 30 million more than Blur.
Their fanbase, then, has grown to encompass all ages and races. It is wide and entirely random. In 2020, Helen Mirren wore a Radiohead jacket on the red carpet, while everyone from Madonna to Daniel Craig has attended shows. They soundtracked the fireworks at Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt’s wedding.
Helen Mirren wearing a Radiohead jacket at the Berlin film festival in 2020
THOMAS NIEDERMUELLER/GETTY IMAGES
At a small dinner a few years ago, a friend was sitting at a table with Jay-Z and Beyoncé when they began a game of “Name Your Favourite Act”. An intimidating crowd, and the only answer that wasn’t scoffed at by anyone present was Radiohead, of course.
So stick with it, acne-ridden Jonathan — you are on the right side of history. Because from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet playing Talk Show Host as the film introduces Leonardo DiCaprio, to Everything in its Right Place soundtracking Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky, no band has inspired the savvier side of Hollywood in this way since Martin Scorsese used the Rolling Stones in Mean Streets.
A jubilant crowd watch Radiohead’s performance at Glastonbury in 2017
MATT CROSSICK/ EMPICS ENTERTAINMENT
Acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson is a friend of Yorke, and filmed him and his Italian actress wife Dajana Roncione dancing through brutalist landscapes for a video a few years ago. In it, Yorke looks free. He is having fun. Fans have followed his lead — he showed introverted teenagers that the world is a better place when you open up to it.
“If I can’t enjoy this now, when do I start?” he said years ago — a sentiment that sums up precisely how a band, a man and his devoted fans feel about these winter gigs. It’s been a journey. Now we’re ready to have the time of our lives.