the band weren’t likely to go anywhere. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1990 they made one of their most important decisions when Jonny moved from keyboard to guitar. That was when they started playing songs for the first time that would, eventually, appear on Radiohead records.
“Phil was away for that summer and I was filling in and drumming for the band,” says Nigel. “They did ‘How Can You Be Sure?’ which ended up as a B-Side for The Bends . The whole band was driving ahead and not wanting to look back so they did tend to kill off old material as new material arrived. It was that summer that they actually started sounding like Radiohead. At that point Jonny said, ‘I play guitar as well, so maybe we could have three guitarists?’ So they did and started coming up with this wall of sound thing.”
“The early incarnations of On A Friday sounded like Haircut 100 or something,” says Shaun McCrindle. “I remember Thom played me one of the On A Friday demos called ‘What Is That You Say?’ which I’ve seen listed as ‘What Is That You See’ and I think it was one of the first tracks that Jonny played guitar on. It had all this feedback guitar. That was massively different from the funky guitar, Haircut 100 thing they’d had before.”
A tape of fourteen songs from that period, labelled On A Friday/Shindig demos shows the variation in their sound. The first track ‘Climbing Up A Bloody Great Hill’ is highly accomplished but rather cheesy funk-rock with a chirpy brass sound, a slick 1980s bass line and an incongruously louche vocal from Thom. If it had been a song like that which had propelled them to global stardom, Thom would never have had to worry about being seen as a moping miserabilist! Although it was recorded at Clifton Hampden VillageHall in Oxfordshire, and despite some gloomy lyrics, it sounds like Thom had a Santa Monica beach on his mind.
The rest of the tape leaps around wildly: the highlights of ‘The Greatest Shindig In The World’ and ‘How Can You Be Sure?’ were later recorded as B-sides for The Bends singles (the former re-titled ‘Maquiladora’). They were both songs that were recognisably Radiohead. Other songs, like ‘Something’ and ‘Life With The Big F’ sound like Headless Chickens. They have that same jaunty, Wonder Stuff-inspired late 1980s indie vibe.
Elsewhere, though, there are tracks like ‘Rattlesnake In The Big City’ and ‘Everyone Needs Someone To Hate’ that contain cheap, Casio beats and a kind of rap from Thom. Neither of them sounds particularly serious. One track ‘Tell Me Bitch’ is speeded-up ska with a chipmunk vocal that anticipates another Oxford band Supergrass’s ‘We’re Not Supposed To’. These tracks show imagination but not much else.
Part of the change in their sound is explained by their decision to tell the horn section that their services were no longer required. It wasn’t easy for Colin. “It was up to me to fire them since they were my friends – we’re still friends, they still talk to me because they respected my honesty,” he said later. “When things started to happen, it wasn’t really practical to have three alto saxes.”
“There were just too many people on stage,” a friend of the band, Oxford act The Candyskins’ Mark Cope told me. “What they were doing was more like guitar music anyway. They realised you could make all these different sounds with guitar and effects.”
It must have been frustrating to have so many songs but so little opportunity to play them or work on them. Nevertheless, at the end of 1990 they started sending tapes out to labels and one of them ended up in the hands of Chris Hufford and Bryce Edge. The two of them had been in a band themselves in the 1980s, Aerial FX, but at the start of the 1990s they ran a recording studio in Oxfordshire called Courtyard. They’d twice had their fingers burnt by the music industry. Once when they signed a record deal and saw things fall
“Phil was away for that summer and I was filling in and drumming for the band,” says Nigel. “They did ‘How Can You Be Sure?’ which ended up as a B-Side for The Bends . The whole band was driving ahead and not wanting to look back so they did tend to kill off old material as new material arrived. It was that summer that they actually started sounding like Radiohead. At that point Jonny said, ‘I play guitar as well, so maybe we could have three guitarists?’ So they did and started coming up with this wall of sound thing.”
“The early incarnations of On A Friday sounded like Haircut 100 or something,” says Shaun McCrindle. “I remember Thom played me one of the On A Friday demos called ‘What Is That You Say?’ which I’ve seen listed as ‘What Is That You See’ and I think it was one of the first tracks that Jonny played guitar on. It had all this feedback guitar. That was massively different from the funky guitar, Haircut 100 thing they’d had before.”
A tape of fourteen songs from that period, labelled On A Friday/Shindig demos shows the variation in their sound. The first track ‘Climbing Up A Bloody Great Hill’ is highly accomplished but rather cheesy funk-rock with a chirpy brass sound, a slick 1980s bass line and an incongruously louche vocal from Thom. If it had been a song like that which had propelled them to global stardom, Thom would never have had to worry about being seen as a moping miserabilist! Although it was recorded at Clifton Hampden VillageHall in Oxfordshire, and despite some gloomy lyrics, it sounds like Thom had a Santa Monica beach on his mind.
The rest of the tape leaps around wildly: the highlights of ‘The Greatest Shindig In The World’ and ‘How Can You Be Sure?’ were later recorded as B-sides for The Bends singles (the former re-titled ‘Maquiladora’). They were both songs that were recognisably Radiohead. Other songs, like ‘Something’ and ‘Life With The Big F’ sound like Headless Chickens. They have that same jaunty, Wonder Stuff-inspired late 1980s indie vibe.
Elsewhere, though, there are tracks like ‘Rattlesnake In The Big City’ and ‘Everyone Needs Someone To Hate’ that contain cheap, Casio beats and a kind of rap from Thom. Neither of them sounds particularly serious. One track ‘Tell Me Bitch’ is speeded-up ska with a chipmunk vocal that anticipates another Oxford band Supergrass’s ‘We’re Not Supposed To’. These tracks show imagination but not much else.
Part of the change in their sound is explained by their decision to tell the horn section that their services were no longer required. It wasn’t easy for Colin. “It was up to me to fire them since they were my friends – we’re still friends, they still talk to me because they respected my honesty,” he said later. “When things started to happen, it wasn’t really practical to have three alto saxes.”
“There were just too many people on stage,” a friend of the band, Oxford act The Candyskins’ Mark Cope told me. “What they were doing was more like guitar music anyway. They realised you could make all these different sounds with guitar and effects.”
It must have been frustrating to have so many songs but so little opportunity to play them or work on them. Nevertheless, at the end of 1990 they started sending tapes out to labels and one of them ended up in the hands of Chris Hufford and Bryce Edge. The two of them had been in a band themselves in the 1980s, Aerial FX, but at the start of the 1990s they ran a recording studio in Oxfordshire called Courtyard. They’d twice had their fingers burnt by the music industry. Once when they signed a record deal and saw things fall
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