After The Flaming Lips I managed to wrangle my way within 3 heads of the front barrier and the excitement started to stir as the roadies dragged on amp after amp, tom-tom drums and endless piles of crazed electronics. Somewhere to stage right, REM and Mr Eavis himself are watching and then the lights cut out and the dark techno B-side Where Bluebirds Fly starts pulsing out of the sound system and Radiohead bound on stage in an eruption of screams and fainting.
Ed and Johnny attack the Tom Toms with savagery – There There growls along- Yorke jittering around as the crowd work gets more and more intense: people are plunging over the barrier like lemmings and, Dear God! Is that Phil Jupitus in the wings, nodding approvingly? Can things get any better?
But of course. 2+2=5 creeps and wails and detonates, Johnny veering around and pulling himself apart, Sit Down Sand up sees Yorke screaming RAINDROPS! RAINDROPS! RAINDROPS! And sail to the moon is some kind of deathly silent pressure drop – it’s beautiful, and I don’t ordinarily care for it.
I guess I could keep talking about individual songs and Thom forgetting his words in Karma Police and stuff like that, but I would be missing the point somewhat. Radiohead seemed hyped and excited and happy. Ed couldn’t stop grinning and Thom – who has a history with the blue meanies – was smiling and dancing, cracking odd jokes and generally having fun. During Everything In Its Right Place he left his piano and looked out at the teeming mass of people there to see his band play. A little smile tweaked his mouth. I guess it wasn’t what they play as such, but the way it sounded and how it felt to be there.
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Reading the Q guide a couple of days later, I was told that Radiohead split the gig between all six albums. Well, that’s not true and this is my only gripe, a small one. Amnesiac is perhaps my favourite Radiohead album but because none of it would ever grab a seat on ‘Radiohead’s Greatest Hits’, it didn’t get played live. The majority came from Hail To The Thief, Ok Computer and The Bends. No Pablo Honey or Amnesiac and only two from Kid A – including a thundering National Anthem. I guess when you’re headlining Glastonbury you’ve got to wheel out the big guns.
Ha! But what guns – Street Spirit, Paranoid Android, No Surprises, Just and the gargantuan sing along that was Fake Plastic Trees. And as Karma Police ended the first encore and the band walked off, Thom paused a second, going solo – just for a minute there, I lost myself.
Radiohead aren’t up and coming anymore, they aren’t breaking into the big time – it’s all behind them and long gone. There’s probably flecks of grey in the beards and the legions of garage rock chancres in scuffed leather jackets may be snapping at the heels, but they still love what they’re doing and there isn’t a better band on the planet as far as I’m concerned.
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