BY THE TIME Radiohead arrived in Australia for a national tour in early 1998, the band had released the second of a pair of albums vying for defining moments of the '90s and the ironic lines from "Lucky" - "I'm on a roll, I'm on a roll this time/I feel my luck could change" - were ironic no more. If anything, the frankly ridiculous eulogising of the band's third album OK Computer was at its peak. Not ridiculous because it wasn't true and justified but because it was serving to separate the band from the songs and in effect to demand a live performance almost beyond reality. It was a far cry from the tepid response given to their first Australian tour in 1994, which coincided with their one-off hit, "Creep".
"We're going to go away for six months after this tour, because there's been too much about us in the press and we are all slightly embarrassed about it, in a very English fashion," bassist Colin Greenwood told the Sydney Morning Herald during the tour. “And obviously, there will be a backlash. If you believe the hype, you have to believe the backlash, too. I don't believe either, so it's fine."
From within the psychologically frigid Sydney Entertainment Centre the backlash had begun in some quarters (one reviewer not waiting for the gig to go half an hour before rushing out to file a damning review – of the emperor/clothes variety) bur, equally, the squat grey box was filling with emotional intensity.
That emotion was all there was. There were no props, no flash, no Close Encounters light show and barely any talk from the hooded eyes of singer Thom Yorke. (And barely any sign of guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s eyes at all, his head bowed behind the wall of long lank hair.) But the music grabbed you, held you close, making its heartbeat your heartbeat. It was not possible to separate the physical and cerebral in your response; few chose to try. “Exit Music" and "Let Down" were drenched in feeling, almost crushing in the layers sadness, expectation, hope, wistfulness and yearning. It was too much; how could we be expected to keep this in? Some tried to stand to shake themselves free - to be ready for the next emotional load. Others in the mosh-free moshpit responded by barely moving, held there in stasis.
The escape came in the lashing of guitars accompanying the peaks of "My Iron Lung" or the elongated "Paranoid Android". The climax of the first "movement" of "Paranoid Android” began to release the tourniquet, but it was only an easing, a chance to breathe in quickly before the pressure returned. It was held in, pressing against the seams until the third, hard-driving movement flung open the gates. Let it out.
For wearing their intellect as prominently as their hearts, Radiohead uneasily wore the tag of prog rock. But it wasn’t as simple as that. Asked about the intricate "Paranoid Android", Colin Greenwood's answer ostensibly was about the song's construction but equally applied to the way the band ripped itself open throughout 1997-98. "It was more about taking things apart and sticking them together again to see if they made any sense,” he said.
The disorientation and dislocation examined on OK Computer found its full flower in the subsequent world tour, the rat in a maze life captured on the most dispiriting and yet doggedly purposeful music documentary, Meeting People Is Easy. Having told us four years earlier in "Creep", "I don't be long here", Radiohead used OK Computer to say, “I can’t get out of here”. And yet, the band’s shows were no cries for relief from them of calls for help from us; it was an exchange, a dual catharsis, maybe even a purging. At the end of the gig there was stillness. The turbulence had subsided but there was no rush to leave, no urge to speak. In fact, there was little to say, or little ability to articulate it yet. "No alarms and no surprises... silence."