Radiohead Won't Play By Rules

LONDON -- It's highly unusual in these days of scientifically coordinated marketing campaigns to find an act that has no qualms about risking commercial gain to maintain its creative self-government. But "highly unusual" is Radiohead through and through.

The British group -- whose last Capitol set, 1997's "OK Computer," has sold 1.2 million copies in the U.S., according to SoundScan, and 4.5 million worldwide by label estimate -- is preparing to release its hotly anticipated fourth album, "Kid A," with some typically nontraditional tactics. There'll be no single, no conventional video, and no U.S. tour, at least not until next year -- and by then, there could even be another Radiohead album.

Even to consider such exceptions to the marketing rule book is a measure of Radiohead's artistic conviction, its prominent standing within its record company, and the huge groundswell of support for one of the U.K.'s few genuine international guitar-based groups. But then, the "guitar-based" description itself is under siege on the remarkable "Kid A," due Oct. 3 in the U.S. on Capitol and in Canada on EMI. (In Japan, the album streets Sept. 27 on Toshiba-EMI. It will be released in the rest of the world a day earlier on Parlophone/EMI.)

The highly adventurous record (see track-by-track analysis, this page) often distances Radiohead from its recognizable electric and acoustic guitar framework in favor of audacious new sonic experimentation that is by turns mesmerizing, disconcerting, and exhilarating.

Capitol will service a promotional CD of the track "Optimistic" to rock radio Sept. 18 and will ship the entire album (produced by the band with longtime associate Nigel Godrich) to radio a week later, but programmers will be encouraged to take an old-fashioned proactive stance in choosing music from "Kid A." In place of a standard video, some 40 "video blips" have been produced, featuring a range of esoteric images and clips from the album, but with little visual evidence of the band itself.

"We'd rather not make a record than make another record that sounds like 'OK Computer,' " says guitarist Ed O'Brien. "We've done that. What's the point, unless you're in it for the lifestyle? We've done this record this way because we want to carry on making a record a year, and we haven't been in that position because the industry doesn't let you."

Radiohead's discomfort in dealing with the byproducts of popularity is nothing new. Speaking to Billboard in 1997, lead singer Thom Yorke told this writer, "I never want to be in the situation where because you are who you are, people snarl at you, like 'Oh, it's that lot,' like suddenly when people look at you in a different way. I don't think I can handle that. Most of the time I have panic attacks about what will be the consequences of [making] this [record] and what we will be doing."

It has been an open secret that the recording of "Kid A" was often fraught with creative infertility, and O'Brien's postings to the band's Web site became the focus of much industry attention. Work began on the album in January 1999 in Paris, followed by an equally unproductive period in Copenhagen before the band moved into a Gloucestershire mansion in southwest England in the spring. By August, O'Brien was writing in his Web diary that "nothing substantial" had resulted from any of those sessions.

The band's own studio, close to its hometown of Oxford, was finally ready for members to work in by September, but progress was still slow. "We all thought several times that we might not see the other side of it," says O'Brien. The turning point came when it reconvened after last Christmas. "Before we knew it, by the end of March, we had 22 or 23 songs finished."

The band is already considering the possible release in 2001 of some or all of the 13 songs completed but not used on "Kid A." The idea certainly doesn't faze Parlophone U.K. managing director Keith Wozencroft. "Come January," he says, "we may well be talking about another album. I do see another record next year."

Capitol senior VP of A&R Perry Watts-Russell is similarly supportive. "They're widely considered to be one of the best live bands in the world, but they're not going to tour in the States for at least six months," he says. "They're widely acknowledged to have made some of the best videos ever, and they're not going to make any videos. They can churn out very radio-friendly songs, but they're choosing to go down another path there.

"To me that's all good news," Watts-Russell continues. "Does it make our life more difficult? Yes, it does, but it also challenges us to find other ways of doing things. Everything comes from the music."

Radiohead played dates throughout Europe this summer to work in new songs and reintroduce itself to the road. Anticipation for the album, thus seeded, has grown with a series of U.K. and international playbacks of "Kid A," at which journalists were invited to listen in a conducively serene atmosphere on cordless headphones, resulting in excited "early impression" reviews everywhere from the New Musical Express to allstar.com.

The band then started its Under a Big Top tour Sept. 2 in Newport, Wales, transporting its own 10,000-capacity tent from town to town. After dates in Holland, Denmark, Belgium, and France, it will play three sold-out London shows Sept. 23-25 at Victoria Park, with an extensive British itinerary thereafter.

Retailers contacted by Billboard had yet to hear the album but acknowledged the keen anticipation. Chris Roberts, a buyer for Welsh indie retailer Cob Records in Bangor, says, "Radiohead always go really well around here; I think it will fly out. We just had people in asking about it two or three minutes ago. Expectations are pretty high."

Alex Huskisson, mail-order manager for independent retail and mail-order store Badlands in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, says, "I think [interest in it] is going to take off soon. It'll be interesting to see how it sells, with the fact that they aren't promoting it in the usual way."

Wozencroft, who was instrumental in signing the band during his A&R days at Parlophone, sympathizes with its motives entirely.

"The more I go along the roots of the project, the more [of the] music I listen to, I totally understand the vision the band had," he says. "I don't see [the album] as anything other than commercial. The music and visuals work perfectly together."

Just ahead of "Kid A," Yorke will be heard dueting with Björk on "I've Seen It All Before," from One Little Indian's soundtrack to the Lars Von Trier movie "Dancer In The Dark," in which Björk stars. That album will be released Sept. 18 in the U.K.

Meanwhile, the story of Radiohead's evolution up to and including the "Kid A" sessions is documented in "Exit Music: The Radiohead Story," a new band biography by Mac Randall, published Tuesday (12) in the U.S. by Delta.

Also with serendipitous timing, an extensive new survey of consumer and media album tastes reveals Radiohead reaching new levels of acclaim. Colin Larkin's "All-Time Top 1000 Albums," a poll of the favorite music of 200,000 music lovers in the U.K. and beyond, published Sept. 7 in Britain by Virgin, shows that the band is now challenging the traditional supremacy of the Beatles themselves.

"Revolver" holds at No. 1 on the survey, but Radiohead's "The Bends" climbs to No. 2 (it was No. 10 in the most recent edition, from 1998), while "OK Computer" moves 21-4, braced by "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "The Beatles" (popularly known as "The White Album").

Those ratings were greeted with some surprise in the U.K. media, but the band's work has always made a powerful connection with its audience, even if the effects were sometimes not immediately obvious. In 1997, Yorke recalled for Billboard that two years earlier "The Bends" only charted in the U.K. at No. 6 in the same week that Elastica's self-titled debut entered at No. 1.

"We were on tour and just thought, 'Whatever.' Then, a year after that, I'd go into a club, and some drunk bloke would come up to me and grab me and shake me and say, 'This album changed my life,' " he said.

With daytime pop radio airplay in the U.K. unlikely to materialize on "Kid A," Parlophone and Courtyard are focusing early radio exposure at the BBC's national top 40 station Radio 1. On Sept. 18, presenter Steve Lamacq's "Evening Session" show will premiere the album in a special show from Paris, also featuring interviews with the band.

"Radio 1 and its listeners have had a very rewarding relationship with Radiohead over their three studio albums," says Alex Jones-Donelly, editor of Radio 1 music policy. "We're excited to be premiering the new album." Of its musical direction, Jones-Donelly says, "What strikes me on a first listen is that it's certainly a challenging but exciting body of work, with new textures and a strong sense of flow."

Chris Hufford, who co-manages Radiohead with Bryce Edge for Courtyard Management, adds that there are plans for a Radio 1 live broadcast of the band's Oct. 2 U.K. show in Warrington, Cheshire, in northwest England.

Meanwhile, Capitol will bring key U.S. radio programmers over to London for the group's Sept. 23 Victoria Park concert date. A possible video project may result from new tour footage being shot by Grant Gee, the director of the Radiohead tour film "Meeting People Is Easy."

"We're going to push for exposure in every way possible and be true to the record," says Capitol president Roy Lott. "In this day and age, when you keep reading about consumers being upset that the rest of a record doesn't sound like the song on the radio, in this case we've got an album that really stands up as an album."

Radiohead is planning one U.S. show next month and is also booked to perform Oct. 14 on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." Clips from the album, plus video images, are already appearing at Capitol's hollywood andvine.com site, and artwork can be viewed at the band's site, radiohead.com.

On Sept. 5, approximately 200 journalists and 400 lucky fans—some of whom had waited overnight in a line that spanned a city block—filled the Sony IMAX theater in New York's Lincoln Square for the first North