Rock And Hard Places Part 1

Rock and Hard Places.

Travels to Backstages, Frontlines and a.s.sorted Sideshows.

by Andrew Mueller.

Introduction.

ZAGREB, CROATIA, AUGUST 2009.

IT IS A fitting happenstance of deadline that I'm writing this here and now-in Zagreb, Croatia, in between U2's two shows at Maksimir Stadium. As the thrillingly witty pun that serves as this book's t.i.tle suggests, the reportage gathered in this volume straddles, with varying degrees of chafing, the realms of rock'n'roll and conflict, and it's a version of that same ungainly feat that U2 are attempting here. The two nights U2 are playing in Zagreb are their first shows ever in Croatia, and their first anywhere in the former Yugoslavia since they took their gaudy, glitzy PopMart PopMart circus to the shattered Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1997. circus to the shattered Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1997.

That these shows are essentially a long-delayed sequel to the Bosnian outing was acknowledged last night in Bono's introduction to "One," U2's supremely versatile lament for the loss of love, faith or whatever you're (not) having yourself. "The next song," he'd said, "means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Tonight, we want to play it for everyone in this region who has had their warm hearts broken by cold ideas." As the crowd recognised it, there was a palpable shift in the atmosphere: a warm summer night suddenly felt a few degrees chillier. I've heard this song played dozens of times in dozens of cities, Sarajevo in 1997 among them, but it has never sounded better than it did last night, which is to say it has never sounded more wounded and reproachful, Edge's scuffed-up guitar itching like an unresolved tension. U2 faded "One" into an excerpt from The Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody"; in the Balkans of all places, the phrase "time can do so much" hit a note somewhere between a threat and a promise.

If this book is about any one thing-which, just so we're clear on this, it very definitely isn't-it's about moments like that, when music steps beyond its boundaries of verse and chorus and becomes a soundtrack or accompaniment to something somewhat larger than itself.

THIS IS THE second introduction I've written for this book. I wrote the first a little over a decade ago, when a slightly different version of Rock and Hard Places Rock and Hard Places was published in the United Kingdom to widespread indifference (it was, however, a minor if weirdly enduring cult hit in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, from where I still receive emails about it with baffling regularity; I can only conclude that the entire print run was mistakenly loaded onto a barge bound down the Danube, where it ran aground and was subsequently looted by delirious locals in some sort of was published in the United Kingdom to widespread indifference (it was, however, a minor if weirdly enduring cult hit in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, from where I still receive emails about it with baffling regularity; I can only conclude that the entire print run was mistakenly loaded onto a barge bound down the Danube, where it ran aground and was subsequently looted by delirious locals in some sort of Whiskey Galore Whiskey Galore scenario). Having just re-read said introduction for the first time in nearly that long, I've decided to lose almost all of it except the headline. scenario). Having just re-read said introduction for the first time in nearly that long, I've decided to lose almost all of it except the headline.

It's not that I believe the original introduction is bad, exactly. Indeed, for something composed in a hungover fog in a hotel room in Boston-where I was, at the time, on tour with The Cardigans-it's reasonably coherent, and contains what I still think is quite a good joke about orangutans. It's just that ten years is a long time, in which much has happened, both to the world in general and to the journalist meandering about in it. The difference between the world this book was first published in, and the world this book is being re-published in, is neatly ill.u.s.trated by the blurb which appeared on the cover of the first edition-and which, for reasons which will become clear presently, does not appear on the cover of this one. It was contributed by the very great P.J. O'Rourke, who very kindly appended his name to an observation that the writing about rock music and various screwed-up locations contained herein was "as spectacular as a Taliban attack on Lollapalooza-which come to think of it, isn't a bad idea." Which is to say that, back in 1999, the idea of a gaggle of religious cranks based in Afghanistan threatening the destruction of an American inst.i.tution seemed so preposterous as to be the stuff of throwaway whimsy.

All the pieces in this book were first commissioned as journalism by various publications (except the last one-incredibly, n.o.body wanted to spend money on an account of taking a country band on tour in Albania. And they wonder why n.o.body's buying newspapers anymore). The versions of them collected herein are, however, longer than those which were originally printed, which is to say I've put back in all the jokes, digressions, tangents and a crashingly self-indulgent flourishes which are invariably-and usually quite rightly-the first things to perish when an editor swishes his machete at one's copy. As will be noted by the dozens of owners of the initial pressing of Rock and Hard Places Rock and Hard Places, as they while away long winter evenings by comparing that with this, some old stories have been jettisoned in favour of some newer ones. The older ones appear, despite the occasionally retrospectively horrified urges of the author, unaltered from last time out-except for a few excisions of trivial and now irrelevant references to contemporary phenomena, which really didn't merit the explanatory footnotes that leaving them in would have necessitated. The new ones don't have quite so many trivial and irrelevant references to contemporary phenomena: let it not be said that I've learnt nothing these last ten years. And all the stories have introductions composed especially for this volume, seeking to place them in their proper context, wrap up what happened next, and/or basically explain to the reader what the heck the author thought he was doing at the time.

Rock and Hard Places is not intended to be a serious, or even a frivolous, portrait of our times (my other book, is not intended to be a serious, or even a frivolous, portrait of our times (my other book, I Wouldn't Start From Here I Wouldn't Start From Here is, however, and remains freely available) or of anything else. The stories gathered here have nothing much to do with each other except that I wrote them, so taken as a whole, this tome doesn't really demonstrate much besides the sorts of things that can happen when someone decides to be a rock journalist, and then a travel writer, and then a foreign correspondent and, finally, a country singer. I have gleaned some insights along the way, however. Young men carry electric guitars and rifles with the same insouciant swagger, both implements prized as they are by vindictive and resentful males for the instant, if often ill-deserved, gravitas they confer. In countries at war, the food is invariably worse than in countries at peace, but the coffee is always better. The more alcohol a people drink, the worse they look, except in Iceland. The major difference between America and the rest of the world is that America is unconcerned about becoming Americanised. Finally and most importantly, travelling yields no answers, but it does, if you keep your eyes and ears open, occasionally give you ideas for better questions. is, however, and remains freely available) or of anything else. The stories gathered here have nothing much to do with each other except that I wrote them, so taken as a whole, this tome doesn't really demonstrate much besides the sorts of things that can happen when someone decides to be a rock journalist, and then a travel writer, and then a foreign correspondent and, finally, a country singer. I have gleaned some insights along the way, however. Young men carry electric guitars and rifles with the same insouciant swagger, both implements prized as they are by vindictive and resentful males for the instant, if often ill-deserved, gravitas they confer. In countries at war, the food is invariably worse than in countries at peace, but the coffee is always better. The more alcohol a people drink, the worse they look, except in Iceland. The major difference between America and the rest of the world is that America is unconcerned about becoming Americanised. Finally and most importantly, travelling yields no answers, but it does, if you keep your eyes and ears open, occasionally give you ideas for better questions.

1.

IN A BLUE YORKE STATE OF MIND.

Radiohead in America OCTOBER 1995.

ALMOST ALL TOUR features in all almost all music journals are frauds perpetrated against the reader. The wretched reality masked by the "On the road with . . ." headline is almost invariably as follows. The journalist is flown somewhere at the grudging expense of the band's record company. Arrangements are made for said hack to attend two-perhaps, if they're incredibly lucky, three-consecutive shows of the tour in question, ideally in towns not too inconveniently and expensively far apart. A formal interview will be scheduled in a dead hour one afternoon along the way, after lunch and before soundcheck, so that sufficient quotes to fill the writer's word count may be prised from the half-asleep singer. An invitation may also be extended to one or more after-show parties. In the event that the band actually deign to turn up at one of these wing-dings, the ranking of the journalist in their order of priorities may be precisely calculated by counting how many famous people, influential music industry panjandrums, and attractive young women are also in the room (one swiftly learns to avoid the rookie error of pitching for the gigs in big, glamorous cities: the solidarity fostered by adverse circ.u.mstances, and the absence of anything else to do, ensures that you'll generally get far more out of any given band when they're marooned in some misbegotten midwestern swamp than you will when they're larging it in Los Angeles or New York). After all of which the journalist will transcribe his tape, decipher whatever notes he might have scrawled, meditate briefly upon the relative nature of truth, and compose a few thousand words subtly conveying the impression that he had bonded with the group in question to the extent that they had all but asked him to join.

The story that follows, originally written as a cover feature for Melody Maker, was an exception to the above rules-as are, in general, all the tour stories gathered in this book (the ones about underwhelming encounters with Belgian art rock ensembles, and waiting three days in Seattle's Four Seasons hotel for a fifteen-minute interview with a band whose management were suffering terrifying delusions of majesty, are being saved for a subsequent, woefully inferior and utterly shameless cash-in volume). It isn't a definitive portrait of the subjects. Indeed, it would be ridiculous to have entertained any pretensions of that sort-how firm a grip on the essence of your being would someone have who'd just hung around and watched you at work for a few days? It is, however, a reasonable summation of what sticks in the memory after a few days on tour: the fleeting impressions, of unfamiliar places and people, smudged at the edges by drink, jetlag and exhaustion, haphazardly focused by the oncoming deadline.

"IT'S A VERY good idea," nods Thom Yorke. "It's not the idea I'm arguing with. The idea, in itself, is fine."

Thom, sungla.s.sed and shrouded in an enormous fake black fur coat, is sitting on a luggage trolley in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Hartford, Connecticut. He has just stumbled off the tour bus after a long drive from Philadelphia. Behind him, a bow-tied porter hovers vaguely, as if unsure whether to heave this bedraggled apparition into the street, or ask him which room he'd liked to be wheeled to. Crouched on the floor in front of Thom, Radiohead's ba.s.splayer, Colin Greenwood, is earnestly outlining his plans.

"My question," continues Thom, at pains to sound reasonable, "is where the f.u.c.king h.e.l.l we're going to find five hundred f.u.c.king ping-pong b.a.l.l.s at short notice in this f.u.c.king place on a Sunday afternoon."

A pensive silence ensues. Thom has a fair point. I'd hardly been able to find a cold beer in Hartford at eleven o'clock last night.

"We'll just have to think of something else," says Thom, and chews on a thumbnail.

AN HOUR LATER, with everyone washed, changed and infused with caffeine, we pile into a minibus to the venue, and Colin explains a few things. Tonight, Radiohead will play the last of their shows as the support act on R.E.M.'s "Monster" tour. They have been warned to expect some sort of practical joke by way of farewell. Clearly believing that revenge is a dish best served pre-cooked, Radiohead (Thom, Colin, drummer Phil Selway, guitarists Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood-from whom, presumably, Thom stole the "h") have been plotting their retribution in advance.

"Mike Mills," says Colin, "told us not to wear anything we want to wear again."

"Paint," speculates Thom, gloomily. "It'll be paint. Or custard pies. Oh, G.o.d."

"So the idea with the ping-pong b.a.l.l.s," continues Colin, "was that we'd get the roadies up in the lighting gantries above the stage to drop them on R.E.M. during the last song."

A contemplative hush settles as we drive through Hartford. If you've never driven through Hartford, the effect can be recreated in the comfort and safety of your own home by going to sleep. I flew in from London last night with Melody Maker photographer Pat Pope and Radiohead's press officer, Caffy St Luce. Our efforts to hit Hartford and paint the town red had come to nought; we couldn't even claim to have painted the town beige. The first place we tried was a sports bar, decorated with fading hockey pennants and populated by four lone, middle-aged men staring morosely into their drinks. We asked the barman what people in Hartford did for fun. "They come here, sir," he replied. We finished up in a deserted c.o.c.ktail bar where the star turn was a drink called a Zombie. "Limit two per customer," said the menu. I asked a waitress what happens if you drink three. "You can't walk," she replied.

"I wonder why people build cities in these places," says Thom, balefully surveying the fist-chewingly unremarkable scenery. It's a real graveyard with streetlights, this place, the kind of town where you could fire a Gatling gun down the main road without hitting anybody-and if you did, you'd be doing them a favour.

The venue for tonight's show is the Meadows Music Theatre, a giant half-indoor, half-outdoor affair, something like Wembley Arena with a back yard. It's early afternoon, hours before showtime, but we've arrived early so Radiohead can soundcheck and do some of the aimless milling about that const.i.tutes the major part of any rock'n'roll tour. In Radiohead's commodious dressing room, Thom draws a smiling face and the words "Thanks for having us, you've been brilliant, love Radiohead" on a sc.r.a.p of paper and gives it to a roadie who will secrete it amid the sheets on Michael Stipe's lyric stand. This gesture is at odds with the received wisdom on Thom Yorke, which is that he's slightly less amenable than a cornered mongoose.

"Yeah, well," he shrugs. "They've really been brilliant to us. We're getting a whole hour to soundcheck every night, and you know how often that happens to support bands in real life."

Grat.i.tude notwithstanding, the other members of Radiohead have been talking, and a Plan B prank has been hatched. R.E.M.'s stage set is an extravagant homage to Alexander Calder that includes a backdrop of enormous red lampshades, swinging from the stage roof. The idea now is that as R.E.M. close their show with "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" the lampshades will be joined in flight by all five members of Radiohead, suspended from harnesses. Colin, Jonny, Phil and Ed look well pleased with this scheme. Thom looks rather less so.

"It'll never work," he says.

Radiohead go off to do their soundcheck, which I watch from the hill at the back of the empty arena. Between songs, Ed plays s.n.a.t.c.hes of "Radio Free Europe," R.E.M.'s first single. I've often thought that it'd be a great gag for a support act to close their set by playing the headliner's biggest hit, but I suspect Radiohead want to be invited back one day.

Back in the dressing room, Radiohead are informed that the harness j.a.pe is off-R.E.M.'s tour manager isn't having it. Someone else says, probably quite rightly, that Radiohead's insurers would pop a rivet if one of their clients got injured in a mid-air collision with a giant item of lounge furniture.

Phil brings one of the big red props into the dressing room for further discussion.

"We could," he offers, "just put them on our heads and run around the stage."

He tries it on. He looks silly beyond description.

"I can't see," he announces, m.u.f.fled.

"Typical," snorts Thom, momentarily recalling, as he sometimes does, the deadpan snarl of John Lydon. "Very b.l.o.o.d.y Keith Moon, aren't we? Other bands seem to be able to misbehave without looking like utter w.a.n.kers. I wonder what our problem is."

He clomps off to wait in silence for showtime, fidgeting with some artwork he's got stored in his Macintosh laptop. Jonny, meanwhile, is trying to evade a phone interview with some local radio station. He asks if I fancy doing it. "They'll never know," he says. He explains that several j.a.panese and Taiwanese magazines currently trailing exclusive interviews with Radiohead's right-angle-cheekboned guitar hero are, in fact, running with the thoughts of his mates, cousins or anyone else who was sitting around his house in Oxford when the phone rang.

"Go on," he goads. "It's easy. How are you finding touring with R.E.M.? Do you feel under pressure to follow the success of 'Creep'?"

It's a tempting offer, and the trust Jonny is offering at such early acquaintance is touching-after all, there's nothing to stop me saying, "We're only supporting R.E.M. for the money, all of which we plan to invest in companies which test cosmetics on baby seals and pay Malaysian children three cents an hour to drill those pointless little holes in the ends of toothbrushes and I am sleeping with your sister." However, I've done more than a few phone interviews myself, I know how p.r.o.ne they are to literal and metaphorical crossed wires even when you're talking to who you think you are and I don't want to wind up a fellow hack unnecessarily. There is some honour among scoundrels.

"Suit yourself," he says. "I'll ask one of the crew."

Jonny tells me that his driving ambition is to leave America having said "w.a.n.ker" and "b.o.l.l.o.c.ks" on every radio station in the country.

GIVEN THAT HARTFORD is what it is-the kind of place where they'll have to close the zoo if the chicken dies-it's not surprising that the venue looks full to its 30,000 capacity an hour before Radiohead are due on.

To get to the arena from backstage, I have to run an ideological gauntlet of stalls operated by the organisations R.E.M. have invited on tour with them: Greenpeace, Rock the Vote, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and some people who'd like it to be more difficult for other people to buy handguns. There's a couple of groups with more nebulous names, like People for the American Way and Common Cause, which sound excitingly like rogue shotgun-wielding militias of squirrel-eating far-right rednecks that have snuck under R.E.M.'s wire, but these also turn out to be cheerful liberals encouraging others to be cheerfully liberal. I talk to a few of them. I probably even agree with most of them. I've just never grown out of that shockingly juvenile reflex of rebelling against any opinion that is being thrust at me in tones of righteous certainty, even if it's my own. By the time I get to my spot on Radiohead's mixing desk, I'm almost goose-stepping.

Radiohead are brilliant tonight, but as they rarely display any apt.i.tude for being anything else, it's not surprising. As for R.E.M.'s threat of practical jokes, this pretty much turns out to have been the practical joke itself. Ed is briefly tormented by a radio-controlled car operated from the wings by Mike Mills, but no custard pies or paint bombs are deployed. Nevertheless, Radiohead have convinced themselves of the worst: as soon as the last note of their last song (a rousing version of "n.o.body Does It Better," dedicated to R.E.M.) fades, they down tools and leg it as fast as they decently can. As Radiohead complete their flight, R.E.M. wander on stage bearing a tray of champagne gla.s.ses, seeking to toast their support act, and find nothing but 30,000 people laughing. After a couple of agonising minutes, Thom, Ed, Jonny, Colin and Phil are retrieved, and the R.E.M./Radiohead mutual admiration society drinks its health to sustained applause.

Backstage at the end of the night, every friend or relative of every member of R.E.M. and Radiohead makes both bands stand together for souvenir last-night pictures. Peter Buck gently taunts Radiohead for their eventual, agonised decision not to storm the stage during the encore. Colin brings me a beer.

So, Colin. Do you feel under pressure to follow the success of "Creep"? How are you finding touring with R.E.M.?

"I can remember listening to R.E.M.'s first couple of alb.u.ms on my Walkman on the way to school," he says. "They're one of the reasons I wanted to be in a band. This is still really strange."

During R.E.M.'s set, Colin had shepherded me out onto the stage, to a position just behind Peter Buck's amplifiers, where we spent the set giggling like two starstruck teenagers who'd snuck into someone's soundcheck.

"They've been so good to us, and it's been really good for us, especially Thom. This seems to have been his year for meeting his heroes. Elvis Costello introduced himself at this thing we did in Italy. I think that kind of thing has helped Thom a lot."

Bill Berry, R.E.M.'s drummer, comes over to say goodbye. He's wearing a purple Radiohead t-shirt.

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, in a New York City feeling the first chills of winter, Radiohead are due to play a secret show at the Mercury Lounge, a tiny venue on East Houston. The band leave Hartford by minibus while Pat, Caffy and I get on a train, which breaks down, then a bus, which gets a flat, and then another bus, whose unspeakably s.a.d.i.s.tic driver hits upon Planes, Trains & Automobiles Planes, Trains & Automobiles as just the video everyone is going to want to see by this stage. as just the video everyone is going to want to see by this stage.

When we get to the Mercury, almost hysterical with irritation, Radiohead are mid-soundcheck. I stand up the back and try to be inconspicuous, which isn't easy in a brightly-lit venue almost too small to change your mind in.

"There you are," grins Thom from the stage. "Any requests?"

Someone's in a good mood, at least. I suggest "Sulk," a deliciously bitter tune that sounds roughly the way you feel when trapped in an interminable bus journey while being subjected to a film which could have been based on your misery, except that you know Steve Martin is going to get home eventually.

"We were going to do it anyway," says Thom, with a smirk. They play it, and things suddenly seem like they could be worse: my favourite band of the moment play a four-minute concert for an audience consisting of me and the bloke on the mixing desk.

Thom and I head for a coffee in a place up the street. The waitress is wearing a Sleeper t-shirt-evidently one of New York's sub-species of ardent Anglophile indie-rock fans. She double-takes at Thom, but obviously can't quite place him. She carries on double-taking while we talk.

"The thing that's really freaked me out about doing a tour with a band as big as R.E.M.," begins Thom, "is seeing how being so famous can change the way everybody, and I mean absolutely everybody, behaves towards you."

Someone once wrote that the curse of being Marlon Brando, I think it was, was that you'd never see people being themselves.

"Absolutely. And it is really hard to do, to be yourself in front of somebody famous."

The waitress is beyond double-taking and is now staring. She's worked it out.

"I find it . . . f.u.c.k, you know, I don't want it to happen. But that's presuming we're even going to make another record that people like."

Colin was saying last night that you'd found meeting a few people in your position helpful. What happens? Do you have those magnificent, unfathomable conversations that artists always want everyone else to believe that artists have, or do you just stand around gawping like a fan?

"No . . . it's more . . . you're there, and there's millions of things you can ask, but just the fact that you've met them becomes enough. I mean, even someone like Elvis Costello you can still judge on first impressions to some degree, and he was really nice, really trying to be nice. He can obviously be extremely sour, just like I can be, just like a lot of people under pressure can be, but he was really nice."

I think the reputation he's got-rather like the reputation you've got-is more than anything to do with an inability to suffer fools gladly, or even at all. If you can't cope with imbeciles, and you work in the music business, you're going to upset people.

"You're right, and the music business is quite b.i.t.c.hy and compet.i.tive, but after all that, you meet people you really admire, and suddenly that whole compet.i.tive thing is just not important. I found that helpful. Just being able to say I've met him. That's enough."

So you just talked shop, like everyone else.

"I b.l.o.o.d.y hope not. Although, to some degree, you do find yourself in the same boat, having gone through the same experiences, and they're quite a limited set of experiences, and they can turn you into quite a limited personality. So, I think, it's a shock when you discover that there other people who have gone through that, who are a few years ahead of you in the time machine, and have come back and said it's okay, you know, they're still alive."

Since Radiohead's debut single, "Creep," went supernova in the States in 1994, the band as a whole, and Thom and particular, have reacted to the fame thrust upon them with the bewilderment and disgust of a Methodist who inherits a brothel. The common take on "The Bends," the t.i.tle track of the alb.u.m Radiohead made against the backdrop of that success, was that it was a vicious, splenetic rail against the fact that stardom is not the liberating force that people imagine. It's actually incredibly limiting, and ultimately, unless you can ignore it, rise above it or find a way to have fun with it, utterly cretinising. "The Bends," like The Byrds' "So You Want Be A Rock'n'Roll Star," Costello's "Hand In Hand" and "Pump It Up," or Nirvana's "Serve The Servants" and "Pennyroyal Tea," sounded like one of those records often made by newly successful bands-they've got what they always wanted, and discovered that they don't want it.

"Well, no. . . ," says Thom, sounding almost apologetic for tearing down this hastily-constructed theory. "That song was really just a collection of phrases going round in my head one day. The crazy thing about that song is that there was no calculation or thought involved-it was just whatever sounded good after the previous line. It was written way before we'd ever been to America, even, but yeah, it's always interpreted as this strong reaction against the place and everything that went with it for us."

Understandable, though. The lyric is loaded with sleepy-eyed views from aeroplane windows, an alcohol drip-feed, the fear that the surface everyone sees is all you've got left.

"Oh, absolutely, but that hadn't started at all. I wrote it before we recorded the first alb.u.m. We hadn't been anywhere. Is that the time?"

I imagine so.

"s.h.i.t, we're on in half an hour."

I pay for the coffees while Thom waits outside, polishing his sungla.s.ses on the hem of his baggy jumper.

"Is that the guy who sang 'Creep'?" asks the waitress.

STREWN AROUND THE Mercury after another typically incendiary show are record company flyers plugging The Bends The Bends. These trumpet excerpts of the blanket critical praise The Bends The Bends has attracted. Radiohead have predictable difficulty taking any of it seriously. has attracted. Radiohead have predictable difficulty taking any of it seriously.

"Radiohead toss and turn like the best Pearl Jam and U2 anthems," recites Jonny, from one leaflet.

"With the emphasis on toss, presumably," adds Ed.

"Thom Yorke's voice," reads Thom Yorke's voice, "is as enigmatic as Billy Corgan's."

Thom blinks a few times.

"Thanks a f.u.c.king bunch," he splutters, less than enigmatically.

Colin, meanwhile, is perturbed by the critical line taken by Rolling Stone Rolling Stone. "It's four stars in quotation marks," he grins. "Does that mean they just swore at it?"

Outside on the pavement, a few dozen people have waited for Radiohead to emerge so they can tell them that they're, like, rilly rilly awesome. One woman apologises to Thom for her boyfriend, who'd been making a nuisance of himself down the front during the gig, and had come very close, at one point, to having Thom's guitar shoved down his throat. Sideways on, to judge by Thom's expression.

There's a record company meet-and-greet bunfight we're supposed to be at, though n.o.body is keen on the idea. Thom and I get in the last of the fleet of taxis that Caffy has flagged down.

"Right," he says. "Here's the plan. We hit the room, we charge around it as fast as possible, we shake hands with and smile at as many people as we can, whether we know them or not, and then we get out and go back to the hotel. I hate these things."

Right.

"If it doesn't kill us," says Thom, "it makes us stronger."

It turns out to be fairly low-key and relaxed, and everyone eventually stays for more than a few drinks. Even Thom could be mistaken for a man who's not having all that terrible a time. When we get back to our lodgings at the Paramount Hotel near Times Square, it's long past midnight, so we stage a chaotic photo shoot in Pat's tiny room-to allow all of Radiohead to get in front of the camera, I have to sit in the bath. Pat's efforts to encourage Radiohead to look like stern, seen-it-all road warriors are not aided by Jonny who, as Pat loads new film, reads choice t.i.tles from the catalogue of the hotel's in-house video library. "I will give anyone in this room five dollars in cash," he announces, "if they will ring reception and ask for Honey, I Blew Everybody Honey, I Blew Everybody."