Customer Reviews

Radiohead: Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album

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Although i've been a fan of RH for a number of years, I've never read any books about them - until this one. I found it to be a really excellent read and a very original concept. Working on two parallel themes - firstly, how the band emerged and by the time of their third album produced one of the finest records of all time [OKC regularly comes top in 'best album of all time' lists, although probably more often in Europe than in the USA}, taking in the band's influences [music, literature, films, politics etc]their uniqe brand of ambition, and the various input from the individual members. The seond theme regards the state of the music industry and the world at the time of release - 1997 - and the author makes a superb argument about OKC being the last, complete, classic 'album' - after this most decent records were simply a collection of tracks - often produced with the downloader, playlist or cherry picker in mind. Radiohead of course took a while to fully embrace this technology, but by 2007's 'In Rainbows' had emerged as the most savvy players on the planet in this regard.
Quite simply a fascinating read, that goes way beyond the often pedestrian and limited appeal of the average rock biog. My only reservation is that certain indiviadual arguments are skipped over a bit too quickly, without fully expanding on the theory - although this does open the debate for the comments of others - i wonder if a site exists where readers can add theior own arguments - this one could run and run......
Recommended.

From what I've heard, many biographies of Radiohead are a bit pointless, regardless of quality, because Radiohead's career is still far from over, so these books are by no means getting the full story. This book is different in that it focuses on a period of Radiohead's career, specifically the background of, creation of, content of, and aftermath of their 1997 classic "OK Computer". Although this book covers info as recent as "Hail to the Thief" in a chapter at the end about Radiohead's post-"OK Computer" career, "OK Computer" is the story here. And what an excellent job it does. There's a chapter detailing each song, the recording of the whole album, the sequencing of the album as a whole, the album artwork, the album's reception... The whole thing is extremely comprehensive and well-sourced. Highly recommended for fans.

In brief, the book is well written, but falls victim to the same problems that almost all media of this type fall to. The author speculates the majority of what he writes (and he is, to his credit, up front regarding this at the start of the book) because without direct artist reference via artist commentary, that is all he can do. The book attempts to tie in political, sociological and historical data from the time into the creation of the album, often making connections that, while fairly well thought out, are purely speculation and nothing more. Most artists, Radiohead included, obfuscate thier influences as much as possible. They want you to look in one direction, but the truth lies in another. This is common, as no one wants to look like a clone (btw -- I'm not in any way knocking Radiohead -- I truly think they create some of the most interesting music Ive heard in the last 30 years). This book also to some extent, over intellectualizes the music, but again, this is common dealing with Radiohead. In that way they are comparable to John Lennon, who while certainly a very intelligent man, often had things he wrote and said over-analyzed to such an extent that much more was made of them than he originally intended. Radiohead don't play this up as much as Lennon did, but it's there, no doubt. At the end of the day, it's an interesting read, but not to be taken too seriously.