Jeff Buckley’s lesson that helped Thom Yorke

In the mid-90s, fresh from the enormous success of “Creep”i Radiohead they were in an identity crisis. The Oxford quintet wanted to abandon the path of the easy (so to speak) refrain to experiment with something new. Clearly their record labels – Parlophone for Great Britain and Capitol for the United States – had a different opinion on the matter and were pushing for them to try to replicate the success of what was and is one of the most representative songs of the nineties.

There was a need to put together the successor to
“Pablo Honey”
their debut album released in February 1993. There was no shortage of ideas, but they were traveling on a track rather different from the wishes of Capitol who wanted to listen to something that – in the opinion of the record company – could be worth it, before asserting the option for the second album. You’ve already understood it: something that refers to
“Creep”
. Among other things, even the band’s management was starting to have some doubts about the solidity of the boys.
Thom Yorke
he was really exhausted physically and mentally, so much so that he declared to the NME: “Mentally I’ve had enough.”

The climate within the band was terrible. The group locked themselves in their rehearsal room in Oxford and, as Yorke told the NME, perhaps for the first time, everyone spoke with an open heart, without hesitation. “It all came out spontaneously. All the things that we had always fought about and I think when we started our little band, as kids at school, it was never about us being friends or anything. Years and years of tension and not saying anything to each other, basically all the things that had been building up since we’d met, came out in one day. We were spitting and fighting and crying and telling each other all the things you don’t want to talk about and I think if we had never done that, I think it would have completely changed our way of doing things.”

THE Radiohead they decided that a change of location and a very capable figure at the mixer were necessary to bring the band’s second album to life. Perhaps John Leckiealready in the production of Stone Rosesit could have been the right choice. Leckie recalled how things went in an interview with Gearspace: “I went to a rehearsal in an orchard in the countryside near Oxford. There was myself, two managers, Parlophone UK A&R and Capitol USA A&R, all sitting in the room listening to new Radiohead songs. The band played thirty songs, all performed with passion. The aim was to choose a single to record as a follow-up to ‘Creep’, which the band obviously hated.”

After some initial singles sessions, Leckie, his assistant Nigel Godrich and the band recorded the rest of what would become “The Bends” between RAK Studios, Manor Studio Oxford and Abbey Road Studios. Leckie worked with the band to cultivate their ideas, pushing for the radio-friendly hooks Parlophone and Capitol desired, but still leaving room to expand their creativity. Although some songs had a slow and painful birth, a key piece, “Fake Plastic Trees”one day seemed to arise from Yorke quite spontaneously. As he remembered Johnny Greenwood to The Nashville Banner in 1995: “We usually write a song together, make it as one. ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ was made by Thom playing alone, gradually adding one element at a time.”

This acoustic piece contained the most intimate anxieties of Thom Yorke. His fears and frustrations were channeled into lyrics that were both quite profound, but also ironic. It was quite different from anything that up until that point had been in the pipeline for “The Bends”. Deciding what to do with it from an arranging and recording perspective became a headache for Yorke and Leckie, who was quite worried.

At that time John Leckie suggested that Thom and the group leave the studio and go to a concert of Jeff Buckley at The Garage in London, before returning later in the evening to finally try to make it happen “Fake Plastic Trees”. At Buckley’s concert, Yorke, Greenwood and Leckie were completely fascinated by the great emotion displayed by the Californian musician. At Uncut a Colin Greenwood he enthused: “He just had a Telecaster and a pint of Guinness. It was just amazing, really inspiring. Then we went back to the studio and tried an acoustic version of ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. Thom sat down and played it in three takes, then burst into tears. And that’s the one we used for the record.”

He wasn’t alone
“Fake Plastic Trees”
to suddenly come to life, but the whole
“The Bends”
. At the Denver Post
Thom Yorke
revealed: “‘Fake Plastic Trees’ was a real turning point for the album. The day we recorded that song was a real nightmare. It was just me and my acoustic guitar, but there was something chilling in the air. We’d been there for a month, and that was the first time I felt a connection to what Radiohead stands for.” Fearing that his raw, raw emotion might be a little too strong to actually use on record, Thom was initially a little embarrassed by what had just been recorded. He was skeptical. But Leckie and the rest of the
Radiohead
they were overwhelmed by what Yorke had managed to accomplish.

On The Singer’s Talk podcast Thom Yorke he recalled: “When we got together to listen to it, everyone said, ‘Let’s use that!’, and I said, ‘No, no, we can’t use that, it’s too vulnerable. It’s too much like me.'” In the end the group prevailed and the final studio version is the performance recorded that evening, in three takes. With the basics of “Fake Plastic Trees” ready, Leckie and the rest of the band took another few months to refine the song. Also in that interview the singer of Radiohead he said, “We had the Hammond plugged into every guitar amp, every single effect, every knob and switch worked. It was deafening, filling the whole studio. That song could easily have sounded like Guns N’ Roses. We wanted it to sound like Phil Spector.”

Years later, the guitarist Ed O’Brien reported to Guitar World, that when it came to “The Bends”the band felt increasingly comfortable leaving Thom in the spotlight: “We were very aware that there was something in ‘The Bends’ that we hadn’t noticed in ‘Pablo Honey’: if it sounded really good with Thom acoustically with Phil (Selway, ed.) and Coz (bassist Colin Greenwood, ed.), what was the point of trying to add something more?”.

Released as the third single of “The Bends”, “Fake Plastic Trees” it was the most representative song on the album. And perhaps there really is the hand and the soul of the poor Jeff BuckleyYorke confirmed this on The Singer’s Talk. “When we were recording the second record, I went to see Jeff Buckley before he died. He reminded me of that vulnerable part of me that I chose to hide.”