13 March 2025
RADIOHEAD released their second LP THE BENDS on 13 March 1995,
today 30 years ago. A sublime, bloodcurdling masterpiece. Striking strokes
of genius such as My Iron Lung, High and Dry, Fake Plastic Trees, Just, Street Spirit
(Fade Out) and the title track lifted this record to a sui generis opus. Along, with
OK Computer, the most complete achievement of Radiohead‘s phenomenal
catalogue.
The Bends was the first Radiohead album with artwork by Stanley Donwood,
who has worked with Yorke to create all of the band’s artwork since.
Yorke and Donwood hired a cassette camera and filmed objects including road signs, packaging and street lights. They entered a hospital to film an iron lung, but, according
to Donwood, found that iron lungs “are not very interesting to look at”. Instead, they filmed
a CPR mannequin, which Donwood described as having “a facial expression like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony, simultaneously”.
To create the cover image, the pair displayed the footage on a television set and photographed the screen.
The album peaked at #7 in the UK and #88 in the US. But as Radiohead got more
famous and released more impressive material, the LP went on selling on for years.
NME wrote: “Radiohead clearly resolved to make an album
so stunning it would make people forget their own name,
never mind ‘Creep’.”
KEY SINGLES
ALBUM