Live in Berlin (September 2016)

the date

On 11 September 2001 Radiohead played the Parkbühne Wuhlheide, an open-air stage in Berlin, hours after the attacks in America, and Thom Yorke told the crowd what little he knew before they went into “Paranoid Android”. Their Sunday headline set at Lollapalooza Berlin, in Treptower Park, fell on the same date 15 years later, and it was their only concert in Germany that year. Berlin's administrative court had cleared the festival to use the park only three days before it opened. Gerrit Bartels began his review in Der Tagesspiegel with the rain and the strangeness of 2001. The reviewer for PopMatters noticed that nobody on stage said a word about the anniversary.

the song on the printed setlist

The set was the last of the band's European nights that year, and ran to about 135 minutes. The PopMatters reviewer thought the sound the best they had ever heard at a show, and saw the field answer the older songs loudest. Yorke was sharp-tongued between songs and danced through them. The printed setlist had “Give Up the Ghost” down for the second encore, and Yorke brought the band back without naming what they would play.

You know it, I know it, they know it.

Thom Yorke · PopMatters, September 2016

It was “Creep”, and “Karma Police” closed the night. Bartels, writing the next morning, called Radiohead the last great rock band in the world.