Radiohead's new name is a complaint about radio, says Jonny Greenwood

On a Friday have become Radiohead, and Jonny Greenwood tells John Harris of Melody Maker that the new name is aimed at radio itself.

Everyone's subject to the same information all the time, becoming more and more like each other. I really hate the idea of radio waves being inescapable.

Jonny Greenwood¹

Ed O'Brien dismisses the old name with a swear word. He dates the change to a drive about a fortnight before it, when every station they tried was playing the same Michael Bolton song.

Harris meets them at the Jericho Tavern, the small Oxford pub he calls the room the band launched from. Drill, their first EP, is on sale through Parlophone, and he hears Pixies and Throwing Muses in it.

Radio play of the right kind is still the aim. Thom Yorke names “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as the effect he is after, a record nobody can ignore once it is playing, and says all their songs start from a state of conflict. The stage is where it counts. Yorke describes 40 minutes of stored-up energy let out at a gig, with everything else just waiting, and O'Brien likens a show to an exorcism.