On a Friday sign to Parlophone and become Radiohead

On a Friday have signed a six-album contract with EMI's Parlophone label, on 2 March, and they are to be called Radiohead. Neither the label nor the band cared for the old name, and the new one comes from “Radio Head” on Talking Heads' 1986 album True Stories.

Chris Hufford remembers the customary glass of champagne at EMI's offices, and Rupert Perry, the main man at the label as Hufford puts it, putting his head round the door to tell Jonny Greenwood that his favourite track on their tape was “Phillipa Chicken”. Jonny told him the band had dropped it.

Hufford, who owns the Courtyard studio where that demo was recorded, now manages the band with his partner Bryce Edge. The deal means Jonny has left his psychology and music course at Oxford Polytechnic after one term. Thom Yorke is taken with the contract's reach. The contract signed us to Parlophone 'all around the world and in the known and unknown universe.' I like that breadth of vision.⁸

The tape got to EMI across the counter of the Our Price in Oxford, where Colin Greenwood worked. He gave it to Keith Wozencroft, an EMI sales rep about to move into A&R at Parlophone, on his farewell visit to the shop, and told him to sign his band. On a Friday were the first act Wozencroft took to his boss, Nick Gatfield. In December the Oxford paper Curfew reported 25 A&R men at a packed Jericho Tavern, every one of them paying to get in, two weeks after a gig there with one man from EMI in the room. Nearly every major label came to look, but Gatfield had put in a good offer straight away, and the band took it because, Colin says, we liked the cut of their jib.⁶