Radiohead draw 3,000 to Roseland as Pablo Honey goes gold

Radiohead played to 3,000 people at Roseland in New York on their tour with Belly, a year after they were drawing a few dozen in Britain. Paul Lester went with them from Providence through Boston to New York for this week's Melody Maker cover feature.

Pablo Honey has sold more than half a million copies in America and gone gold, with a million expected by the end of the year, and Suede faxed their congratulations. At home the reissued “Creep” has reached number seven and put the band on Top of the Pops.

Phil Selway puts the American response down to the band's Englishness.

It's a far more abrupt kind of Englishness than Suede's, more energetic, more frenetic and direct

Phil Selway¹

At Lupo's in Providence, Thom Yorke dedicated “Yes I Am”, the B-side of “Creep”, to people who had treated the band badly, and “Pop Is Dead” closed the set. Yorke turned 25 on the day of the interview, and Ed O'Brien and Colin Greenwood gave him a book by Noam Chomsky.

The shows in the feature