Radiohead end three nights in Tel Aviv with “Creep” twice

Radiohead closed their three nights at Roxane in Tel Aviv on Saturday 3 April with a packed show, three encores and “Creep” played twice. Galei Tzahal, the army radio station, broadcast it live, according to the notes with the surviving recording. Yoav Kutner, the DJ who had interviewed the band on their first day in Israel, presented from the club.

The Wednesday and Thursday shows had been thin. When the band asked whether some other big act was taking their audience, they were told it was East 17. In the band's words, Saturday night witnessed a packed house and a response which made Beatlemania look like a mild sedative.⁵

On the recording the crowd sings along all night, to “Thinking About You” and “Anyone Can Play Guitar” as well as “Creep”. Thom Yorke dedicated “Stop Whispering” to peace in Israel, and a song to two Israeli fans hurt in a serious accident after the first show. When he announced the last song the crowd shouted no, and he introduced “Pop Is Dead” as a song about the death of music.

The encores ran to seven songs, among them “The Bends” and “Killer Cars”, neither yet released, a second full “Creep” and Glen Campbell's “Rhinestone Cowboy” to finish. Yorke thanked the local organisers by first name, Uzi, Erez, Gil and Shuki, told the crowd they were the best audience the band had had, and promised to come back very soon.

Amit Shoham, reviewing the show for Hadashot, granted the crowd's love and the lavish encores but found the band a middling example of a good thing: a singer who knows his job, three well-matched guitars, routine bass and drums. “Creep”, top of the Israeli airplay chart that week, had lost its punch for him by the hundredth hearing.

Setlist, Saturday 3 April