Radiohead play Japan for the first time, with Itch out for the tour

Radiohead play the second of two nights at Club Citta' in Kawasaki tonight, the last of five shows on their first visit to Japan, which began at Shibuya Club Quattro in Tokyo on 4 June. Letters and presents have piled up since the first night, in a response Phil Selway likens to something like Beatlemania¹, a culture shock that has left the band flabbergasted.

Selway, taken for the bus driver on earlier tours and once offered a ticket to his own gig by a tout, has a fan club of his own in Japan, and fans have come to the shows in “Phil is Great” T-shirts. Japanese fans, unsure where the “O” goes, have renamed Ed O'Brien “Edo Bhen”. Thom Yorke has loved being taller than everyone and finding clothes that fit, and when he could not sleep he filmed Japanese television for hours.

Itch came out on Toshiba-EMI on 1 June, and its booklet calls it a Japan tour mini-album. It gathers B-sides, three songs JBTV recorded live at the Metro in Chicago, and an acoustic “Creep” to close.

The Tokyo set, taken from a tape of the night, ran to 18 songs. It had the six songs they took round Europe in May that are on no record yet, “Black Star” and “My Iron Lung” among them, and a second encore of “Lurgee”. From here the band fly to Hong Kong for the Ko Shan Theatre on 12 June, and then on to Australia.

Japan, June 1994

Itch tracklist (Toshiba-EMI TOCP-8285)