Parlophone sets out its launch plan for The Bends

Parlophone has told British record dealers how it will launch The Bends, Radiohead's second album, due in March. Before a copy reaches the shops, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are booked for four fan preview nights in February, in Edinburgh, Sheffield, London and Leicester. Each is a half-hour acoustic set for members of the band's fan database and invited guests, who then meet the band and hear the new album played back.

The album is out on 13 March, partway through a 13-date British tour that opens at Cardiff University and ends at the London Forum. Dealers are promised double flyposters on the streets, listening posts in the shops and press advertising. From release day to the end of May, Pablo Honey goes to them at mid-price.

“High & Dry” comes first, on 27 February, with a heavy round of promotion. The label means it to show the starker, acoustic side of the band, after “My Iron Lung” last October gave people the more familiar Radiohead sound. A third single, not yet named, is pencilled in for April or May. John Leckie produced the album last year. It runs to 12 tracks, from “Planet Telex” to “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”.

Parlophone's press kit for journalists explains the title as what happens to a diver who comes up too fast, and claims 1.5 million sales for Pablo Honey.

EMI in Germany has its own promo sheet, with the album out there on 9 March, four days ahead of Britain, and “High And Dry” as the single. The same sheet lists the singer as Thom E. York. It tells the “Creep” story as a studio warm-up the band did not know was being taped: Jonny hated the song and tried to wreck it with the burst of guitar before the chorus, and that one take became the hit.

Preview nights and British tour, February and March 1995, as the presenter lists them