Radiohead bat away a “Creep” rumour in the Baltimore Sun

Radiohead play Merriweather Post Pavilion tonight, opening for Alanis Morissette, and the Baltimore Sun's preview finds them still known to many as the “Creep” band. The song has grown its own folklore. A fan wrote in by e-mail with a theory that it was about Thom Yorke's wife. In Yorke's retelling it is his second wife, lost after a cocaine binge. Jonny Greenwood calls it incredibly fanciful. Asked how many wives he has had, Yorke laughs and says none.

“Creep” keeps coming back. Earlier this year it was a top-20 hit in France after it turned up in a film.

The radio stations, having been given the record two years ago, didn't like it. But now it's on a film, they do. Typical.

Jonny Greenwood¹

The Bends is having a second life of its own. Ed O'Brien came home to Britain in January after four weeks away to find the album climbing the chart again and the band suddenly talked about. Several music magazines had named it their album of the year. Yorke enjoys the letters, and the journalists who once dismissed the band, asking why the record isn't huge.

It's taken people a year to figure it out

Thom Yorke¹

O'Brien remembers being asked, when the band signed, what their agenda was. They said it was about the music, and that is why they have never been seen mouthing off in the press about an issue. I'd much rather people heard the music.¹