Radiohead work up “Life In A Glass House” at the Vox Club in Modena

Before their show at the Vox Club, at Nonantola just outside Modena, on 29 October, Thom Yorke played the rest of Radiohead an unfinished new song and asked for it to be taped. John Harris of Select was there, travelling with the band through Italy for the magazine's January cover story, and places the song somewhere between “Exit Music” and “Climbing Up the Walls”.

First a door kept being opened onto a night close to freezing, and since the Italian security man spoke no English, one of the crew had to go and shut it. Then Yorke took his black acoustic guitar, and Phil Selway began drumming behind him. The take went to the studio at the back of the tour bus, where the band keep their work in progress. In what Harris calls a daily ritual, the others then joined one at a time, cautiously, Colin Greenwood first, then Ed O'Brien, then Jonny Greenwood. The song stopped, started and drifted on for the best part of ten minutes.

Next day Yorke told Harris it was sort of called “Life In A Glass House”, that bits of it had been around for a while, and that at a soundcheck people are watching.

It's not really done at all. But we won't finish it on the road. You can't.

Thom Yorke¹

Jonny says it is one of eight or nine songs written since OK Computer, and that he doesn't yet know how to play it.

It could end up sounding like a bad Cure song, or it could end up sounding brilliant.

Jonny Greenwood¹

A recording from that soundcheck is on the show page, and NME heard the song) in Berlin a few days later.

The band had come to Nonantola from the PalaVobis in Milan, where a reviewer for the Italian magazine The Games Machine found the show lively rather than thrilling, and the band live nearer American hard rock than refined English pop. He calls it an honest show and worth the ticket, though he admits he didn't pay for his.

The crowd in the 1,200-capacity Vox Club sang every word of “Karma Police” and joined in on the “rain down” section of “Paranoid Android”. Before the encore they held one sung note, raising it and their hands until their breath gave out, then started again. Yorke joined in, then thanked them.

Thank you, people of Modena and surrounding areas

Thom Yorke¹

Before “Electioneering” in the second encore, Ed said “Grazie”, thought better of trying any more Italian, and apologised that the band don't speak foreign languages.

Two hours after the show the bus left for Florence, and the band woke up at the Palasport, a 7,000-capacity arena on the edge of the city. Ed had a cold and kept losing his voice, and at the soundcheck “Paranoid Android” came out loud enough to startle Yorke himself. The crowd held up lighters for “Exit Music”, “High and Dry” and “Fake Plastic Trees”. The band were wary of the British arena dates that would end the tour. On the evidence of Florence, Harris thought they need not be.

Setlists, Italy, October 1997