Ed O'Brien asks if Radiohead are heading into Stone Roses territory

In the second week of Radiohead's rehearsals, Ed O'Brien has written the first entry of his online diary that he had no wish at all to write. On Wednesday 4 August the band played very little and talked a great deal, and O'Brien, writing it up a day late, put the worry plainly.

are we going down 'stone roses' territory?

Ed O'Brien²

The trouble, he writes, is that Radiohead are in limbo. For the first time they have nothing to get ready for except “an album”, which they have been working on since January) with Nigel Godrich producing. So far they have little to show for it beyond some hard lessons in how not to make one. A footnote allows that they have recorded some good things, if not many. Each of their last three albums was made against a deadline, and none applies now. The talk ended with the band agreeing that they need a plan and something to aim for.

The week had started well enough. On Tuesday they took up “Lost at Sea”, which O'Brien had written down in the diary's first week) as “lost at sea/in limbo”. Thom Yorke thinks they already made the definitive version in Paris. O'Brien isn't so sure, and Yorke concedes that this comes down to how he sings it, which he has only ever done alone, with a tape, at the wheel of a car.

i really like this new version, as much as anything for its relentlessness and energy.

Ed O'Brien²

Then came a new song, “Cuttooth”, long and hypnotic, with what O'Brien calls a “neu” thing about it, and the day ended with an attempt to rescue “You and Whose Army”.

Thursday was much better. “Optimistic” still sounds great, and Jonny Greenwood tried the ondes Martenot, the early electronic keyboard he plays, on it. O'Brien likes the high parts, just not where they follow the main riff. “Up the Ladder” improved with more space in it, ran on into “Follow Me Around”, and the “cminor song” was reworked in the style of a Stax record. Jonny also had the vocal microphone running through his analogue filters, a rig O'Brien compares to an old telephone exchange. The last two songs kept breaking into bursts of otherworldly noise, some of it very good and some very bad.

On Friday they ran through most of the songs. It was the last rehearsal for a couple of weeks, O'Brien explains, because the eclipse falls next Wednesday. The week has made them face how to set up the next stretch of recording so that they don't start 20-odd songs and finish none, and O'Brien hopes it will be remembered as the point where the band turned a corner.

its taken us seven years to get this sort of freedom, and its what we always wanted, but it could be so easy to fuck it all up.

Ed O'Brien²

Worked on, 3 to 6 August 1999 (working titles as Ed O'Brien wrote them)