Radiohead end their Oxford homecoming with “Creep” in the rain

Radiohead closed their show in South Park, Oxford, on Saturday 7 July with “Creep”, a song they had not played live since June 1998, and only because a keyboard gave up. In the third encore, with the rain lashing down, Thom Yorke and Colin Greenwood were alone on stage for “Motion Picture Soundtrack” when Yorke's keyboard died a few chords in. He put on a mock-German Kraftwerk voice, told the crowd It's kaputt, ja?¹ and promised them an older song. The whole band came back for “Creep”, and about 40,000 people sang it in a downpour.

It was their first concert in Oxford since they played to about 400 people at the Zodiac on Cowley Road in 1996. Apart from a Later... With Jools Holland recording for television in June, they had not played a British show since the Kid A tent tour of 2000, and NME called it the biggest headline show they have played in Britain. The idea came to Nick Moorbath, who runs the Zodiac, on a walk through the park with his daughter. Tickets sold out in five days. Radiohead chose the local charities the day raised money for.

The set ran to two and a half hours and 24 songs. “Airbag”, second after “The National Anthem”, was stopped and started again when the sound went wrong, with Yorke swearing; early in the set he muttered The only UK gig - no pressure⁵. He dedicated “No Surprises” to Tony Blair and “Paranoid Android” to Geri Halliwell, getting to her name only after describing her as the blonde Spice Girl who left. At the start of “Pyramid Song” he leaned back on his piano stool and conducted the crowd. Down at the front, Michael Hubbard of musicOMH saw the crush during “Paranoid Android” and “Karma Police” knock people over, and some lifted out over the barrier.

Dorian Lynskey, giving the night four stars in The Guardian, credited the whole band with making the new songs work outdoors, Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien putting their guitars down for effects boxes and samplers on “Everything in Its Right Place”. Hubbard saw Jonny take over the upright piano for “Knives Out” and “You and Whose Army?”. Huge silver drapes either side of the stage bore the weeping bear from the Amnesiac artwork, and a wall of fluorescent tubes stood behind the band.

The bill settled in June opened with two Oxford bands, Hester Thrale and The Rock of Travolta, whom Radiohead picked from about 120 local demo tapes. Then came Humphrey Lyttelton and his band, Sigur Ros, Supergrass, and an acoustic set from Beck. Lyttelton, who is 80, plays the trumpet on “Life in a Glasshouse”, the last track on Amnesiac.

Phil Selway told the Oxford Mail that all five still live in Oxford at least part of the time and think of themselves as an Oxford band. From the stage, Lynskey noted, Oxford got one mention, in a joke about parking.

Setlist