2003

Treefingers, a new Radiohead fan site, opens on New Year's Day 2003.

Radiohead's producer has had his hands on a record that began on a Roman stage, with a novelist reading over Air's playing.

Greenwood's music carries a film that tells a single human life in footage gathered from a century of cinema.

At a publisher's party in London, Colin Greenwood is reminded of a wet day in Oxford and says sorry for it.

With no click tracks, no dialogue to leave room for and no 20-second cues, Greenwood could write for a string quartet and let the music be pretty.

After the long, closed-off Kid A sessions, the sixth album was recorded in eight weeks, many of its songs already heard on tour and on the Christmas webcast.

It is the band's only place on this year's shortlists.

The hour is given over to the Samaritans campaign on depression and stress that Radiohead are backing with a live recording.

Moby's verdict on his own voice is the best line in a mock face-off he has written for his website.

His artwork goes on an Atlanta radio station's charity CD of tracks by Coldplay, R.E.M. and others.

The new record still has no name and no chosen single, but it now has a date, less than three weeks before the band headline Glastonbury.

Thom Yorke's weekend in Los Angeles takes in a club gig and a protest against war.

The festival only won its licence back last week, and the band's fan club will sell 500 weekend tickets of its own.

With Werchter added, Radiohead's festival summer away from Glastonbury takes in Sweden, Germany, Belgium and France in the space of three weeks.

The first new clothes in the band's shop for some time come in a deliberately small range, with more promised later in the year.

On the official message board Jonny Greenwood also confirms that “I Will” has been recorded and may make the new album.

Donwood's new book comes numbered and signed, though the stories inside cost nothing to read online.

The sixth album was about to go off for mastering when Thom Yorke posted, and the band have still to say what it will be called.

The pianist hopes the record sends classical listeners to Radiohead and Radiohead fans to their first piano recital.

The band have not played a British or Irish stage since Belfast in September 2001, and have not toured Britain's indoor halls since 1997.

On the first weekend of the Iraq war, Yorke joins Will Self, George Monbiot and Mark Thomas among the speakers outside the base the B-52s fly from.

Most of the new songs have been heard live since last summer; now the record they make has a title and a running order.

Live action, animation or graphics are all wanted for a project called The Picture Gallery, and films fans have already made are welcome too.

The Strokes have picked Radiohead's producer, Nigel Godrich, for their second album, Drowned In Sound report, on a two-song trial.

Jonny Greenwood likes the short songs and the b-sides, and is less sure Radiohead have room for his banjo.

The poster comes from the artist who put cruise missiles into Constable's Haywain for CND in 1980.

EMI lets Australia's youth network off after three songs, but sends the Canadian station a cease and desist order.

The new record's words will be printed in the booklet, and vinyl buyers get it across two discs.

The Japanese edition keeps its head start on the rest of the world, though a shorter one than March's listing promised.

Michael Eavis has someone tracking resold Glastonbury tickets full time, and the ones he claws back go to fans on a reserve list.

For ten days Radiohead, their producer and their artist answer the leak, and Colin Greenwood asks fans to wait for the finished album.

Two of the band spend a day talking up the new record in France, eight weeks before it reaches the shops.

The first single from Hail to the Thief is on the air six weeks before it reaches the shops.

Fans can now buy tickets for the July show from the band's fan club, by post within Europe and on the day for everyone else.

The French DJ puts a date on the theft behind the leak that has had fans hearing the new album weeks early.

Fans outside Italy can buy seats for all three nights through the band's fan club, which has a share of the tickets for each.

A four-part radio history made with the band's help is under way, from On a Friday to OK Computer.

Six weeks before the album reaches the shops, most of those who have heard it, in advance or from the leak, find all of Radiohead's past in it.

The band Ed O'Brien guested for are on the Pyramid Stage on the day Radiohead headline, and they want him up there with them.

American fans can have the first single from the new record free, six weeks before the album reaches their shops.

In a round of likes and dislikes, Radiohead come off worse than Blur and the White Stripes.

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company's new piece opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October, with both bands on stage for the first night.

NME's verdict on the album is lukewarm, hard on the first single and kindest to a piano ballad.

Every song on the new album's road-map sleeve carries a second name, and the album itself becomes The Gloaming.

The two-hour evening programme goes out four days before Hail to the Thief is released.

Writing in The Guardian, Blab Happy's Jon Dennis recalls four nights supporting Radiohead in February 1993 and being in awe of a young Jonny Greenwood.

In NME's 10 May issue, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood explain the new album's songs, two of which date from about five years ago.

American television viewers are hearing the new album a month before it reaches the shops, as part of Capitol's campaign for it.

A month before Hail to the Thief is out, Ed O'Brien says the band went for short songs, a short stay in the studio and the confidence they found on the road.

Tickets for the May shows in Belfast, Edinburgh and Manchester go back on sale at W.A.S.T.E., returned from eBay sellers who were caught out.

Four weeks before the album is out, most of the push for it is happening online and down a free American phone line.

After weeks of rough versions going round, the finished record itself is now out there, long before the shops have it.

It was the band's first concert in nine months, and some of the crowd had travelled from as far as Japan and the United States to be there.

Anyone at both Olympia shows heard more than a third of the set change between Saturday and Sunday.

After a month of small club rooms, Radiohead move up to the arenas in late November, with London's Earls Court in the middle of the run and Dublin at the end.

Ten days after its British premiere, the video for the first single from Hail to the Thief gets its American launch.

It was the band's first show in Scotland in more than two and a half years, on the fourth night of their run of small venues.

Ticket sales open on Friday for what the Spanish promoter calls the band's one show in Spain this summer.

Radiohead tell the Telegraph Magazine how the “There There” video was made, where the new artwork's colours come from and what the gloaming means.

London hears the Hail to the Thief songs in a theatre before the band move up to arenas in the autumn.

A UK ringtone company is selling the tunes, while the band's own mobile push for Hail to the Thief comes from a San Francisco firm.

The Waterfront Hall is already working on getting the band back to Belfast once this year's touring is done.

Noel Gallagher says “There There” does not annoy him and calls Yorke and Greenwood together genius, but cannot see what Radiohead have to be miserable about.

Written from advance copies while the album is still weeks from the shops, the first American notices run from lukewarm to all but rapturous.

After months of leaked rough mixes, the first finished versions anyone can hear arrive about two weeks before the album is in the shops.

Radiohead's first visit to the Live Lounge brings two songs at the piano, a word on Glastonbury 1997 and Kid A named as the album Yorke is proudest of.

Australian listeners get the whole of the new record on the radio a week before it reaches the shops.

With Hail to the Thief a fortnight away, Ed O'Brien and the rhythm section explain how a pile of Thom Yorke's demos turned into a band record.

Ten days before the new album is out, Yorke says the next one should sound like nothing Radiohead have made.

Asian Dub Foundation's guitarist remembers Ed O'Brien's day on Enemy of the Enemy as his favourite of the sessions.

Before Hail to the Thief reaches the shops, fans from Pittsburgh to Liverpool can hear it played through a club sound system.

Venues, papers and now a ticket seller are filling in a North American summer the band themselves have yet to confirm.

Thom Yorke is on the cover of the new Q, and tells the magazine that Radiohead's music makes him sick.

The first single from Hail to the Thief is in the top five eight days before the album reaches the shops.

The new album was planned to come quickly, with the songs played in on stage before a short spell in the studio.

Colin Greenwood tells the Orlando Sentinel the new album's songs are about individual responsibility, not the US administration, and explains the move to Los Angeles.

Seventeen years after he first volunteered, Radiohead's drummer is putting the band's music behind a push to get young people talking about mental health.

The finished album can be heard from start to finish online before it is in the shops, with a place for readers to say what they make of it.

Two members of the band join Stu Bailie on Friday night to choose records and talk about Hail to the Thief.

Fans who planned a weekend camping at Calverton now have one day in a New Jersey stadium instead, and Radiohead are still playing.

Five days before Hail to the Thief comes out in America, MTV2's concert put Radiohead in a room less than a tenth the size of their last New York show.

Four days spent arguing that Radiohead matter less than their audience thinks left the critic with 17 of their songs he wanted to hear.

Two days after asking the fan sites to take Radiohead's lyrics down, the publishers have agreed to let them carry on.

Eight large pieces of the new album's artwork hang in Virgin's Oxford Street shop, with the album playing in the room.

Cut from a weekend of camping on Long Island to one cold, rainy day in New Jersey, Field Day still ends with two hours of Radiohead.

In a light interview, Colin Greenwood insists Thom Yorke is no tortured soul and owns up to Madonna and the Pointer Sisters.

The director of the “There There” promo tells XFM how his small animation company got the job and how he approached it.

For the length of the Hail to the Thief campaign the band have a television channel of their own, and they want fans' films for it.

A classical pianist worked out 15 Radiohead songs by ear, from Pablo Honey to Amnesiac, and first played them as filler on his NPR radio show.

The reviewers who warm to the album and the ones who tire of it end up praising the same few songs, “Sail to the Moon” first among them.

Chris Ott's long Pitchfork review reads the album as Thom Yorke turning to more immediate subjects.

Whether the new album plays on an older stereo or a home computer depends on which country the copy was bought in.

After screenings across Europe and on British television, nine songs from the last night of the band's May club tour can now be watched song by song.

Jonny Greenwood and the band's American label tell Billboard what the unfinished mixes that leaked in the spring cost them, and what they did instead.

Ed O'Brien says the band's interest in the rules of world trade grew out of the Jubilee 2000 debt campaign.

Thom Yorke explains where the album's title came from, why he took six months off, and why he wants Hail to the Thief on the radio.

The next Radiohead releases could be short four-track records, and Yorke would happily put them out without anyone knowing who made them.

Twenty nights between mid-August and early October, two of them at the Hollywood Bowl, with W.A.S.T.E. selling tickets to its members.

The countdown was voted by the channel's viewers, and it puts Yorke a good deal nearer the bottom than the top.

Radiohead's sixth album gets good notices across the North American dailies and weeklies, with one cool second look in Chicago.

The name on the new record is a plain statement of where the band stand, and it is at number three in America.

Two members of Radiohead with guitars and a piano play songs from the new album and older records, and the whole band talk between them.

Downloaded for weeks before it reached the shops, Radiohead's sixth album still opens bigger in America than either of the two before it.

Two days apart, Radiohead headlined Germany's sister festivals, ending one night on “Karma Police” and the other on “Just” alone.

The band's site is turning its visitors into remixers, and a selection of their work will be posted each month for anyone to hear.

Success on that scale is the hard part, Yorke tells MTV, because people start to treat you as if you came from another planet.

Japanese fans who missed the limited edition the first time get another chance, though only 10,000 copies are being pressed.

Hail to the Thief was the other four's choice, and they talked Yorke round when he feared it made the record sound like it was about Bush alone.

The magazine picks the 1997 North American OK Computer dates as the band's best tour, though it was a miserable one for them.

The weekend's biggest crowd so far sang “Fake Plastic Trees” back to the band, and kept singing after “Karma Police” had finished.

For Thom Yorke, the thief in the album's title is fear, more than any one American election.

The friendship goes back eight years, to the night Radiohead opened for R.E.M. on the same Berlin stage.

Thom Yorke began the main set's last song with a piece of Neil Young's “After the Gold Rush”.

Half of the ten songs about a hundred fans heard in a Montreal TV studio in June came from the new album.

Ashgate will publish the collection, written by 11 contributors who answered a call on a mailing list, on subjects from the band's lack of gender identity to their musical merit.

Radiohead's first Montreux concert, reported sold out on the day tickets went on sale, is there to watch from start to finish.

The three disagree on the mood, from an Italian critic who calls it cheerful to a Boston one for whom Thom Yorke is as paranoid as ever.

Hail to the Thief has shipped half a million copies in the US, even as it slips down the Billboard 200.

New York gets the first go at the autumn dates, with a radio presale for both Garden nights a day before the general sale.

Every album gets a fresh reappraisal in a collector's magazine given over entirely to Radiohead.

Programmes made for the band's website get a cinema screen, and new work from Chris Bran with them.

The new instalment joins the four-hour loop, and there is a QuickTime download for anyone who misses it.

With arenas in Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, the band's winter tour now starts on the mainland before it crosses to Britain and Ireland.

Radiohead never agreed to the advert, and Parlophone, who had already turned down other requests for the song, have called in their lawyers.

Most of the summer's notices take the record as serious piano music made from the band's songs; Billboard and Uncut take it as something closer to background music.

The band's two Summer Sonic sets, a night apart in Osaka and outside Tokyo, had only nine songs in common.

A radio station's listing had put the band in Dortmund, and a full-page magazine advert in five German arenas, in the new year.

Five years after the tape, the band's collected promo videos can be had on disc, in Britain and North America in the same week.

Almost nothing in Alex Rutterford's film for the second single from Hail to the Thief was shot with a camera, down to the crowds walking past.

From the side of the stage, the support act finds Radiohead easy company off it and still working out how to reach a crowd of thousands.

Four of the band spent an evening as guest DJs on a Boston radio station, and the station kept the list of what they played.

The first American night of the tour leaned hard on Hail to the Thief, and brought back a song no US crowd had heard from the band since 1998.

Toronto radio listeners still get Radiohead next week, from the Montreal concert in place of their own.

With the drums out of action in the encore, Montreal heard Thom Yorke alone with a song that has never been on a Radiohead record.

A packed amphitheatre in Ohio heard 23 songs, and saved its loudest singing for the older ones.

The night before their Alpine Valley show, the band turn DJ on Chicago radio.

The first North American leg of the Hail to the Thief tour reaches Wisconsin for a 23-song night, with Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks in support.

The second single from Hail to the Thief gives fans three songs that are not on the album, and a live take on an old B-side.

Ahead of the Vancouver show, the bass player explains how the band are steering their tour away from Clear Channel's venues.

Yorke also explains why the band could not keep this tour away from corporate advertising, a deal he calls blackmail.

Jonny also tells Vue Weekly why the band dropped fixed roles and swapped instruments for the new album.

Amazon list Radiohead: Homework, an unauthorised documentary on DVD, for 23 September.

Radiohead's two guitarists make the magazine's cover-story list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

Chris Hopewell's stop-motion video takes one of the four craft awards it was up for at MTV's awards night in New York.

The new single got its own introduction at the USANA Amphitheatre, on a night that ran to 23 songs and two encores.

Yorke welcomes songs sold one at a time and thinks the album is on its way out anyway, as listeners pick the tracks they want.

A song from Hail to the Thief is going into the tenth edition of EA Sports' football game, out on three formats this autumn.

Bidders at the Oxford Police Ball compete for a disc that exists only once, and the money goes to a charity Phil Selway has long worked with.

Two days after the paper's Oxfam CD carried a Radiohead demo, Yorke takes the same cause to its opinion pages ahead of the trade talks in Cancún.

The bookmakers had Hail to the Thief joint favourite when the shortlist came out in July; the prize goes instead to a debut by an MC still in his teens.

A skateboard deck the band have signed follows next week, in Amnesty's Music for Human Rights sale on eBay.

Bowie was in the crowd at the small New York theatre show Radiohead played for MTV2 in June.

Security and money are not the holdup, the band say; they are still working out how to play shows there that ordinary fans can afford.

MTV viewers choose the winner online, and the result comes at a live show from Miami Beach in late October.

The Toronto night lost to the August blackout is back on, though everyone holding a ticket for it has to swap it first.

His first season playing the True Love Waits arrangements live has run from Wesleyan University in July to Berkeley in September, with radio spots between.

The company that puts out Radiohead's records could end up joined to Warner's, as Warner's talks with Bertelsmann stall.

The band take questions on San Francisco radio and Thom Yorke plays a short acoustic set, a day before the second North American leg begins.

The band's prints hang in a charity gallery of famous feet, and a sale helps a charity for seriously ill children.

The jazz saxophonist talked of for Hail to the Thief turns up on Jonny Greenwood's film score instead.

Los Angeles got two different Radiohead concerts on consecutive nights, the second reworking about half of the first night's set.

Of every concert he has seen, the singer picks a soaking wet night in New Jersey that the band turned to their advantage.

Yorke takes a turn as compère for James Brown, at the venue Radiohead had sold out on the two nights before.

Los Angeles radio woke up to a stripped-down Radiohead session, played for a room of listeners who had won their way in on the phone.

In an American cover story, the band talk about making Hail to the Thief at a track a day in Los Angeles, and why a dark record no longer means a miserable band.

Within a week, a piano record of Radiohead songs has become the best seller of a classical pianist's career.

New York's natural history museum has updated the 1970s laser rock show, and its soundtrack starts with a song from Kid A.

The band stayed away from the ceremony, and the film shown in their name was news to Jonny Greenwood.

Two songs missing from the set since August come back, and the local critic finds warmth in the band's coldest-sounding records.

A Radiohead record starts with Thom Yorke's bare songs and is built by all five, O'Brien says before the West Palm Beach show.

Florida's papers greet the band's only show in the state with Greenwood's fear that Radiohead could end up chasing new sounds for their own sake.

Radiohead's only Florida night of the tour, and their first in the area in eight years, sells out to more than 18,000.

Radiohead play New York on Thursday and Friday without the band who have opened for them since late September.

The tour service Capitol started in August with setlists and fans' photos now has music too, a different live track each week.

The band's web television channel puts a song from Hail to the Thief on screen as it was being recorded.

7 Television Commercials comes out on DVD in Japan with a Japanese lyric booklet, and Meeting People Is Easy returns at a lower price.

A half-hour session from The Bends tour, eight years old and with the first “Lucky” known to have been played, can be heard from the station's website.

Radiohead's music for Merce Cunningham's new dance has no songs and no guitars, just keyboards, beats and voices cut up and sent round the hall.

Belgian television has the band's summer night in Switzerland, a dozen songs from “My Iron Lung” to “2+2=5” with the five talking in between.

With Europe still to play this year, Radiohead already have two nights in Osaka and two near Tokyo booked for the spring.

The man who made the album's artwork has carried its look onto a model cow, and the bids will go to two charities.

After the album escaped two months early, the label's Canadian arm now sends advance music only to people who can prove who they are.

Travis made 12 Memories without Nigel Godrich, and their singer says sharing the producer with Radiohead was the reason.

With the contract fulfilled, Yorke thinks Radiohead's next release is more likely to be EPs than another album.

Britain and much of Europe get Jonny's score for Simon Pummell's wordless film today, and the rest of the world follows into the new year.

Talking about his first record under his own name, Jonny Greenwood explains why a film with no words let him write music no ordinary score would.

The engineers behind the band's American arena dates explain how a show of about 25 songs is mixed, and why the desks are analogue.

The April shows will be Radiohead's first in Australia since a tour that ended in Perth in February 1998.

His first solo record carries his name alone, but Jonny Greenwood would only make another if the band stopped, and has no plans to leave them.

The prize goes to a film with no dialogue, carried by Greenwood's music and a century of footage of human lives.

Two of the score's first critics catch the piano of “Pyramid Song” in its opening piece, and one wishes Radiohead's guitarist had played more guitar.

The pianist behind True Love Waits plays Bristol, London, Coventry, Nottingham and Glasgow in November.

Since September, Radiohead songs have been turning up under sport, trailers and public service spots on both sides of the Atlantic.

Radiohead have now been shortlisted for the award twice and lost it both times, this year to a band who did not turn up.

Radiohead's drummer takes the Samaritans, and the marathon he ran in 2002, to a Radio 4 audience.

Once the touring ends in the spring, Radiohead mean to make songs for their own sake rather than to fill an album, Colin Greenwood says.

The film Jonny Greenwood scored reaches Hollywood before anyone has signed up to release it in America.

The tour of mainland Europe starts in Germany, and a fan's sign changes the encore on the first night.

The pianist's first concert in the town where he grew up ran to 24 pieces, with the encore's first song picked by the audience.

Jonny Greenwood's first record under his own name reaches American shops four months after the rest of the world got it.

The second night of the European tour came after a few Belgian days given over to the band in the papers and on the radio.

More than 10,000 people saw the second German night of the European tour end with one song the band could not get through and another they had not planned to play.

First expected a week earlier, the single reaches the shops the week before Radiohead's two nights at Earls Court.

An hour of the July night when the two played Paris as a duo reaches French and German television.

Two of Radiohead drop in on Radio 1's afternoon double act on the eve of the band's British arena dates.

The band who had Ed O'Brien on guitar on Enemy of the Enemy are on the bill every night of the pre-Christmas run, from Manchester to Dublin.

U2's “One” is named the greatest song ever, but U2 have one song fewer than Radiohead in the list.

Paris hears the first “Creep” of the European dates, and a technical hitch brings Thom Yorke out alone for “True Love Waits”.

Two films from the Paris taping are on the channel's website, one of them the three quieter members remembering their first times on stage.

Yorke wants the visit met with protest, and thinks the Royal Family should make the President feel unwelcome too.

Donwood's maps of cities come as a set in a black portfolio, ahead of the store's Christmas order deadlines.

With the Netherlands done, the tour crosses to the British arenas, starting in Manchester on Saturday.

Away from the image they carry at home, Radiohead are enjoying themselves, and they have started playing “Creep” again.

The interview went out on the night of the band's show at the Gelredome, with footage from it.

Half of Radiohead's six albums make the list, and the oldest of the three sits highest.

The hour was meant to be about the band's web TV programmes, but readers wanted to know about EMI, America and whether Radiohead will ever split.

The band share the disc with Coldplay, Beth Orton, David Gray and five other acts.

Paired with the historian for a magazine conversation, Yorke doubts a band can change much, and says Radiohead are not political at all.

The night after Manchester, the British arena run reaches Tyneside.

Jonny Greenwood would only score another film if Radiohead took a break, and he hopes the band go straight back to work once the tour is over.

A poster announcing the new album, with all five autographs on it, goes on eBay to raise money for the American group.

Registered users of the awards' website can vote for the band as best rock act and for the “There There” video.

Fans who were at Forest National have their say in the Dutch magazine's report, illustrated with photographs from the night.

The shirt is the campaign's own, sold online and handed free to every new member.

Only Johnny Cash beats Radiohead in Jools Holland's 10 favourite performances from his BBC2 show.

Radiohead toured America this autumn braced for trouble over Yorke's words on the war, and found the audiences on their side.

A song from Hail to the Thief has gone to American radio, trimmed for airplay.

A hall blamed for years for spoiling concerts sounded clear and intense for Radiohead, the Glasgow Evening Times says.

Radiohead's spokesperson says the band probably won't play the London run themselves, though The Sun has them hoping to.

The Recording Academy put Radiohead's album, its first single and the man who produced it in the running for February's awards.

Thom Yorke dropped a hint about a DVD, and NME now put a month on it.

After its festival screenings, the film Jonny Greenwood scored gets a British cinema run that lasts into February.

With Simon Pummell's film now in UK cinemas, the December reviews find Jonny Greenwood's score richer in invention than in tunes.

Jonny Greenwood talks about downloading, in a conversation taped soon after the album escaped onto the internet.

The DJ who toured the US with Radiohead tells an Oxford crowd that Colin and Molly Greenwood are expecting a baby.

With no famous faces on screen, Simon Pummell wanted a famous name on the soundtrack of Bodysong, and Radiohead were the band he hoped for.

Radio 4's morning news programme hands a day of its New Year week to the Radiohead singer, alongside Stephen Hawking and Lord Tebbit.

Jonny Greenwood's new concert piece and music from Bodysong share a bill at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.