Alan Sparhawk of Low keeps a diary of seven Radiohead shows

Alan Sparhawk of Low has written up the seven shows his band opened for Radiohead in Italy, France and Spain in July. A keen gear man, he watched Jonny Greenwood run some parts through laptop effects and expensive hand-built analogue filters, yet get his crunch from a small solid-state practice amp, so that the world famous “KA-CHUNK” on “Creep” can be yours at the local pawn shop, not the fancy expensive equipment boutique¹.

Pulse of the Twin Cities has printed the diary, heavily edited, and the full version is to go up on Low's website. The request came in May from Radiohead's management, through Low's European agent, and it surprised the Duluth band even though they had heard Radiohead were fans and had met them briefly at a Spanish festival the year before.

In Bergamo the members of Radiohead came over one by one after their soundcheck to say hello, and the first 20 or 30 fans racing for the stage rattled Sparhawk more than the full crowd did later. Every night, the crowd went wild at the “you have not been paying attention” part of “2+2=5”.

He rates the second night in Florence the best Radiohead set so far. These were their first full shows since Hail to the Thief came out, two hours and more after festival sets of 90 minutes at most, and before each one several of them sat together working on the setlist.

At an after-show gathering in Florence, Colin Greenwood asked whether Low had ever done any Al Green songs, because some of their phrasing and harmonies sounded like him.

Ferrara's stage stood at one end of the cobbled square by the castle, 100 feet from Low's hotel. When Zak Sally broke a string on the first night, a Radiohead backline tech put one of Colin's basses in his hands, and by the end of the next song Sally had his own back, restrung. That night Radiohead opened the first encore with “Like Spinning Plates”, which Sparhawk found strangely intimate and counts as his highlight. He talked it over with Thom Yorke at lunch the next day and found the band well aware of how hard it is to connect at big shows, and still working at it. Sparhawk has no time for anyone who calls them cold live.

In the Roman arena at Nîmes, before 12,000, Yorke played and sang the first verse of Neil Young's “After the Gold Rush”. At the farewell the talk turned to the American dates, where the band were already taking flak for their hinted anti-war, anti-Bush leanings.

Colin had been the most sociable of the five all tour and Phil Selway always the best dressed, and Even the dark one, Johnny was quite social on occasion.¹

Low opening for Radiohead, July 2003