Radiohead headline Glastonbury again, six years to the day

Radiohead closed the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury on Saturday night, 28 June, their first time at the festival since 1997 and six years to the day after that headline set. When “Karma Police” ended the first encore and Thom Yorke walked off, the field went on singing the song's closing line by itself, and was still singing it when the band came back out for “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”.

Martin Clark, reviewing for the Guardian, calls it the gig of a lifetime and the crowd easily the biggest of the weekend so far; 133,000 people were on site at Saturday's peak. A scorching day had given way to a quick chill after dark, and lamps and candles stretched back across the field.

NME's Julian Marshall rates the set above the band's celebrated 1997 performance and picks “Fake Plastic Trees” as its peak, sung back by the whole field with fireworks going off on the horizon.

The 19 songs opened with “There There” and “2 + 2 = 5”, and the report that reached us on the night has Yorke dedicating the third, “Lucky”, to R.E.M., who had headlined the Pyramid stage the night before. Michael Stipe had come back to the site just to see Radiohead, old friends of his.

Seven songs came from Hail to the Thief, out for less than three weeks, five from OK Computer and none from Amnesiac. At one point a bandmate sampled Yorke's voice live and played it back with more and more distortion while he stood silent, staring out at the crowd, and the long electronic passages went down well with the field.

Akin Ojumu was less taken with it in the Observer. He found much of the newer material struggling in so big a setting, and gave his weekend to R.E.M. and to the Flaming Lips, on before Radiohead at sunset.

Radiohead left out “Creep”, and on Sunday night Moby, closing the festival on the same stage, played it himself. A lot of people have been asking a band for it, and I'm going to do it.⁷

Michael Eavis had turned Paul McCartney down for this year, since McCartney would play only on the Saturday and Radiohead already had it. A couple of hours before the set Eavis went to wish Yorke luck and settle his nerves, then watched from the back of the arena, and the next afternoon he named Radiohead his favourite band of the weekend so far. Musically it was perfection. It was the perfect setting, it was a lovely evening.²

Setlist, Glastonbury, Pyramid stage, 28 June 2003