Radiohead end their club tour with Thom Yorke alone on “True Love Waits”

Radiohead's week of small British and Irish halls ended at Shepherd's Bush Empire in London on Sunday 25 May with Thom Yorke back on stage alone, with an acoustic guitar, for a third encore of “True Love Waits”. He could not remember how it started, broke off grinning and went to the front of the crowd to ask. What's the first line... Oh fuck! What is it?² NME has him stopping twice and asking the front row both times; Jason Leavey of musicOMH describes one break, at the first line.

It was the song's first outing of 2003, and the first since San Sebastian last August. The night was the second of two at the Empire and the last of a tour that, by NME's count, put the band in their smallest British venues for six years. MTV filmed the show to broadcast later.

Ten of the 24 songs came from Hail to the Thief, out on 9 June. “There There”, the new single, opened the show, with Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien both beating tom-toms through the slow build before Greenwood went back to his guitar. Two songs later he started “The National Anthem” by turning the dial of an old transistor radio, and the crowd cheered the moment he picked it up.

Leavey reports that in the second encore someone on stage said that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist, and spoke about the rise of the right in America and Europe.

Setlist, Shepherd's Bush Empire, 25 May 2003