Radiohead headline Lollapalooza's sold-out first night in Grant Park

Radiohead headlined the first night of Lollapalooza in Grant Park, Chicago, on Friday 1 August, seven years to the day since they last played the park. During “Everything in Its Right Place” a fireworks display that had nothing to do with the festival went up behind the stage over the Field Museum, and the crowd held up their lit phones.

About 75,000 people were there, and Friday is the first single day of Lollapalooza to sell out since the festival settled in Grant Park in 2005. Bloc Party played just before Radiohead. The night opened the band's August North American leg; a charity show at the Chicago Theatre two nights earlier was meant to start it, but it was called off because Thom Yorke was ill and wanted to be well for Grant Park.

In March the Chicago Sun-Times passed on another Chicago paper's report that Radiohead would headline, and the band's publicists would neither confirm nor deny it. The line-up announced on 7 April put them at the top with Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Kanye West and Wilco.

All ten In Rainbows songs were played. The crowd sang along to “The National Anthem”, “No Surprises” and “The Bends”, though WPGU's reviewer heard Yorke stumble over the words of “The Bends” and named “Faust Arp”, played unplugged as a duet, the best of the night. Yorke said little between songs beyond thanks. The first encore opened with “Videotape”, a click on the drum rims took the band straight into “Paranoid Android”, and the stage went red for “Optimistic”.

Setlist, Grant Park, Chicago, 1 August 2008