Radiohead play “Lotus Flower” and “Staircase” on Saturday Night Live

Radiohead were the musical guests on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live on 24 September, with Alec Baldwin hosting. They played “Lotus Flower” from The King of Limbs, then “Staircase”, a song left off the album and not out on any record. The broadcast opens a week in New York for the band, with an hour of The Colbert Report on Monday and two nights at the Roseland Ballroom on 28 and 29 September.

It is their first time on the show since October 2000, when they played “The National Anthem” and “Idioteque” while promoting Kid A. This time Thom Yorke danced at the microphone with a pair of maracas through “Lotus Flower”, then moved to a keyboard for “Staircase” and kept moving there.

“Staircase” was first seen in June, in a film from the band's From the Basement session that went up on YouTube more than two weeks before the full session was first broadcast, on Spanish television in July.