Film of Thom Yorke singing “High and Dry” at Exeter surfaces

A film of Thom Yorke singing “High and Dry” with Headless Chickens, the band he played with as a student at Exeter University, has turned up on YouTube. Shaun McCrindle shot it at the Lemon Grove, the university's student venue, and posted it on 10 July; his note puts it at about 1990. Fans spotted it, and by Monday the music press had it.

Yorke sings lead and takes a guitar solo, and the song comes out blistering, a different version from the one on The Bends. McCrindle says Yorke played with Headless Chickens in term time, in a line-up that included Simon Shackleton and John Matthias. The band's only release was “I Don't Want To Go To Woodstock”, on the 1989 Hometown Atrocities EP, which was Yorke's first appearance on a record.

Yorke went to Exeter in 1988 to read English and Fine Art, with On a Friday, his band from Abingdon School, on hold while he studied. He went back to them after graduating in 1991, and On a Friday became Radiohead.

McCrindle has since turned up a second film, of Yorke in 1990 on electronics and vocals with a university ensemble playing experimental music, at what Fact say was Exeter's Contemporary Music Festival. It runs 22 minutes; giant dice are thrown about the stage at 12, and Yorke's voice comes in at 14:20.

Radiohead recorded “High and Dry” as a demo with Jim Warren at Courtyard Studios in 1993, and that recording went on The Bends. It came out as a double A-side with “Planet Telex” on 27 February 1995. Yorke had to be talked into putting it out. I had my arm twisted on “High and Dry”⁸, he told Pitchfork in 2006, and then, laughing, It's not bad, you know. It's not bad...it's very bad.⁸

Headless Chickens, with Thom Yorke, playing High and Dry at the Lemon Grove, Exeter, about 1990· Shaun McCrindlewatch on youtube →