Radiohead open TRNSMT in Glasgow, their first Scottish show since 2008

Radiohead headlined the first night of TRNSMT on Glasgow Green on Friday 7 July, their first show in Scotland since June 2008. The opening chords of “The Bends”, second to last in a 25-song set, drew audible gasps before the cheering started.

TRNSMT is a new three-day festival from DF Concerts, held in T in the Park's usual July weekend while that festival takes 2017 off. It was the band's fourth night on Glasgow Green, after two in September 2000 and one in June 2008.

Before the set, campaigners from Glasgow Palestine Action, Glasgow Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Radiohead Fans for Palestine demonstrated outside the festival, asking the band to respect the cultural boycott of Israel and call off their show in Tel Aviv on 19 July. Palestinian flags and placards went up in the crowd during the set. Fans at the show said Thom Yorke seemed agitated. Before “Myxomatosis” he shouted the same angry exclamation over and over while staring into the crowd, and he was seen giving the middle finger, though whether either was meant for the protesters is not clear. The Tel Aviv show is still going ahead.

The set ran about two and a half hours, starting with “Let Down” as the sun went down. Will Butler, reviewing it for NME, rated it better paced than the band's Glastonbury headline set two weeks earlier and put the crowd at 35,000. The field sang along to “Pyramid Song” and “Paranoid Android” and cheered the line about the government in “No Surprises”. “Karma Police” closed the second encore, and the crowd kept chanting its refrain on the way out.

Setlist, TRNSMT, Glasgow, 7 July 2017