Shot by Both Sides

magazine

Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley wrote it, and it was Magazine's first single, released in January 1978 and reaching number 41. The title came from an argument. Devoto was rowing about politics with his girlfriend, and she told him he would end up shot by both sides.

Shelley gave him the riff while Devoto was helping with some early Buzzcocks ideas. “He played the chord sequence and I was really impressed, said so, and he just gave them to me there and then,” Devoto remembered. The same figure turns up on the Buzzcocks B-side “Lipstick” later that year. NME made it the ninth-best track of 1978.

In March 1978 Magazine re-recorded it for Real Life with John Leckie producing, 16 years before Leckie made The Bends with Radiohead.

“just”

Jonny Greenwood told Adam Buxton on BBC Radio 6 Music in 2013 that the guitar part of “Just” comes from the playing of John McGeoch, Magazine's guitarist, on the song, “pretty much the same kind of idea”.

werchter

Radiohead played it in the first encore at Werchter, in the big top they toured Europe with that autumn, on 12 September 2000, between “How to Disappear Completely” and “Bones”. It is the only time they have played it. That was a second night in Belgium, added after the tent dates went up in June, and the night before had brought a cover of its own, Can's “Thief”, in the same place in the set. Somebody filmed the whole show.