Song · OK Computer era (1996–98)
The Tourist
Jonny Greenwood's slow song ends OK Computer, and for years it ended the concerts too.
OK Computeralbum- 1997released
- 5:24length
1996
a square in france
The music started with Jonny Greenwood, and the rest of the band treat it as his song. The picture behind it came from France: a beautiful square on a sunny day and a party of American tourists being wheeled around it, trying to see everything in ten minutes because they had to be in Paris in the morning. Yorke told the story to Select; the 2003 site's note puts Greenwood in the square, appalled that anyone could stand somewhere that lovely and not stop to look.
Yorke wrote the words. In 2017 he told Rolling Stone that Greenwood had come up with an incredibly slow riff, so he started singing about slowing down. The band were travelling without a break and everything felt like speed. He also traced the chorus to one morning in Germany, short of sleep and paranoid, looking for breakfast and finding only a dog barking at him while everyone else carried on. It sounds like it is about technology, he said, and it is not.
That song was written to me from me.
thom yorke · launch, 2 may 1997
1996–97
a song with space
Greenwood told Humo he was surprised the other four let him do it, and that it did not sound like Radiohead at all. His point was that nothing has to happen every three seconds.
It has become a song with space.
jonny greenwood · humo, 22 july 1997
It moves as a slow waltz, with the Mellotron choir from “Exit Music” and “Lucky” coming back and a scraping Greenwood solo in the choruses. At the end the guitars drop away to drums and bass, and the last sound on the album is a small bell. Nigel Godrich thought it was a triangle and that Selway played it. Greenwood, quoted on the 2003 site, said Yorke did not play a note on it and just listened.
Accounts of when it was finished differ. Tim Footman lists it among the four songs nearly complete at Canned Applause; Ultimate Classic Rock has Greenwood placing it at the end of the St Catherine's Court sessions, as they were about to pack up.
1997
last
The band spent two weeks on the running order. Yorke said it was obvious this had to close the record, because so much of the album was about background noise and everything moving too fast to keep up with. Greenwood had seen that coming.
It sounds like the last song on an album.
jonny greenwood · quoted on the 2003 site
1997–2018
fifty endings
Its first night in the archive is Barcelona's Zeleste on 24 May 1997, and it was in the set thirty-two times that year. It has been played on 77 nights. It has never opened a show and it has closed fifty of them. After Victoria Park in London on 24 June 2008 it was gone for 3,201 days, back in Miami on 30 March 2017. The most recent is Philadelphia on 1 August 2018; the 2025 tour left it out.
Israel Vibration sang it on Radiodread, the Easy Star All-Stars' 2006 reggae version of the album.
on stage
Live at Hammerstein Ballroom, 1997.· Zehead16watch on youtube →
Live history
| Times played | 77 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Saturday 24 May 1997 · Barcelona |
| Last played | Wednesday 1 August 2018 · Philadelphia |
| Closed the night | 50 times |
| Longest absence | 8 years · back on Thursday 30 March 2017 · Miami |
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
Tabs (1)
sources8
- Andy Greene, “Radiohead's ‘OK Computer’: An Oral History”, Rolling Stone, 16 June 2017, for Yorke on Greenwood's riff and Godrich on the triangle.
- Andy Greene, “Inside ‘OK Computer’”, Rolling Stone, 31 May 2017, for the morning in Germany.
- Bryan Wawzenek, “Radiohead Slow Down on ‘The Tourist’”, Ultimate Classic Rock, 20 May 2022, for Yorke in Select, Greenwood in Humo, the band's view of it as Greenwood's song, the Mellotron and solo, and the St Catherine's Court account.
- “Radiohead: The album, song by song, of the year”, Humo, 22 July 1997, via Wikipedia, “OK Computer”, for Greenwood's quote.
- Dave DiMartino, “Give Radiohead Your Computer”, Yahoo! Launch, 2 May 1997, via Wikipedia, “OK Computer”, for Yorke on writing it to himself and on closing the album.
- Wikipedia, “OK Computer”, for the waltz, the bell, the two weeks of sequencing and Footman's list of the four songs.
- Wikipedia, “Radiodread”, for the Israel Vibration version.
- treefingers.com, the 2003 lyric page for “The Tourist”, for Greenwood in the square and his two remarks.