Song · Pablo Honey era (1992–93)
Vegetable
A student reviewer in Massachusetts rated it the strongest song on Pablo Honey.
Pablo Honeyalbum- 1993released
- 3:13length
1993
what o'brien said
Thom Yorke wrote the words, but the explanation on record comes from Ed O'Brien. Talking to the Washington Times on 24 June 1993, he picked out two songs on Pablo Honey as political. “Stop Whispering” was about people who fail to stand up for their rights, and this one warned people against letting themselves be dehumanised, against becoming vegetables.
Bryan Wawzenek, writing in Ultimate Classic Rock on the album's 25th anniversary, traced the lyric to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The words fit it, with a narrator who has worked hard, refuses to be quietened, and turns on whoever keeps him fed.
1993–2018
the notices
Rob Haneisen, reviewing Pablo Honey for The Strobe, the student paper at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts, in November 1993, put this above everything else on the album and thought it could stand as the band's anthem against doing things by formula.
Later readers were cooler. Scott Plagenhoef, reviewing the 2009 reissue for Pitchfork, put it with “How Do You?”, “I Can't” and “Ripcord” as “run of the mill at best”, and Annie Zaleski in Salon found its bottled-up irritation a little comically overdone.
1992–95
a regular in 1993
It was first played at the Duchess of York in Leeds on 27 October 1992, and in 1993 it was a regular, on fifty-six nights in the archive. Paul Moody's NME feature that September names it from the warm-up for Reading at the Venue in Oxford, a night he called amazing. It was in the set EMI filmed at the London Astoria on 27 May 1994, and it closed a show once, at Gino in Stockholm on 1 December 1995.
A live recording went on the limited 12-inch of the 1993 reissue of “Creep”, with “You” and “Killer Cars”, and the 2003 site lists it on Itch, the EP EMI put out in Japan on 1 June 1994.
on stage
Live at Doornroosje, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, June 1993.· tsktskboogiewatch on youtube →
the record(1)
on stage(3)
Live history
| Times played | 104 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Tuesday 27 October 1992 · Leeds |
| Last played | Friday 1 December 1995 · Stockholm |
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
Tabs (1)
sources9
- Washington Times, interview with Ed O'Brien, 24 June 1993.
- Bryan Wawzenek, “When Radiohead Imitated Their Heroes on ‘Pablo Honey’”, Ultimate Classic Rock, 22 February 2018, for the Cuckoo's Nest source.
- Rob Haneisen, review of Pablo Honey, The Strobe, Fitchburg State College, 17 November 1993, p. 8.
- Wikipedia, “Pablo Honey”, for Plagenhoef's verdict (citing Scott Plagenhoef, Pitchfork, 16 April 2009).
- Annie Zaleski, “Pablo Honey: Beyond ‘Creep’”, Salon, 23 February 2018.
- Paul Moody, NME, 11 September 1993.
- Wikipedia, “Live at the Astoria”; Wikipedia, “Creep (Radiohead song)”, for the live B-side; Wikipedia, “Radiohead discography”, for the Itch release.
- The 2003 treefingers.com song file, for the Itch listing.
- Performance dates from this site's own setlist archive.