The band · timeline
Timeline
Where the band changed direction, against every album, 1985 to now.
On a Friday forms at Abingdon School
On a Friday, the band that became Radiohead, formed in 1985 at Abingdon School and took its name from their usual rehearsal day in the school's music room. They disliked the school's strict atmosphere: the headmaster once charged them for using a rehearsal room on a Sunday.
EMI signs On a Friday, and they become Radiohead
Colin Greenwood of On a Friday met Keith Wozencroft of EMI in a record shop and gave him the band's demo. EMI signed them between December 1991 and March 1992, and in the spring of 1992, at the label's request, they changed their name to Radiohead, after “Radio Head”, a Talking Heads song.
“Creep” becomes a hit abroad first
“Creep”, Radiohead's debut single, did little in Britain at first. It became a hit in Israel after the DJ Yoav Kutner started playing it on Israeli radio, and in America through alternative radio; reissued at home in September 1993, it reached number seven.
Stanley Donwood starts making Radiohead artwork
Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke had met as art students at the University of Exeter, and Yorke asked Donwood to help with the sleeve of the My Iron Lung EP. They have made every Radiohead sleeve together since.
Nigel Godrich moves from engineer to producer
The producer John Leckie brought Nigel Godrich in to engineer The Bends, and Radiohead nicknamed him “Nihilist” for pushing their sound in new directions. He co-produced OK Computer and has produced every Radiohead studio album since.
radiohead.com in December 1997: one sentence
The Wayback Machine's capture of radiohead.com on 10 December 1997 holds the word RADIOHEAD and a single sentence: “This is the Radiohead internet site.”
Radiohead's OK Computer-era website, the “Shopocalypse Channel”
A note on the old-sites page of radiohead.com, written by 2004, says Radiohead's OK Computer-era website was made mostly at St Catherine's Court, the house near Bath where they were recording OK Computer, from an overstuffed easy chair in the corner of an old library. Its archived front page is titled “Shopocalypse Channel” and says it is “optimised for a 640X480 monitor set at 256 colors”.
Meeting People Is Easy follows the OK Computer tour
Grant Gee filmed Radiohead's OK Computer tour, and the round of interviews that came with it, from Barcelona in May 1997 into 1998. The film, Meeting People Is Easy, came out on video in Britain on 30 November 1998.
Ed's diary appears inside the official site
Ed O'Brien kept an online diary of Radiohead's progress from 22 July 1999, during the sessions for Kid A and Amnesiac; the last entry was written in Athens on 26 June 2000. It went up on radiohead.com, the band's own site, as pages of images. This site has mirrored it since the 2000s.
Kid A released with no commercial single and few interviews
Radiohead released Kid A on 2 October 2000 with no commercial single and no official video, and gave few interviews. In their place came “blips”, dozens of short animations of Stanley Donwood's artwork, shown on music channels and passed around online.
Radiohead take Kid A round Europe in a tent of their own, with no sponsors
In the months around Kid A's release in October 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a tent built for the tour, with no sponsors on it.
Stanley Donwood's bears on radiohead.com
Stanley Donwood's pointy-toothed bears turned up on the radiohead.com site made while Amnesiac was being recorded, with two pages of their own, one headed “Modified Bears”.
The radiohead.com site made during Amnesiac
The radiohead.com site made while Amnesiac was being recorded pointed visitors to Friends of the Earth Europe's climate pages and held Ed O'Brien's diary. It also had “Fred's Nightmare”, a rant about supermarkets for readers to paste into the Mac voice that reads “Fitter Happier”.
Radiohead's EMI contract ends
Hail to the Thief, released in 2003, was the sixth and last album of the six-album deal Radiohead had signed with EMI. Radiohead were left without a label, and in 2007 they told EMI they would not re-sign.
radiohead.com archives its old websites
A page on radiohead.com headed “Hypertextual Archaeology” linked six of Radiohead's old sites, “left to wither on the line”, with a short note on each. The newest, made in a very short time just before Hail to the Thief came out, went up, its note admits, with nothing to put in it.
Dead Air Space opens as Radiohead's own blog
Radiohead started a blog, Dead Air Space, in 2005, while recording the album that became In Rainbows. It carried notes from the studio and pictures, their politics and their announcements.
In Rainbows sold from Radiohead's own site
Jonny Greenwood announced In Rainbows on Radiohead's blog on 1 October 2007, saying it was “coming out in 10 days”. Buyers named their own price on the band's website, and a discbox with a second CD of eight more songs sold alongside it there.
Radiohead broadcast their own web shows
Around In Rainbows, Radiohead ran their own broadcasts from their Oxfordshire studio, among them Thumbs Down on radiohead.tv in November and Scotch Mist, put on YouTube on New Year's Eve.
The “Nude” stems go on sale
Radiohead sold the five separate parts of “Nude” on iTunes so that anyone could remix it, and the results were posted and ranked online.
“House of Cards” made with lidar
James Frost made Radiohead's video for “House of Cards” with no cameras, using only motion capture and lidar, which scans with lasers. The scan data went up on Google Code under a Creative Commons licence.
Radiohead criticise EMI's “Best Of”
EMI put it out in June 2008, after the band had left the label and without their say. Thom Yorke called it “a wasted opportunity”.
Office charts on Dead Air Space
Radiohead's blog, Dead Air Space, ran an office chart, usually a list of records. In June 2010 one posted by Jonny Greenwood listed ten video games instead.
The Universal Sigh, a free newspaper
The Universal Sigh, Radiohead's 12-page tabloid, was handed out free in cities around the world on 28 and 29 March 2011, to promote the CD and vinyl release of The King of Limbs. Stanley Donwood, who designs Radiohead's artwork, and, in his words, “a fellow-conspirator” gave away about 3,000 copies outside the London record shop Rough Trade East.
The King of Limbs goes out as a download first
The download arrived on 18 February 2011, a day earlier than announced. The CD and vinyl followed on 28 March.
PolyFauna, the app
A phone app built from the music and imagery of The King of Limbs, made with Stanley Donwood, Nigel Godrich and the studio Universal Everything.
Radiohead delete their web presence
At the start of May 2016 radiohead.com went blank and the band's social media posts vanished. “Burn the Witch”, the first song from A Moon Shaped Pool, followed on 3 May.
OKNOTOK reissues OK Computer
OK Computer at 20, remastered with its B-sides and three songs never released before, “I Promise”, “Man of War” and “Lift”. It was the first Radiohead compilation released after XL Recordings took over the band's back catalogue in 2016.
MiniDiscs [Hacked] released after a leak
More than 16 hours of Thom Yorke's OK Computer-era minidiscs leaked in June 2019, with reports of a ransom. Radiohead put them on Bandcamp for 18 days and gave every penny to Extinction Rebellion.
Radiohead Public Library launches
In January 2020 Radiohead opened the Radiohead Public Library, an online archive of their music videos, live performances and artwork, the 1998 documentary Meeting People Is Easy among them.
The Kid A Mnesia Exhibition opens
Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, a free digital exhibition of the Kid A and Amnesiac artwork and music, on 18 November 2021 for PlayStation 5, Mac and Windows, after plans for a real installation fell through. A physical installation based on it opened at Coachella in April 2026.
The Smile debuts
Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner, the Sons of Kemet drummer, made their debut as The Smile on Glastonbury's Live at Worthy Farm stream on 22 May 2021.
Radiohead return to the stage after seven years
Radiohead played four nights in each of five arenas, in the round, from Madrid on 4 November to Copenhagen on 16 December. Their last show before that was in Philadelphia on 1 August 2018.