FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| COVER STORY What the good goddamn is the world coming to? Not long ago you'd get only three answers to the query: What's the best thing about being a rock star? Fame, wealth and, of course, the license to satisfy any and all sexual perversions you may harbor, no matter how much they contradict the laws of physics, nature or the UN Charter. (A timely piece of rock star advice: you may want to "clean up" the hard drive before having your computer serviced.) Ask the question today and it's like you're Donald Trump searching for Miss Congeniality. "I want to be a rock star to spread joy throughout the land." "Being a rock star to me means I can adopt that Vietnamese family of 11 that I've had my eye on for awhile." "I want to feed the world!" "Because I love children!" (Again, heed above advice.) Then there's Radiohead's guitarist Ed O'Brien, who apparently views the situation as some sort of student exchange program and much less than the hedonistic vision we all grew up with and longed for. "For me, I've always loved traveling," he says (unfortunately without quickly adding, "so I can get recognized and shag hundreds of different broads"). "Before I was in this band I did a lot of backpacking so the ability to travel around the world very comfortably seeing these great places, and places that you can return to... that for me is probably the best part of what we do." It better be because for a solid year, since the release of Radiohead's third critical darling disc OK Computer, O'Brien and his four old school friends have been on the road playing any place that will have them. Seeing not a lot of anywhere but a little of everywhere, they're nearing the end of the extremely successful tour which has taken them through Europe, Mexico, Australia, the Orient and finally to North America. While O'Brien is nothing but courteous and casually accommodating - in a very un-rock star manner - you can tell the travel which he purports to enjoy so much has taken its natural toll. He seems extremely weary and (politely) lets it be known that he's fairly sick of talking about the album and having it talked about. Which is fine because there is little else to say about the dense, saturnine CD which has already sold over 200,000 copies in Canada, alone. It's time to move on and move on they will. After the last few dates, all five will return to their homes in Oxford where they'll rejuvenate for four months before heading back to the studio to record the follow-up. Again, let it be duly noted O'Brien betrays his chosen profession by sounding a little too eager to leave the limelight behind and by painting a vacation picture that's more mundane plumber than prima donna. "We need some time off to get totally refreshed and just get a life, really," he says wistfully. "To get a bit of normality, really. Getting a routine, catching up with friends.... It would be nice to just have a normal day. It's leisure time, it's something to be excited about. "Your privacy and your personal life are so important, they're the things that keep you sane. If you have a good personal life and privacy, they're the things that actually make you want to continue doing it because I reckon you could get to a stage - as probably Oasis and Blur have found out in the last few years - that if you aren't in that situation it's to the detriment of the music and you don't actually want to carry on making music, because it's not worth it," he continues. "We really want to carry on, it's what we've been doing for the last 12 years as a band. We never formed a band for the life and all the trappings. There is a trade-off, of course, but if you can retain some privacy and normality you carry on hopefully making good music. And when you get to the state where you realize you're not making good music you can call it a day. That's equally as important because if you do have a private life and a social life, you're not scared of giving up all the lovely things about being in a band." Lovely things? Lovely? There aren't supposed to be any lovely things about being in a band. It's supposed to be about debauchery; about getting everything that's coming to you and being a right ungrateful prick about it. Rock stars aren't supposed to avoid the trappings, they're supposed to mainline them and greedily demand more. That's what separates them from the little people - the fans. That's what allows them to jump out of a hooker-filled limo with a rock of crack cocaine stuck in their mustache and perform an hour-long set (including encore with 12-minute guitar solo), hop back into the limo and jet off to Vegas before the unwashed who paid 40 bucks a ticket can even board public transit. That's what you aspire to, isn't it? "One of the worst things that happens with a band when they seem to get bigger is that they lose touch with the people that come along to the show," O'Brien says. "The best thing about this year and the US and Canadian tour was actually talking to people after the shows because we basically didn't have a fucking clue when we went out on the road about how it was going to be perceived. We were really taken aback by how pertinent the album was and the themes behind it, after talking to people. "We make records in isolation, but we'd be lying if we said we just made them for ourselves," he says. "I think maybe we convey to people into our music that we are fairly straight-ahead and you wouldn't mind having a drink with one of us in a bar. We could have a reasonable conversation - we're not complete idiots." And with that, there are no more illusions left to shatter. |