This blog entry adheres pretty closely to the song order and the lyrics to those songs on the album; rather than laboriously cross-reference each picture in that respect, it's probably quicker and easier to check the lyrics directly as you're listening/reading along - this is the best place to do so.
Much of the piece also references a bad road accident that I sustained at 12:30 pm on Saturday 24 October 1998. "But we're only in the summer of 1997!" I hear you tut; see Ken Bruce reference towards piece's end. Thematically it fits.
Anyway, the pictures:
1. Trevor Square in Knightsbridge SW1, just behind the spot of pavement where I walked off into the road and sustained that accident.
2. Didcot Power Station; much of OK Computer was recorded in Didcot, and it's also a train stop between Oxford and London.
3. Oxford railway station, where I went on the morning of 24 October 1998 to board a train.
4. Paddington station, where I got off that train.
5. Harrods, where I went after I got my haircut (which at the time was regularly in Knightsbridge - where I got my haircut, that is; Harrods hasn't moved anywhere else, except the duty-free sections of certain international airports).
6. Michael Holroyd's magisterial biography of Lytton Strachey, which I bought in the book section of Harrods - yes, back then they had one (it was really Waterstones, but better than nothing) - on 24 October. On my copy you can still see the bump where the bus hit it.
7. Old edition of what was then still called Vox magazine; Laura was getting into Placebo and asked me to try to find a copy of this issue in London (why wasn't Laura with me? Back then she worked on Saturdays). The only place that might have stocked it was in Denmark Street, which was why I had to cross the road and get a bus into town.
8. Denmark Street, at the bottom of which (on the right as you're looking at this picture) was a specialist music shop which sold only music books, music papers and magazines (new and old) and fanzines. Unfortunately I can't remember its name nearly twenty-eight years on and it closed in the early 2000s anyway.
9. Knightsbridge Barracks, on the other side of the road which I impatiently and impetuously crossed to board the number 10 bus which was loading up at the stop just to its right.
10. The westbound number 52 bus which I didn't see coming and which hit me as I was attempting to cross that road.
11. Self-explanatory consequence.
12. The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, 369 Fulham Road, where the ambulance took me. I was on a life support machine for five days.
13. The Kidlington Roundabout in Oxford, where Thom Yorke's 1987 car accident happened.
14. Airbags.
15. Tried to find one without him in it.
16. *image deleted but it was a born again reference*
17. John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford, where I was eventually transferred.
18. Frankie Vaughan, who was on the same ward at me at the Radcliffe, undergoing treatment for cancer.
19. The copy of that month's MOJO magazine which included that Bill Fay review (written by Jim Irvin).
20. Hadn't heard of BF before. After my discharge from hospital I went to HMV on Cornmarket Street and they had one copy of this, as if they had been waiting for me to get better and go in and buy it.
21. "superhero"
22. Number one in the UK singles chart on the day of my accident was a terrible Hot Hits budget-level cover of "Gym Tonic" which itself couldn't come out as a single in Britain because the Jane Fonda sample was cleared for use in France only. Actually I had my Walkman on at the time of the accident - which I guess didn't help - and was listening to Thurston Moore's Root. Funnily enough, both Discman and Root survived unscathed, unlike my poor raincoat. I forgot to put that in and should have done; sorry.
23. Lot of people compared OK Computer (unfavourably) to this at the time...
24. ...but Pop was already on sale in HMV for £3.99.
25. LAZY COMPARISONS TO PINK FLOYD (Waters doing his Taylor Swift impression there).
26. Self-explanatory.
27. Self-explanatory.
28. Street party to celebrate rebirth/second coming.
29. Drum pedal over which Jonny G scrawls his stuff at the end of "Airbag."
30. Keith Rowe of AMM, some of whose unorthodox guitar techniques Jonny G also utilised.
31. The old Ford car plant in Cowley, adjacent to the Shotover industrial estate, on which the album's cover design was based.
32. Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (Peter Jones)...
33. ...after which Level 42 were named (as was OK Computer).
34. Sad robot (to whom Mark King's voice has also been compared).
35. John Peel, primary inspiration for Marvin the Paranoid Android.
36. Self-explanatory.
37. West Hollywood, where the incident that inspired "Paranoid Android" took place.
38. White Gucci jeans.
39. When the woman in the bar freaked out, Yorke looked at her eyes and saw the Devil.
40. Self-explanatory.
41. Rock out section of "Paranoid Android" inspired some young fellows in Teignmouth to do likewise (Muse on that for a while).
42. The article Lennon read which inspired the song that influenced about half of "PA."
43. The Breeders, who also covered "Happiness Is A Warm Gun."
44. "PA" sounds to me much closer stylistically to this than "Bo Rhap."
45. Rain down, come on rain down on me.
46. The Mellotron.
47. Yorke was originally going to sing "God kills His children" but the record company panicked so he changed it to "loves" but added a super-sarcastic "yeah" at the end.
48-49. The yuppies networking.
50. Self-explanatory.
51. What Yorke yelps at the end of "PA," and the book's subtitle served as general guidance for this piece.
52. "Subterranean Homesick Alien" was Radiohead's "let's do a Jeff Buckley song" song.
53. Bill Heine's roof shark sculpture, Headington, Oxford; intended as a metaphor for Hiroshima.
54. Kylepark, Uddingston - I grew up in Uddingston but not in that "aspirational" bit.
55. Fish restaurant in Beckenham where Lena and I went once; never again. Talk about getting funny looks.
56. "I can take you to the sun, but you don't want to go."
57. What happens when you tell people The Secret To Living.
58. "But you just try being free, my friends - everyone will hate your guts."
59. Howard Jones was born John Howard and John Howard was born Howard Jones.
60. "funny looks"
61. Perrin screaming.
62. It's too suffocating, suburbia, you've got to get away from it ("Smalltown Boy" video).
63. That shark's not going anywhere, unless it's burrowing into your soul.
64. "Exit Music" composed for and used in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet film.
65. Self-explanatory.
66. Montagues versus Capulets.
67. The Parallax View test scene (key words).
68-69. Lyrics.
70. "EM" makes brilliant use of the Picardy third.
71. Sung by Ute Lemper, written and directed by Scott Walker, all about the last moments in the Dignitas clinic.
72. "it brings on many changes"
73. Juliet and Romeo.
74. "Let Down"; the album's most overt song about what a drag it is being on the road.
75. Alanis Morissette, whom Radiohead had recently and unhappily supported on her North American tour.
76. Audience of robots (band complaint about Pavlovian reactions to "Creep" etc.).
77. Travis.
78. Keane.
79. Coldplay (all three of these bands clearly followed in Radiohead's mellower wake).
80. Witty "skeet" as I believe they're called these days.
81. Insincere laughter.
82. Chris Martin accidentally falls through hole on stage.
83. "Karma Police" - a Beatles song, but not the way you think. Deliberately lumpen drums emulating Jeff Lynne's suffocating production of "FAAB."
84. The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, subject of Lennon's "Sexy Sadie" as referenced in "this is what you get."
85. "he isn't me, kill him"/recent Observer column on why waste time with difficult Rushdie books, read accessible, honest Dan Brown instead.
86. Unbeatable response.
87. "They."
88. don't like books.
89. really don't like books.
90. Communist subversive Stephen Hawking, whose books are currently in the process of being withdrawn from the library systems of several North American states.
91. Self-explanatory.
92. "The girl with the Hitler hairdo"; Yorke later admitted he was thinking of Justine F.
93. "I lost myself"
94. Ending of "Karma Police."
95. Kampuchea - humanity being ground to a halt.
96. End Of Part One.
The "Fitter Happier" section:
91. Warren Beatty, The Parallax View test scene.
92. The Prisoner, "Free For All" episode ("we mustn't damage the tissue").
93. Neil and Jennifer in The Office, "Charity" episode - he's dressed for Comic Relief; they're about to make David Brent redundant.
94. Douglas Adams, creator of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, in the gym, where he suffered a fatal heart attack while on the treadmill, aged forty-nine.
95. Glengarry Glen Ross: "Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries."
96. Where untrammelled spiv-accommodating capitalism gets us.
97. "no more microwave dinners and unsaturated fats"
98. "A patient, better driver" (gory UK public information film from 1971)
99. "Baby smiling in back seat"
100. "No bad dreams"; Gray Ward, St George's Hospital, to which I was admitted in 2018.
101. "Careful to all animals"
102. "Keep in contact with old friends"
103. "Will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in wall)"; Botley Roundabout, Oxford, whose cash machines I know only too well.
104. St Francis of Assisi: "fond but not in love"
105. "Charity standing orders"
106. "On Sundays ring road supermarket" - East Dulwich Sainsbury's, my local in the second half of 1997 and where I bought entry #576.
107. "No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows"; still from The Parallax View test scene.
108. "Car wash (also on Sundays)"; London Colney, not actually in London.
109. Hospital scene, Werckmeister Harmonies.
110. "Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate"; The Parallax View test scene.
111. "An empowered and informed member of society."
112. "Pragmatism not idealism."
113. "no chance of escape"
114. "Shot of baby strapped in back seat"
115. "Tyres that grip in the wet"; Shepperton...
116. ...home of JG Ballard, whose novel Crash inspired elements of OK Computer...
117. ...and whose near-neighbour Dickie Valentine was killed on Glangrwyney Bridge, near Abergavenny, in May 1971; his death was apparently the chief inspiration for Crash.
118. Memorial to Marc Bolan, Barnes Common, London SW13.
119. "No longer empty and frantic" - the voice realises he's been used and begins to turn the tables.
120. Narcissus erasing his own reflection.
121, "Frozen winter shit" in Oxford, which is what Laura and I used to say a lot of the time - that one was ours.
122. The ducking stool.
123. "the ability to laugh at weakness"
124. Boxer on his way to the abbatoir in the cartoon film of Animal Farm: "Fitter, healthier and more productive."
125. In the transition between "Fitter Happier" and "Electioneering" you may consider Phil Selway's restless cymbal as symbolising the pig on antibiotics rattling the bars of its cage.
126. "Electioneering" was worked up by the band while they supported R.E.M. on tour in 1996 hence is naturally their "R.E.M." song.
127. Great use of the cowbell in "Electioneering."
128. "I trust I can rely on your vote"; Conservative Party election rally, Wembley, June 1987.
129. The song is more about the machinations of the music industry than politics; "When I go forwards, you go backwards/And somewhere we will meet" (JADE and Not Simon Cowell For Legal Reasons at the BRIT Awards, 1 March 2025)
130. In essence "Electioneering" is another life on the road lament.
131. The late Gene Hackman in the closing scene of 1974's The Conversation, a major inspiration for "Climbing Up The Walls."
132-3. You are always your own worst enemy.
134. "Such a pretty house and such a pretty garden"; Morrell Crescent, Rose Hill, Oxford, where Thom Yorke once lived.
135. "A job that slowly kills you."
136. The real killer.
137. Capitalism can only ever eat itself; the semi-derelict Sunshine Desserts sign (The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin).
138. "Bring down the government; they don't, they don't speak for us"; the Bastille, Paris, 14 July 1789.
139. Too scared to change anything.
140. "I'll take the quiet life"; Britain five springs ago.
141-2. Lyrically self-explanatory.
143-5. Symbols of benign containment; Roehampton ASDA, Strictly, Kitchen Disco/bake cakes.
146. Sheridan Smith from the Inside No 9 episode "The 12 Days Of Christine" (memory of unused airbag).
147. Self-explanatory.
148. St George's Hospital, Tooting, London SW17, to which I have now been admitted on three separate occasions; "it's gonna be a glorious day."
149. Landing on the Hudson River, 15 January 2009: "Pull me out of the air crash, pull me out of the lake."
150. Self-explanatory.
151. "I'm your superhero...": Burt Lancaster and young trainee, The Swimmer, 1968.
152. Peter Sellers circa 1980, still just about believing he could be immortal.
153. Jonny Greenwood.
154. Peter Green - there's something very Fleetwood Mac about the instrumental break in the middle of "Lucky."
155. "We are standing on the edge" of the Grand Canyon.
156. "The Tourist" was based on an experience the band had while in Paris, witnessing tourists rushing around the city and not really seeing any of it.
157. "It barks at no one else/But me/Like it's seen/A ghost."
158. In Held, a woman is berated by her boyfriend for watching movies on her smartphone while they are on a train travelling along the coast of Nice.
159. "Sometimes I get overcharged/That's when you see sparks"; Thornhill Park and Ride, Oxford.
160. "HE THOUGHT OF CARS" - the traffic edging out of the West London of work, towards the Oxford of repose.
161-2. Blur if Brett Anderson had been their lead singer, Suede if Graham Coxon had been their guitarist - that's what "The Tourist" sounds like to me.
163. Self-explanatory.
164. Malin Head, Ireland, as mentioned by Damon Albarn on "This Is A Low."
165-6. Self-explanatory.
167. I'm still seeking the answer to that conundrum.
168. ping
169. toll
170-1. Song cycles.
172. cage but no antibiotics.
173. ping
174. The last trump.
175. Microwave oven bell.
176. Heart monitor.
177. Triangle.
178. He crashes the car - that's what the last sound represents, and we go back to the beginning.
179. It's still 1997.
180. "It's time...Christine." "I'm sorry, I just stepped off the pavement, I wasn't looking where I was going..."
181-2. Self-explanatory. Fly easy, Bill.
183. Obligatory RAYE/"Genesis." reference.
184. Self-explanatory.
185. Cornelius Cardew.
186. Thomas Paine.
187. Olive Morris (all three are genuine superpeople).
188. The playing fields of Botley Park, Oxford, near where Laura and I lived.
189. Back to the beginning...
190. Not so fast!
191. Self-explanatory.
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