2. RadioheadHail To The Thief
There’s so many doors that Radiohead opened for me. This was around the same time we got satellite and I was watching MTV 2 non-stop. MTV was an unbelievably educational experience for me and it has had an impact in terms of linking visuals to music and how you experience music. I remember the video for ‘There There’ came out around that time and that had a big impact. An absolutely stonking tune – it still gives me goosebumps. The way that video looked and the song sounds just seem so in harmony to me in a way I never felt before.
I guess the thing that cemented this record for me was that it was the year my dad died. He died in November 2003 and my uncle bought me the CD for Christmas, so like a month after. I had a CD Walkman and I think it absorbed a lot of my grief. Radiohead are kind of known for their more dour nature but there was something about the melancholy, sadness, and bleakness to some of those songs that seemed to come along at the right moment. I used to walk to school and it took about 45 minutes – about the time of an album – and so I hammered that every day. It wasn’t like it was exaggerating the pain of the moment or anything, it just felt a space to live in.
I feel so lucky that music still does that for me now and to have done it for me for such a traumatic thing because my dad was killed suddenly by being run over. So it was a real hard cut for a 12-year-old boy to experience that. To have music to accompany you through that period is amazing. It had a big impact on why I’ve ended up doing what I do.
