Rock: The Radiohead stars

By Russell Baillie

RADIOHEAD

Meeting People is Easy

(Parlophone video)

On-tour videos aren't much cop usually. Most come from that music industry conveyor-belt marked "merchandise."

But Meeting People is Easy is quite a departure.

So it should be, capturing in its 90 or so minutes the globetrotting aftermath of Radiohead's devastatingly good album O.K. Computer, which led to a series of devastatingly good concerts, including one in Auckland last March.

But it's not an in-concert film either. You get only snatches of songs from the album with director Grant Gee's peculiar sense for a camera angle.

A crowd barrier close-up of nervy singer Thom Yorke, looking back down on the crowd from somewhere above the singer's head. Or spending some time examining the simple elegance of Phil Selway's drumming or guitarist Jonny Greenwood's physicial way with his instrument.

No fast cuts here, but plenty of fractured montage giving you a real sense of how a band like Radiohead see the world: via airports, bus windows, television green rooms and interviews. Oh, so many interviews showing that rock journospeak and VJ and DJ banality is surely an international language (watching this is enough make any rock scribe ponder writing out a couple of hundred lines: "I will never knowingly ask stupid questions of clearly intelligent musicians ... ").

But those come out worst are the media who don't even pretend to care about the music. Like the superciliousness of a Philadelphia DJ repeatedly asking about the celebs at the band's show the previous night, at which Yorke looks as if he wishes the ground would open and swallow him. And we perfectly understand why.

Likewise, there's a striking juxtaposition between some cosy Sky News types discussing Radiohead as "slash-your-wrist music" (oh, how droll) while playing Gee's video of No Surprises.

That's cut between the actual shooting of the video, which has Yorke singing from within an astronaut's helmet fast filling with water - semi-drowing for his art and repeatedly emerging from the helmet looking distressed and undoubtedly wishing the song was shorter.

Along the way, as the tour moves from America back to Europe to Japan and down to Australia (no New Zealand footage here) there's much wrestling with a globe full of glowing reviews, repetitive questions and the occasional distraught fan who is dealt with due English politeness.

Oh, and there's Michael Stipe being asked where his backstage pass is.

But that's about the level of bad behaviour on offer.
You can't help but worry at how much longer a ride on the rock'n'roll conveyor belt the permanently anxious Yorke might take.

He's clearly at his happiest recording, working on demos on the back of the bus or in a London studio. The fan bait to this is, you get to hear a couple of new works-in-progress which may end up on the next album.

Perhaps Gee is a little too in love with pedestrian "walk now" lights, grim urban architecture and departure lounges.

But he makes Meeting People Is Easy a mesmerising experience while showing what the world looks like through Radiohead's increasingly jaded eyes.

And it leaves you with a couple of thoughts. First, what does Yorke keep in that backpack he carries everywhere?

And if they never want to tour or do an other interview again, watching this, we'll quite understand.* * * *
Weekend TimeOut