There was a time in the early to mid-2000s when naming The Bends as your favourite Radiohead album was like opting for chicken korma from the takeaway menu, while the gourmands decided between the bangla shatkora and jhinga bahar.
Thirty years after its release, and with such musical snobbery now thankfully consigned to the past, the fraught, compassionate, violently disturbed rock of The Bends is now appreciated as one of the choice cuts on Radiohead’s album menu. It’s even regarded by some fans as the band’s crowning moment.
The Bends didn’t get off to a good start. The combined pressure to repeat the commercial success of the hit song Creep and rigorous touring schedule led exhausted lead singer-songwriter Thom Yorke to tell an NME interviewer in 1993: “I’m fucking ill and physically I’m completely fucked and mentally I’ve had enough.”
