In the early 90s, Stanley Donwood was “at a loose end after university”, hitching around Britain and making a little money as a busking fire-breather. Fetching up in Oxford, he spotted a poster for a gig by a band called On a Friday. He recognised the name: a friend he’d met while studying at Exeter University’s fine art department called Thom Yorke was the lead singer.
So he called Yorke up. An initial plan for Donwood to do his fire-breathing routine as the band’s support act was scuppered by the venue’s nervous manager, but the pair kept in touch. Some time later, after On a Friday had changed their name to Radiohead, Yorke called with a proposition. “They’d done really well with Creep, which I hadn’t heard, it wasn’t my thing at all; I liked bleepy-bleepy, thumpy-thump music,” says Donwood. “But he said: ‘Our record sleeves are shit, do you want to come and have a go?’”
