During vacations from school, On a Friday was revived; live shows featured a brass section and, as a closer, a rousing rendition of Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up." In the summer of 1991, after the members had all completed school, they regrouped in Oxford (Jonny was now a full-fledged guitarist and keyboard player), and eventually changed their name to Radiohead ("Radio Head" is a Talking Heads song on the album True Stories). With other commitments out of the way, they began to take the band seriously, and it didn't take long for the powers-that-be to take notice: after their first official gig, Radiohead received more than twenty record-company offers.

Radiohead's first release was a 1992 U.K.-only EP, Drill, which sparked enough interest to land them opening slots on tours with PJ Harvey, Tears for Fears, and James, just to name a few. But this was only the beginning, as a song called "Creep" was about to change their careers forever. "Creep" hit U.K. airwaves in the second half of 1992 and was eventually named one of the top British singles of both that year and the next. The song, which was perceived as an anthem for the alienated, had little in common with the rest of their first album, Pablo Honey, released in 1993. In fact, some fans of "Creep" were disappointed by the comparative mellowness of the rest of the album, though plenty were fascinated by the band's distinct and varied sound. At last, here was a new British band that owed more to Pink Floyd than to usual suspects the Beatles or the Sex Pistols (in 1995, the band even tipped their hat to Pink Floyd by mounting a most Floydian quadraphonic surround-sound tour of the U.K.). And "Creep" certainly helped Radiohead sell tickets, even though subsequent radio singles failed to garner much airplay in America.

In 1994, the band next released an EP called My Iron Lung, which provided a taste of what was to come on 1995's The Bends. American radio jumped on the single "Fake Plastic Trees," which also appeared on the oh-so-hip soundtrack to the film Clueless in 1995. At last, the band began to escape from their "Creep" pigeonhole. "Fake Plastic Trees," a slow and almost mournful tune, was a far cry from the grinding plaint of the earlier hit, as was "High And Dry," which also received significant airplay.

By this time, the band had plenty of fans in the music world as well as the population at large. R.E.M. liked Radiohead so much that they asked them to be an opening act on their 1995 European and American tours. Meanwhile, other bands paid their respects by doing covers of Radiohead songs. Tears for Fears recorded a live version of "Creep" and released it as a B-side. The Pretenders also recorded their own rendition of "Creep," which appears on the Isle of View video (but not on the CD). It was Alanis Morissette, however, who may have been the biggest Radiohead fan: she often performed "Fake Plastic Trees" during her live shows in 1995 and 1996, and she invited the band to tour with her in August of 1996.

Radiohead started working on material for their third album in early 1996, but it wasn't until after the Morissette tour that they headed into the studio to get down to some serious business. And what a studio it was — the band recorded the album in a fourteenth-century manor house owned by actress Jane Seymour (of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman fame). Located outside of Bath, England, the isolated mansion was also used by the Cure to record their album Wild Mood Swings. The working title of the new record was Ones and Zeroes, but that binary-code reference evolved to OK Computer by the time the set was released in 1997. Songs were recorded all over the Seymour mansion, everywhere from the grand ballroom to the hallway. Bassist Colin Greenwood, in an interview with New Musical Express, described the resulting sound as being "like a stoned Radiohead." The first single, a six-and-a-half-minute track in three parts entitled "Paranoid Android," was released in May and entered the U.K. charts at No. 3. OK Computer, released the following month, debuted at No. 1 in the U.K.

Although Radiohead has been touring since OK Computer's release, and they expect to play more shows in the U.S. in November and December, they do have plans for some "new" music. The band has given DJ Shadow "Subterranean Homesick Alien" to work on and plans to offer the entire OK Computer album to Massive Attack for a remixing dissection.