Pre-Radiohead Demo of Unreleased Songs To Be Auctioned in September
By Jon Wiederhorn
Eight years before Radiohead were singing about creeps and pronouncing on their 1993 album Pablo Honey that anyone can play guitar, the band was scrambling to get noticed without the aid of a Radio or a Head.
Back then, the band called itself On a Friday, and the members (vocalist Thom Yorke, guitarist Jonny Greenwood, bassist Colin Greenwood, guitarist Ed O’Brien, and drummer Phil Selway) were recording original songs on cassette tapes and giving them to friends and club owners.
One surviving nine-song tape from 1986 will go on auction on September 14 and is expected to net in excess of $1,500, auctioneer Paul Fairweather told NME.
The cassette will be put up for bid by Orange Auctions in Stockport, England; it's currently the property of a man who attended Abingdon School with the members of Radiohead. The demo includes six previously unreleased songs: "Fragile Friend," "Girl (In the Purple Dress)," "Everybody Knows," "Mountains (On the Move)," "Lemming Trail," and "Lock the Door." There are also remixes of the final three tracks.
The auction will also include diary pages and handwritten lyrics that Libertines frontman Pete Doherty penned during the making of the band’s 2002 album Up the Bracket, as well as one of Doherty's paintings.
