Tom Dunne: I can't believe The Bends by Radiohead is 30 years old
Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Picture: Jim Dyson/Getty Images.
Radiohead’s classic album The Bends is 30. To quote Fiddler on the Roof: “I don’t remember growing older, when did they?” But there you go. That’s life. Blink and its over. And like Radiohead’s music its full of suffering and misery. But as with their music, the worst thing is: it’s over too fast.
Long winded contemplations on “The Bends at 30”, or “long reads” as they are now called, are oddly divided about it. For most it’s a marker album, a prelude to “what came next.” For others, it isn’t even their fourth-best record.
