Radiohead would rather play a show than attend the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame ceremony
Radiohead just announced its first tour dates of 2018, a handful of stops at South American music festivals. But one gig stands out among the rest: April 14 in Buenos Aires. That also happens to be the date of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame ceremony, which the band would ostensibly be invited to attend if its first-time nomination, announced in October, led to an induction. There’s a good chance the band doesn’t get voted in—this year’s field of 19 includes some long overdue nominations for the likes of Nina Simone and Sister Rosetta Tharpe—but this show just about cements what anyone who knows anything about Radiohead already could have surmised: They probably don’t give a shit about the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.
In fact, this is a realization of something Ed O’Brien told Rolling Stone back in June when asked if the band has any interest in the Hall. “I don’t want to be rude about the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame because for a lot of people it means something, but culturally I don’t understand it. I think it might be a quintessential American thing,” he said before adding that he’d “rather be sitting at home in front of the fire or going to a gig.”
The only Radiohead member who was at least a little upbeat about the whole thing was bassist Colin Greenwood. “I’d be grateful if we got in,” he told Rolling Stone in the same interview. “Look at the other people that have been inducted. I don’t know if everyone else will go though. It might be me just doing bass versions of everything like, ‘Come on, you know this one!’ I’d have to play the bass part to ‘Creep’ five times.” At least he’d probably be able to get Dave Chappelle up on stage for some vocal support.