people and he just played the relatively limited selection of tunes he had in his own collection. This was only about twenty albums and a few singles. Then, as it became more popular and he played every week, he realised that people were very quickly goingto get bored. He borrowed £250 from the bank and went record shopping. It was probably one of his shrewdest investments. A few months later there were about 1,000 people at the Lemon Grove and he was making a significant amount of money for a student.
Yet his set wasn’t the selection of Joy Division or elitist art-rock bands that you might expect. Eileen remembers him regularly playing ‘Push It’ by Salt-N-Pepa. He had a knack for knowing what people wanted to hear and an innate populism which would mean that, years later, even when he was going as far ‘out-there’ as possible, there would always be a part of his music that was unashamedly pop, even when he didn’t necessarily want it to be.
“He used to make a fortune,” Colin Greenwood once said. “And he’d blow it all on crap records!” At the same time Headless Chickens was starting to fall apart. Right from the beginning they’d known that it wasn’t going to be a long-term thing. There were too many obstacles in their way. “Thom always had On A Friday as his ‘real band’,” says Martin. “I remember there were times when we wanted to practise at the weekend and we couldn’t because he’d gone back to Oxford to see Ed and the other guys.”
At this time it also became clear that, although they never fell out, it wasn’t realistic for Shack and Thom to be in the same band. They were both natural front men in very different ways.
“Shack was a music scholar at school,” says Martin. “He was very technical. He could conduct an orchestra. Although he’s since gone on to do many years of crazy grunge and quite niche stuff, the performing side of it and the whole rock star thing was nothing like as important for him as it was for Thom.”
“We had two front men,” says John. “That was one of the problems with the band, really. They kept talking over each other all the time. Which wasn’t great in performance! They’re both quite charismatic front men, which was one of the reasons the band wasn’t going to go anywhere. They both needed their own band in a sense.”
Headless Chickens wasn’t the main thing in any of their lives, either. Shack was starting to become more interested in electronic music and, for Thom, On A Friday was always his main concern. “At university you get loads of bands but Headless Chickens was actually a really popular university band,” says Eileen. “They had something that made you think they could have gone somewhere with it but Thom kept saying, ‘No, I’ve got this band back in Oxfordand I’m really serious about them.’”
“We didn’t take it all that seriously,” says Martin. “We took it seriously in that if we were going to play a gig we’d rehearse but we never had any pretensions towards serious recording. Good bands have to be about something. It’s like any great art. You have to have an idea at the heart of it. And we didn’t. We just did it because it was fun and we enjoyed it. And people came along and it was self-perpetuating. If we’d done three gigs and nobody had come or they’d gone badly, we’d have given up on it. It wasn’t like we had a burning thing to express our teenage angst. It was just we were at university, in a band, and it was great fun. If anything, it was cool that Thom was doing this other thing as well.”
Despite this, when Shack eventually got bored with their relatively generic indie and moved on to a new electronic band, Flickernoise, Thom and John joined him. When Flickernoise started, rock music was deeply unfashionable. Bands like the Stone Roses were the cool thing in the press and, in the UK indie scene, there was an undignified scramble for guitar bands to bring in turntables, electronic
Yet his set wasn’t the selection of Joy Division or elitist art-rock bands that you might expect. Eileen remembers him regularly playing ‘Push It’ by Salt-N-Pepa. He had a knack for knowing what people wanted to hear and an innate populism which would mean that, years later, even when he was going as far ‘out-there’ as possible, there would always be a part of his music that was unashamedly pop, even when he didn’t necessarily want it to be.
“He used to make a fortune,” Colin Greenwood once said. “And he’d blow it all on crap records!” At the same time Headless Chickens was starting to fall apart. Right from the beginning they’d known that it wasn’t going to be a long-term thing. There were too many obstacles in their way. “Thom always had On A Friday as his ‘real band’,” says Martin. “I remember there were times when we wanted to practise at the weekend and we couldn’t because he’d gone back to Oxford to see Ed and the other guys.”
At this time it also became clear that, although they never fell out, it wasn’t realistic for Shack and Thom to be in the same band. They were both natural front men in very different ways.
“Shack was a music scholar at school,” says Martin. “He was very technical. He could conduct an orchestra. Although he’s since gone on to do many years of crazy grunge and quite niche stuff, the performing side of it and the whole rock star thing was nothing like as important for him as it was for Thom.”
“We had two front men,” says John. “That was one of the problems with the band, really. They kept talking over each other all the time. Which wasn’t great in performance! They’re both quite charismatic front men, which was one of the reasons the band wasn’t going to go anywhere. They both needed their own band in a sense.”
Headless Chickens wasn’t the main thing in any of their lives, either. Shack was starting to become more interested in electronic music and, for Thom, On A Friday was always his main concern. “At university you get loads of bands but Headless Chickens was actually a really popular university band,” says Eileen. “They had something that made you think they could have gone somewhere with it but Thom kept saying, ‘No, I’ve got this band back in Oxfordand I’m really serious about them.’”
“We didn’t take it all that seriously,” says Martin. “We took it seriously in that if we were going to play a gig we’d rehearse but we never had any pretensions towards serious recording. Good bands have to be about something. It’s like any great art. You have to have an idea at the heart of it. And we didn’t. We just did it because it was fun and we enjoyed it. And people came along and it was self-perpetuating. If we’d done three gigs and nobody had come or they’d gone badly, we’d have given up on it. It wasn’t like we had a burning thing to express our teenage angst. It was just we were at university, in a band, and it was great fun. If anything, it was cool that Thom was doing this other thing as well.”
Despite this, when Shack eventually got bored with their relatively generic indie and moved on to a new electronic band, Flickernoise, Thom and John joined him. When Flickernoise started, rock music was deeply unfashionable. Bands like the Stone Roses were the cool thing in the press and, in the UK indie scene, there was an undignified scramble for guitar bands to bring in turntables, electronic
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