Fake Plastic Trees and Jeff Buckley

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At the mid-point of the 1990s, Radiohead were having a crisis of identity. Having exploded into the public domain with indie grunge anthem Creep, the Oxford band were struggling with the question of what comes next. 

They were eager to dive into experimentation, and shun with the more commercial spectrum of songs like Creep. Parlophone and US label Capitol were starting to think that Creep may have been a one-off moment of inspiration. 

Though some songs on Radiohead’s second album, The Bends, had slow and painful births, one key track, Fake Plastic Trees seemed to originate fairly spontaneously from Thom Yorke one day in the studio. 

As Colin Greenwood told The Nashville Banner in 1995."Usually, we write a song all together, compose it as a whole. [Fake Plastic Trees] was done by Thom just playing by himself, gradually adding one thing at a time. It's all very considered, in a good way,” 

But, deciding what to do with it from an arrangement and recording point of view became a head-scratcher for Yorke and producer John Leckie.

With various arrangements leading to dead ends, Leckie was becoming concerned. Not anticipating the difficulty in getting the basic track down, he'd hastily pre-booked string players to come in and overdub on the as-yet unrecorded track the following day.

He suggested that Thom and the group leave the studio and go and see a performance from Jeff Buckley over at London’s The Garage before returning later in the evening to try and finally nail Fake Plastic Trees.

At the Buckley show, Yorke, Greenwood and Leckie were utterly consumed by the Californian's emotional range, and the sheer power that just one individual could conjure with just a guitar and a voice.

“He just had a Telecaster and a pint of Guinness. And it was just amazing, really inspirational,” Colin Greenwood told Uncut. “Then we went back to the studio and tried an acoustic version of Fake Plastic Trees. Thom sat down and played it in three takes, then just burst into tears afterwards. And that’s what we used for the record.”

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