Jonathan Greenwood 05-11-1971
Hufford and Edge had become their managers. Their relationship was immediately put under strain. The debut release was an EP produced by them. “Not a clever move” admits Chris Hufford. “A huge conflict of interests. I think Thom was very insecure of my involvement. I’d had that happen to me as an artist when one of our managers acted as producer. There was definately some friction on that front. Otherwise it was a treat, we fired out the songs. The 4-track Drill EP came out in March 1992 with Prove Yourself as the lead track. It reached 101 in the UK singles chart. It was time to find new producers.
Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade, who produced Buffalo Tom’s “Let me come over”, were hired to produce the two songs for the next single, Inside My Head and Lurgee. Both the band and the producers weren’t too happy with the songs Parlophone had chosen. “Inside my Head wasn’t very melodic, didn’t have any of the stuff we thought the others had, so we were rather disappointed”, says Paul Kolderie. “And the one day in rehearsel, they burst into this other song, which I gues they’d just written. When they finished it, Thom mumbled something like, “That’s our Scott Walker song”…except I thought he said “That’s a Scott Walker song”. Now I was pretty familiar with Scott Walker, but Jeez, there’s a lot of albums and I could have missed something! We walked out of the rehearsal that night and Sean said, “Too bad their best song’s a cover”.
That song was Creep. Legend has it that the band weren’t unanimously keen on Creep. Jonny’s famous guitar crunches were supposedly an attempt to ruin a song he didn’t like. “Jonny played the piano at the en d of the song and it was gorgeous” notes Kolderie. “Everyone who heard Creep just started going insane.” So that’s what got us the job doing the album.” Pablo Honey was completed in three weeks. Creep was released to coincide in September 1992, while Pablo Honey was scheduled for the new year. Creep came out to an audible shrug; one or two good reviews, almost no airplay and just enough sales (about 6,000) to get it to number 78 in the UK charts. Pablo Honey was released together with the third single Anyone Can Play Guitar.
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