02 paranoid android

Please could you stop the noise, I'm trying to get some rest
From all the unborn chicken voices in my head
What's that?
What's that?
When I am king you will be first against the wall
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
What's that?
What's that?
Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
Kicking and squealing gucci little piggy
You don't remember
You don't remember
Why don't you remember my name?
Off with his head, man
Off with his head, man
Why don't you remember my name?
I guess he does
Rain down
Rain down
Come on rain down
On me
From a great height
From a great height
Height
Height
That's it sir (Rain down)
You're leaving
The crackle of pig skin (Rain down)
The dust and the screaming (Come on rain down on me)
The yuppies networking
The panic, the vomit (from a great height)
The panic, the vomit (from a great height)
God loves his children
God loves his children, yeah
***************
Jonny: "paranoid android is a minature-version of ok computer. It was the first song i put on a tape for friends to listen after recording the album, because it's a good introduction for the rest of the album. Paranoid Android should make you curious for the rest of the album". Colin: "On Paranoid Android what we were into was the idea of a DJ Shadow meets The Beatles thing. It wasn't about constructing a classical rock edifice like Bohemian Rhapsody. It was more about taking things apart and sticking them together again to see if they made any sense, in the same way that DJ Shadow does and in the same way that The Beatles did on stuff like I Am The Walrus. Nigel Godrich, our engineer, just spliced the different sections together and it was all luck."

Thom: "it really started out as three separate songs and we didn't know what to do with them. Then we thought of 'Happiness [is a warm gun]' - which was obviously three different bits that John Lennon put together - and said 'Why don't we try that?'"

After being asked if the song was about the Fall of the Roman Empire, Thom adopted his explanation, but other band members have likened the lyrics of the track to those of 'the bends'. On one level the lyrics are absurd; on another, they're quite serious. During the band's 1996 live sets, when they were opening for Alanis Morissette, the song ended with a very long hammond solo courtesy of Jonny, drawing it out to the eleven-minute mark.

Paranoid Android, the first single from 'Ok Computer' was a complicated affair, not least because of the three disparate yet cohesive sections. It had been inspired by a bad experience Thom had one night in a Los Angeles bar. He had gone there for a quiet drink, but found himself surrounded by parasitic groupie types and pretentious California posers. Unbeknown to him, virtually everyone in the room, except himself, was on cocaine. Thom: "The people I saw that night were just like demons from another planet. Everyone was trying to get something out of me. I felt like my own self was collapsing in the presence of it, but I also felt completely, utterly part of it, like it was all going to some crashing down any minute.' The band had been playing the song for months in rehearsals, but that night, while he couldn't sleep, the lyrics flooded into Thom's head at 5am. Of particular horror to him was one especially vicious lady who had a drink spilt over her dress and whose face contorted in venom at the culprit - she was the 'kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy' that Thom sang of and he was horrified. Thom: "Basically it's just abou chaos, chaos, utter fucking chaos."
(http://www.ateaseweb.com/songs/paranoidandroid.php)

in a bar in hollywood* the centre of the western universe, standing at the bar (social drinking) after doing the talk show bit. do you want to know this? this is what we aspire to is it? it is dark, there is a woman opposite me who is as sociably anorexic as her poodle, she looks desolate in her make up and lost eyes, next to her her husband boyfriend is persuading a younger fleshed half his age stewardess to come back to the hills to their mansion to sample his wine. she looks at him like he's a character in a hammer house horror. one of our friends spills a glass of wine over a vacuum packed gucci outfit complete with matching white hand bag. the witch goes crazy, we think it is fuunny. until we see the evil in her eyes. my friend is asked to leave. the gucci creature is the closest thing i have seen to the devil. the woman is possessed. i cannot sleep that night asking what we've got our selves into. voices talking like fax machines, hissing and spitting like demons, this is the master race. and now im part of it. anyway you didnt want to know that. (http://www.radiohead.com/Archive/Site1/gallery2.html)