Not a carbon copy band

PROFILE RADIOHEAD:Innovative, original and deeply concerned about environmental issues, the Oxford band, in a bid to reduce their carbon footprint are urging fans to either walk or use public transport to get to their two concerts in Malahide

IF YOU'RE ANYWHERE in Ireland and you have a private plane, please don't use it to get to Malahide Castle next Friday or Saturday night to see Radiohead kick off their European tour.

The band's website has a "Carbon Calculator" which tells you how many carbon emissions you generate depending on what form of transport you take to any of their shows. If you fly to Malahide Castle you could well be held personally responsible for the end of the world.

Radiohead are imploring you to take the Number 42 bus from Dublin city centre to Malahide for their shows. The alternative, they suggest, is to take the Dart and make the short walk from the station.

However, if you simply must travel by car (as they sternly put it), there are directions given - dictated through gritted teeth, no doubt.

When at the gig (and tout le music monde will be there) do have a look at how the band refresh themselves between songs. Instead of sipping water/carrot juice/liquid tofu from plastic cups, they will all be swigging from reusable flasks. Do you know what damage is done to the planet by rock stars all around the world sipping on-stage drinks from plastic cups? Radiohead do - and could probably illustrate their answer with pie charts and spread sheets.

It may all reek of eco-zealotry for the casual gig-goer who believes getting any sort of drink in any sort of container at a gig to be a major emotional/financial achievement, but, for the querulous members of the most interesting rock band in the world, their devotion to the Green cause is such that, instead of flying out to New York last week to appear on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien television show, they did a satellite link-up from Oxford . Although God knows how many carbon emissions were used up in relaying this self-clap on the back information to the world's media.

You may well wonder why the band members don't go backstage after every gig and self-flagellate to atone for their environmental sins in lugging huge truckloads of lighting and sound equipment across the already congested motorways of Europe. Study after study has shown that the entertainment industry - and specifically live touring - is a big contributor to rising carbon emission levels. The band did do some hand-wringing before deciding to do this European tour but concluded that they could use the tour as a form of consciousness-raising. Not to mention money-raising.

They commissioned an environmental group called Best Foot Forward to research how to make a major European tour "ecologically responsible".

The band wanted to know the environmental impact "on each person entertained" (although most Radiohead fans would rather listen to Coldplay than have such a trite and superficial term as "entertainment" used to describe the experience of a Radiohead show).

Best Foot Forward found that the biggest carbon footprint on a tour was caused by people driving to and from gigs. With that in mind, Radiohead have decided to only play in venues that are directly accessible by public transport. Did you know that if average car occupancy to a Radiohead gig increased from 2.2 people to 3 people the whole tour's CO2 would be reduced by 22 per cent? And if just 10 per cent of those evil car users took the bus instead, it would reduce CO2 tour emissions by a further 7 per cent?

You know now, thanks to Radiohead's somewhat anal preoccupation with transport to an event which is, after all, of their own making. Still, I'm sure it's enough to give you a warm (and naturally produced) glow as you leave the car at home and clamber aboard the delightful Number 42 bus.

Why stop at generalities, though? Radiohead don't. Consider the plight of those truck drivers who are lugging the band's equipment from country to country (air-travel - spit - is strictly forbidden on this tour). In these summer months the drivers need their air-conditioning, but when they're parked outside the venue waiting for someone to take the gear from the stage to the truck, they have to keep their engine running in order for the air conditioning to keep working. Not any more: Radiohead have pioneered a device whereby the trucks can plug into the venue's own supplies so all engines can be switched off.

Little wonder that just before Tony Blair left office and was pretending to care about climate change, he invited the band's frontman Thom Yorke to Downing Street for talks. You get a real sense of what Radiohead are actually like when you consider Yorke's response to the invitation. "It was the illest I ever got," he said. "I got so stressed out and so freaked out about it. First there was Iraq and then Blair's opinion on the use of nuclear power. I tried to be pragmatic about it but then I had preliminary meetings with his spin doctors and I decided not to meet him because he has no environmental credentials at all. Politics is poison."

This type of principled/contrary stance has characterised the band since they formed in Oxford in 1991. Even their breakthrough single, Creep (1993) showed that this was no ordinary meat-and-potatoes rock band. The chorus went, "I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here."

For Yorke, the band's main lyricist, those words set the template.

"Some people go and work at something they don't like, others talk about disconnection a lot," he says. For a band who specialise in bespoke angst and generally seem fretful about the world and its ways, the success of Creep was inimical to them. "I became disenchanted at being right at the sharp end of the sexy, sassy, MTV eye-candy lifestyle," said Yorke, typically overstating his argument - he wouldn't be anyone's orthodox choice of eye-candy.

If the band's second album, The Bends, saw them located in prime alternative guitar-rock territory, the follow-up, OK Computer, arguably helped change the course of modern music and remains, for some, the best album ever released. OK Computer was the masterful melding of classic Pink Floyd-style prog-rock sensibilities with all manner of contemporary musical flourishes. It was, to borrow from the band's hyperbolic lexicon, the aural equivalent of a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel. Only bleaker.

But massive commercial and critical success again unsettled the band. Yorke found that fame meant that "whenever I pick up a guitar I just get the horrors. I completely had it with melody, I just wanted rhythm."

The follow-up records, Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief, saw them delve into freeform jazz territory - albeit with a German electronic music backing. Routinely described as "challenging", these three albums were to be followed up by something even more challenging.

Out of contract with their record label and cognisant of the massive changes in how music was being distributed (mainly as digital MP3 files on the internet), Radiohead were accused of "attempting to destroy the recorded music industry" by releasing their current album, In Rainbows , for free on their website. It was one thing giving away some miserable back catalogue record that no one wanted free with a newspaper, but this was one the most talked-about bands in the world releasing new product in a revolutionary way.

In Rainbows wasn't exactly free - the band decided to pass around the electronic busking cap by allowing people to pay whatever they felt the album was worth. 1.2 million people downloaded In Rainbows in its first 24 hours of release. The band have never released figures for who paid what (and say they never will).

For a band who have little truck with anything so vulgar as publicity, the method of releasing In Rainbows got them headlines all around the world - and their back catalogue albums all re-entered the charts as a whole new fanbase emerged. It is now common practice for bands to release their albums for free, mainly because CD sales have fallen ever since music became widely available on the internet. The big growth sector in the music industry is live touring - where ticket prices frequently cost more than 10 times what a standard album costs you. An album is now released to promote the live tour - as opposed to the other way around.

Cynics have noted that while you were given the option of paying only what you felt In Rainbows was worth, there is no such flexibility in the price of the concert ticket to see the band play at Malahide Castle next week. It's a flat fee of €70.70.

Time magazine may have breathlessly described In Rainbows as "easily the most important release in the recent history of the music business", but the band, typically, say they are now so over the free album download model, describing the release as a "one-off event". Rather mundanely, they are now back on a record label.

Whether they be innovators/hypocrites or just a bunch of good guys trapped inside a bad music industry, Radiohead remain the most challenging, sometimes fractious, but always compelling group around today. Oh, and the music? It's excellent. Enjoy the gigs - and if you do have a drink, make a big deal of forsaking any type of container and just use your hands.

It's a gesture that might make even Thom Yorke smile.

CV Radiohead
Who are they?"The Radioheads" - as one well-known 2FM DJ used to erroneously call them.
What are they?Arguably the best music band in the world, but don't tell them that - it will only provoke a bout of self-loathing.
Eco-Gig-A-Go-Go:Such is their commitment to the environmental cause, that if you do take a car to their Malahide Castle gigs next Friday and Saturday, you may well be set upon by some of their rabid fans accusing you of "killing the planet".
Do:Report Environment Minister Eamon Ryan (a big fan - and if he isn't he should be) to the Green Police if you see him using a plastic cup.
Don't:leave your car running in the car park - not even as a reactionary gesture against meaningless environmental pieties. The band will hunt you down and lecture you at great length. And, speaking from personal experience, if there's even the slightest chance you might be on the receiving end of a Radiohead lecture, it would be better just to walk to Malahide.