I’ve been obsessed trying to find out when I first met Radiohead, so far without much luck in terms of the actual year, because records are quite patchy on promotional visits to Cologne in August in the 90s.

I was still very young, in high school, maybe 15, it’s so hard to say, and I didn’t know a single one of their songs, nor their name, nor anything about them.

My sister Kerstin, who is 3 years younger, and me went to Cologne to hang out by the river in the hope to meet my favourite band at the time. I had been very lucky in the past, and they were always super kind, and fun, so I really went out of my way to try to meet them.

We decided to sit right by the river near a big hotel to see what would happen, who we’d run into. During Popkomm weekend, there were always a lot of interesting people, and we had had quite good times in the past.

Especially as someone who’s a bit nerdy about music, a sponge for pop music knowledge at a time when we didn’t have internet easily available with all this information we’ve got now, I’d recognise even the most obscure of international industry people and knew what to talk to them about.

I wasn’t a beauty, I was quite plain, but with brightly coloured hair. As I do still, I’d love a good laugh and I really did know my music, was easy to talk to, with true interest in the subject. 100% not a groupie** or whatever, just a fan of music, keen to talk about music.

** which as a girl you always have to mention because people assume that’s all you are. It’s a huge cliché that all female music fans just want to fuck the artists. Not I. Met me? Ha!

I’d always end up in deep conversations with the most random artists and industry people, and who knows how I even recognised them, but I did, introduced myself to and had a good chat with e.g. the Torpedo Twins, DoRo, Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, some of the most famous music video makers of their time, who did all the cool Queen videos, classics today, for one thing. I was in heaven. That’s still special to me now.

That specific year, sitting by the river, reading a book for a bit, a group of young guys walked up to us, and they started to talk to us. I can’t remember what we were talking about – in *gulp* English – but they seemed lovely enough, also up for a laugh, asked what we were up to and were just happy to hang out for a bit. It was memorable, we really liked them.

Later that night, we were watching MTV News, and there they were, being interviewed, in Cologne. Radiohead.

And we were like, naw, they were so sweet, warm fuzzies! And then I forgot all about it.

OK Computer

Moving forward to watching music video premieres a few years later. Paranoid Android. Holy shit, what a song, what a video! I went out and bought Ok Computer the day it came out, and a ticket for the release tour that would stop by at Biskuithalle in Bonn.

If I loved music, I had to meet the artists, because I would usually have questions about the music, or wanted to see what they were like in person, so me and Anja went early to say hi.

As we started chatting with them, something mildly but not fully clicked – they seemed familiar, but I didn’t recognise them. You have to understand – I usually met a lot of musicians, actors, artists, from a very young age, so it was all a bit much to remember. I loved the music, I loved and still love OK Computer.

Rumours went around at the time of people saying Radiohead were a grumpy bunch, Thom York would never as much as smile, but again, they were nothing but sweet, chatty, a good laugh. I got my copy of OK Computer fully signed before the show, and in spite of hardcore fans coming in from the UK by the bus load, we still made it to the front row.

That was one of the best live shows of my life. I only really knew OK Computer, but they played a long show, also covering a lot of their back catalogue, and I remember that I was profoundly moved by all of it, crying through most of the show, just utterly overcome by the quality of music and the great sound. I wasn’t a lil fan girl, I knew nothing about them, I just adored the music.

Click!

From memory, fairly late into their set they played Creep, and that’s when something fully clicked into place.

I turned over to a British girl next to me and I asked her, hey, did the band have brightly coloured hair at some point? They did?!

That’s when it all came back to me, and I kind of lost it, in disbelief. What were the chances, right?!

After the show, I went back to say hello again, but this time I was like, hey, I remembered that we actually met before a few years ago… And they remembered me, too, then, and it was a sweet moment. Some of their hardcore fans observing it all were confused, “What’s this all about?! Such young girls stealing all the attention!” – it was just genuine excitement to see and recognise them again.

It’s a really fond memory of mine.

Years later a few of them were in NZ for Neil Finn’s Seven World Collide and I ran into them, but I didn’t say anything, it felt daft to re-introduce myself as that super random little child from Germany, so I left it at that, just smiled and said hello. I’m not insisting on having “moments”, you know.

These days we’re so lucky, we get all these awesome insights into music via YouTube and online magazines, and the whole internet is just such a wonderful resource for even quite niche stuff, that I don’t feel I’m missing out on knowledge about music, and someone would have asked all of those questions I might’ve liked to ask them about myself before we had the internet. Very handy!

Anyways, just sharing a memory.

Bonus fact: The signed copy of the album I sold to pay for moving to NZ, and I got a good bunch of money for it, being fully signed. Thanks, Radiohead! <3