FEATURE:
Reel-to-Real
Jonathan Glazer: Radiohead – Karma Police (1997)
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ONE of the biggest albums…
ever released, Radiohead’s OK Computer turns twenty-five next month. It is such a seminal and important release. After twenty-five years, the band’s third studio album remains so inventive and vital. One of the greatest and best-known songs from OK Computer is Karma Police. Released as a single on 25th August, it is one of Radiohead’s very songs. I especially love the video for Karma Police. Directed by the hugely acclaimed and talented Jonathan Glazer (who, in addition, has directed the video for Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity), I wanted to go into more depth about one of my favourite videos. Spectrum Culture looked inside a music video that is so innovative and memorable:
“The music video for Radiohead’s “Karma Police,” directed by Jonathan Glazer, is futuristically, undeniably tactile. The inflexible metal of a Chrysler car, the automobile’s velvety interior, the bruising ruggedness of the asphalt road, the soft heat of the headlight glow, the eventual alchemical transformation of this glow into the fuller blaze of fire—these seem to make contact with us directly. Even the texture of Thom Yorke’s head gently presents itself to our grasping fingers.
For those not familiar with the video, its basic premise goes something like this: a car drives forward in the night, while Thom Yorke slinks down and listlessly lip syncs in its backseat. Its headlights discover a man who runs and runs, presumably fleeing the vehicle. But when the car stops, it suddenly becomes clear that this man has sinister plans for the petrol that the auto has pissed out onto the asphalt. Behind his back, he lights a match and lets it fall onto the gas-soaked ground to create a blaze that moves towards the car. The tables have turned. The vehicle reverses to avoid the flames, but, in the end, it cannot elude them. It’s set ablaze, but somehow the camera contorts to reveal that Yorke has disappeared from the backseat.
It’s a simple scenario that feels somehow both constructed and real: it’s a parable but a palpable one. The song’s lyrics reinforce this. “This is what you’ll get/ When you mess with us,” goes its notorious refrain. Stated Jesus-style, the message might say, “Blessed are those who don’t fuck with others, for they shall avoid getting fucked over themselves.” It helps that flames of terror are involved—the driver of the car has hell to pay for the initial pursuit. And what a frightening hell this is, where the sheer panic felt in response to approaching fire lasts an eternity, only to lead to a second eternity of actual burning. “For a minute there, I lost myself,” Yorke wails. This too plays out in the video, but the line is both blessing and curse: the disappearance at the end is mysterious bliss but temporary. When the minute’s up, deathly tortures will undoubtedly rain down.
It’s actually sort of amazing that the song’s content and its video match up so nicely. Story goes that Jonathan Glazer, the video’s director, initially pitched the idea to Marilyn Manson for a different song entirely. Manson rejected him, so the concept ended up in the video for “Karma Police.” It’s as if some kind of supernatural, freely associating force led to this result. Every police needs a car; every key change needs some ignition. The song’s transition is haunting, sudden and brutal, and we can certainly say the same for the video’s literal shifting of gears.
One might be tempted to see all of this as just pouring out more praise in favor of a rather obvious choice for the best music video ever. Peter Tabakis wrote in his piece about the best band ever that it’s really not very much fun to choose as “the best” what people already expect. The “Karma Police” video has plenty of accolades already: see this oral history on Pitchfork or the video’s appearance on myriad “Best Music Videos of the ‘90s” lists (this or this, for example). Furthermore, to be shamefacedly self-critical for a second, it’s easy (and right) to criticize my choice as yet another example of a white male critic choosing white male objects as the best or greatest of all time. And this for a medium that, when it’s working on all cylinders, tends to celebrate multicultural realities and camp sensibilities.
But part of the pleasure of “Karma Police” à la Glazer involves tracking its inspirational bloodline to a coterie of diverse artists, videos and films. On the paler side of the pavement, there’s the Cillian Murphy-starring video for Fionn Regan’s “The Meetings of the Waters” or Glazer’s own Under the Skin, both of which rely heavily on the mystery of driving while shrouded in darkness. (See also the vids for Angel Olsen’s “Shut Up Kiss Me” and Chelsea Jade’s “Laugh It Off” for ludic takes on a similar phenomenon.)”.
One of the very best music video directors, I feel Karma Police is among the very best that Jonathan Glazer ever directed. A song as wonderful as Karma Police needed a video that good! That said, how many other directors would have thought of the concept he did? Pitchfork provided a detailed look at the video back in 2017. They spoke with, among others, director Jonathan Glazer about a mind-blowing video:
“Making its debut on MTV’s “120 Minutes” on September 21, 1997, the “Karma Police” video came along in an era when vanguard bands and directors were encouraging each other to push at the format’s limits on a regular basis. (An influx of industry cash thanks to the CD boom did not hurt—the clip’s budget was around $200,000 at the time, a generally unheard-of sum for a video nowadays.) And Glazer was among a generation of music video auteurs, including Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Mark Romanek, who helped to turn an inherently craven medium into something genuinely inventive.
MATT PINFIELD [former MTV VJ and host of “120 Minutes”]: When I was at MTV, the industry was trying to write off the band as a one-hit wonder with “Creep,” but I absolutely loved The Bends as well. We would get heat from other record companies, they would say to us, “Our record sold 20,000 more than Radiohead this week, why do you keep promoting their record?” And we said, “Because it’s great!” We stood our ground, and it was something that the band really appreciated.
When Thom handed me a gold record for The Bends, he was actually in tears. He said, “I know you guys took a lot of shit for standing behind this album and these videos and the band, and I just want to tell you how much I appreciate it.” That’s what this is really all about. And of course, we were right there with OK Computer as well. I’m very proud of having a gold record for OK Computer and for The Bends. It’s not just about material things, I believe in the records and the band so much.
IN THIS PHOTO: Jonathan Glazer/PHOTO CREDIT: Camilla Morandi/REX/Shutterstock
JONATHAN GLAZER: I was flown over to New York to see a private screening of David Lynch’s then new film Lost Highway because Mr. Manson wanted the video to relate to it somehow. Anyway, all I remember from that screening were the opening credits of a rushing road beneath the camera. Next thing I knew it was the closing credits—I’d had a big night, no sleep, and nodded off. So yes, that scene must have entered my subconscious, and the idea for “Karma Police” came out of it. It’s the only time I’ve written something for one artist and ended up making it for another.
RANDY SOSIN [former video commissioner at A&M and Interscope]: I remember having dinner with Manson’s manager right as the “Karma Police” video came out, and he told me that Jonathan Glazer had pitched a similar idea for a video with Manson for his song “Long Hard Road Out of Hell,” which would make sense with the car on fire at the end and everything. I had a similar thing happen once, when Michel Gondry pitched an idea for Soundgarden’s “Burden in My Hand” that later became a Cibo Matto video called “Sugar Water.”
As far as why Manson passed, I just feel like he didn’t necessarily want to be a piece of another artist’s work. I don’t remember him ever saying, “Oh, why didn’t I make that video?” It’s just that music video directors in particular tend to have a very specific vision and they see which artists are willing to go there.
SEAN BROUGHTON [“Karma Police” visual effects supervisor]:: Jon wanted to have the fire chase the car at the end of the video, and as effects supervisor, I had to figure out a way for that to happen. We couldn’t really have a quarter mile of fire chasing this car because you’d light one end and it would burn the full distance in a few seconds and probably set fire to the car and blow it up.
So we actually shot the fire in a dark shed with a locked-off camera during the shoot, about a half mile away from where Thom was. Then we had to actually track that fire into the shot. We had about 100 cones that were covered with a reflective tape, and we put two down on each side of the road for a quarter of a mile. The angle of the cones were such that when the car headlights shone onto them, the tape would glow, and we used those cones in order to track each section of fire into the roadway. There were people looking at us like we were mad: “Why are there people struggling to carry 30 boxes of cones into the countryside? What the hell are you doing? Why can’t you do it another way?”
We worked all night on it. At about one o’clock in the morning, Jon turned up, having not seen any part of the fire, and sat there in silence and watched it for the first time. He just went, “Nailed it.” That was it. It was a good feeling”.
A music video that will always rank alongside the very best, I felt it was necessary and important to highlight Jonathan Glazer’s sterling efforts on Karma Police. Because OK Computer is twenty-five next month, people will pour over songs like Karma Police and its amazing video. All these years later, it still moves me…
EACH time I watch the video.