The Bends

The "bends" is a scuba diving term. It refers to a condition caused when a diver surfaces too fast.

"The Bends" is the title track to Radiohead's second album, released in 1995 following their 1993 debut, Pablo Honey. Lead singer Thom Yorke explained how the song came together: "We wrote this song before completing the first album. The sound at the beginning come from the cacophonous rumpus outside an hotel in the US. A guy was dragging 8-year-old kids to parade with all their instruments. This guy had a small mike on his sweater and he kept shouting: 'Yeah, keep it up, keep it up.' So I went outside and recorded him."

According to Q magazine April 2008, the band worked through several takes of this song because they were initially concerned that it sounded too bombastic. Jonny Greenwood tried many different guitar-and-amp combinations before returning to his original Fender set up at the Manor studios in Oxfordshire. There, the track was finally completed.