The "bends" is a scuba diving term. It refers to a condition caused when a diver surfaces too fast.
Lead singer Thom Yorke: "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, as 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.
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