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Length
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Sung from the perspective of paranoid fear itself, “Climbing Up the Walls” takes the English idiomatic expression for utter unpleasant feelings, such as worry and doubt giving the expression a voice.
“Climbing Up the Walls” Is one of the first tracks by the band to be described as “scary.” Relying heavily on strings, but not in a conventional way, as the string section, composed by Jonny Greenwood alone, features 16 different violins playing quarter tones apart from one another.
Thom accompanies the chilling melodies with equally haunting lyrics about the relentless internal demons people face.
“Climbing Up the Walls” is the sixteenth track in the 01 10 playlist and serves to complement “Reckoner” from Radiohead’s In Rainbows album.
Thom: "This is about the unspeakable. Literally skull-crushing. I used to work in a mental hospital around the time that Care In The Community started, and we all just knew what was going to happen. And it's one of the scariest things to happen in this country, because a lot of them weren't just harmless… It was hailing violently when we recorded this. It seemed to add to the mood. Some people can't sleep with the curtains open in case they see the eyes they imagine in their heads every night burning through the glass. Lots of people have panic buttons fitted in their bedrooms so they can reach over and set the alarm off without disturbing the intruder. This song is about the cupboard monster."
From a Radiohead interview published in Rolling Stone in 2017 for the 20th anniversary of OK Computer:
Phil Selway: Because of the ghosts, I probably went to bed with the duvet pulled up to my nose every night. So the album did have that slightly wired feeling to it, which I think you can hear in “Climbing Up the Walls.”
Thom Yorke: That one’s a bit of a mystery to me, to be honest. I used to work in a home for the severely mentally ill for a while in this little village. And I remember one of them escaping one night – he was perfectly harmless, but he was really ill. I mean he couldn’t be out in society anyway. But because it was in a little village it sort of stuck with me. This idea of this guy in the middle of a field and the police chasing him.
Then I had read some newspaper piece about about a normal domestic murder where obviously the person concerned was not well. I was fascinated in a kind of twisted way about what is it that makes someone who can go through life and just snap one day and do something that you can’t possibly imagine. And it was in the context that people don’t get looked after like they should. Depression for example at the time was something that everybody just went, “Oh, well, you’re just depressed.” But now it can lead into other things like if someone gets ill, they can be a danger to themselves and to other people. That’s what I think about when I play it now.
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