The story behind Radiohead's The Bends album cover

Radiohead's 1995 album The Bends has a very memorable cover, but not everyone knows the story behind it. The cover shows a pixelated image of a mannequin's head and shoulders, with its eyes closed and mouth open. The band's name and the album title are printed at the bottom in red and white. Thom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead, and Stanley Donwood, the artist who designed the cover, recently shared how they created this iconic image. It all started when they decided to sneak into the basement of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. They were looking for something to match the title of their song My Iron Lung, so they wanted to find a real iron lung to photograph.

When they found the iron lung, they were disappointed because it was just a plain metal box and not very interesting to look at. However, while exploring the basement, they discovered a mannequin used for medical training. This dummy was used to teach people how to do CPR and use defibrillators. The mannequin was lying on the floor, and its expression looked strange and lifeless. Thom and Stanley thought it would make a much more striking image for the album cover. They filmed the mannequin with a video camera, then played the footage back on an old analog TV. They took a photo of the TV screen, which made the image look pixelated and distorted. This process gave the cover its unique look.

Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood became friends at Exeter University, where they both studied English literature and fine art. They started working together on Radiohead's artwork in 1994, beginning with the single My Iron Lung and then The Bends album. Donwood has since created most of Radiohead's album covers and also works on Thom Yorke's solo projects. For The Bends, they were still learning how to use Photoshop, and the colors on the cover did not turn out exactly as they expected. The blue color, for example, looked muddy when printed. Despite these challenges, the cover became iconic, and the album was a success. Today, the original cover and other related artwork are displayed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, showing how a creative idea and a bit of rule-breaking can lead to something unforgettable.