http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2077494,00.html
Oh my God, Radiohead killed indie! The bastards! They also killed the classic rock album, this book argues, by making the last one it would ever be possible to make. Lucky it's such a scintillating record, then. We are talking, of course, about OK Computer. Tim Footman's enjoyable and witty book, written in a kind of gonzo-nerd style, is a track-by-track analysis, buttressed by studio and tour stories, readings of the videos and accounts of the songs' influences: "Take a half-remembered creative writing assignment inspired by a surreal science-fiction poem, a 27-year-old piece of jazz rock created by a man in insane sunglases, attempt to copy them both, and fail." Footman spends a few blissfully eccentric pages in close analysis of the CD booklet, happily brings Eliot and Dostoevsky into the discussion, and worries at the lyrics: "the notion of a karma police force is nonsensical," he points out, deadpan. The book ends by considering OK Computer's critical afterlife, and its follow-ups. One could have wished for more time spent on the album itself - the actual evocation of the music can be hurried, though a long, passionate defence of the closing triangle note is both alert to its own absurdity and wonderfully convincing.

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/talking-head/
Tim Footman likes Radiohead. We know this because he’s written a 261-page book about their 1997 album OK Computer, with all the hyperventilating fangasming this demands. Whether or not you will like this book probably depends on how much you buy into its thesis – that OK Computer is the end-goal of all human knowledge up to the point of its release (and maybe later), and therefore worthy of a bookful of analysis.
For the most part, it works. If you like OK Computer, it’s a fair bet that you’ll find something of interest here. Although the insight that Footman offers varies in quality from one chapter to the next, it’s generally a sound assessment of the content and impact of Radiohead’s magnum opus. The author has certainly done his research – the gleefully abundant footnotes and stringent bibliography help to give the impression that Footman has approached this book like a dissertation, reading every extant piece of prior material about his chosen topic before bringing them all together in a series of essays that run the gamut of pop culture from Pulp to Plato.
Footman is an affable guide, acknowledging with a wry aside when he feels he is in danger of paddling in the waters of pretension. Despite the occasionally dry dissection of some of the band’s more enigmatic lyrical and musical offerings, Footman’s humour bubbles up just enough to keep the reader afloat. Although at times the urge to sit him firmly down and play him the “just a band” section of “Thou Shalt Always Kill” becomes a little stronger than might be desirable, Footman can and does criticise his idols on more than one occasion.
I’m inclined to agree with his assessment of “The Tourist” as second-tier, but his disdain for “Electioneering”, in my opinion one of the album’s most immediately gripping cuts, is harder to understand. Footman takes issue with the bluntness of both its politics and its riffs, but for the casual listener – and sorry, Tim, if I sound like a philistine – a bit of balls-out rock comes as a nice pep-up from the faint disconnection that can come as a result of art-rock balls.
Is this music art? Most likely, yes – it takes more time and effort to create than to consume, and it pleases people who listen to music and people in universities who write books about music alike. However, some of Footman’s analysis risks penetrating a little too deeply, while some hovers vaguely on the surface, making comments that the music makes clear enough itself.
There is a danger when looking at mainstream music, even pop as skewed and awkward as Radiohead’s, that people can start to look for things that simply aren’t there. Footman cites the post-structuralist theory that the author is dead in order to pin some slightly questionable sociological tails on his alt-rock donkey, and in some instances a direct chat or two with Thom Yorke might have kept a couple of the wilder guesses in check. However, I don’t presume to guess at the author’s resources or intents; unlike Footman – but again, the majority of his analysis does stand on its own feet, and the logic behind it is relatively difficult to fault.
Towards the end, Footman begins to expound a theory that OK Computer is the last classic rock album, before the Internet ate music and the world was forever changed. In all honesty, it’s quite hard to think of a subsequent release that holds a similar place in the critical pantheon – though that doesn’t mean that such records don’t exist. People are still making great music, in album form; it’s just primarily distributed through MegaUpload rather than your local HMV.
In making such a statement, it seems vaguely implicit that Radiohead have peaked – although they are still recording, if they have essentially killed the classic album, then what they produce in subsequent years must be by extension inferior work. Whether or not you hold this to be true is entirely up to the individual reader, but it’s probably true that a lot of people said a similar kind of thing when the market moved from CD to vinyl. The existence of digital media doesn’t negate an all-time-classic status for future albums – Footman doesn’t seem worried that the Internet will replace books, such as his own. (Whether or not this is the last great music book is a debate for more competent reviewers than I). Despite the prevalence of single-track downloading, I don’t agree that the album has lost its status as a cultural touchstone, for the simple fact that you can still buy hard copies because there are moments when they will be needed. “The new media” (such as 3:AM) hasn’t stopped the production of magazines, and future bands, inspired by Radiohead or otherwise, will still be releasing in the CD format because CDs are still selling.
Whatever you think of the boldness of this assertion, it’s not the whole focus of Welcome To The Machine, and by and large the book is worth a read. The band’s opinion on such scrutiny would probably make for an interesting read as well, but Footman is generally near the mark, and there are certainly worse music writers out there (cf. Pitchfork, Christgau).
It remains to be seen whether or not this is one of the great books about music – probably not, although it isn’t really trying to be – but OK Computer is by common agreement one of the great albums of our time, and Footman handles his material with a reverent proficiency.
Radiohead: just a band? Yes – but a band that many have taken to their hearts, with good cause; and maybe a band worth reading about for the same reasons.
Art?
Maybe.
Classic?
Sure.
Buy this book?
…Go on then.

http://www.26books.com/?p=60
I used to read a lot of books about music - a quick count finds 30 on the shelves behind me - but I usually avoid books about just one band or album. Too often they are written by enthusiastic but uninformed fans or by disinterested hacks who are picking up an easy pay cheque.
But as a fan of Radiohead and a reader of Tim Footman’s blog, I was curious to read Welcome to the Machine. Fortunately Tim falls into neither of the categories above. He is clearly a fan but tempers his enthusiasm with a sharply critical ear and offers real insight into his subject.
Though the book is almost entirely about OK Computer, Radiohead’s exceptional 1997 album, Tim uses the first two chapters to set out the band’s career up to 1997 before embarking on a song-by-song analysis of the album. After that, there are chapters examining, among other things, the artwork, videos and live shows promoting the album. It’s nothing if not thorough.
Barring the odd slip into rock critic cliche (the late Alan Freeman is briefly channeled to introduce “the mighty This Is Hardcore” by Pulp) it’s well-written, clearly communicating a passion for the music. In almost every chapter, I found myself reaching for the iPod and thumbing through to the song in question.
The only unconvincing section comes at the end when Tim attempts to link OK Computer first to the death of indie music and later to “the death of the classic album” (which is the subtitle of the book). Though both are interesting debate topics I don’t think Tim makes either case convincingly. This post would more than double in length if I explained what I think are the flaws in his argument and I don’t have time to do that now but I might try to come back to it on my personal blog later this week.
You don’t have to be a Radiohead fan to enjoy this book but I would think you need at least an admiration for their work. If you have that, then this is an essential read.

Classic Rock, July 2007
Recorded in actress Jane Seymour’s country mansion, released in the year of Tony Blair’s landslide victory and initially treated with disdain by the band’s record company, Radiohead’s OK Computer has become an opus for our times. Tim Footman’s book is overanalytical, playing into Thom Yorke and co’s ‘eggheads of indie reputation’. Fans may warm to this fine-toothcombing approach – embracing TS Eliot’s Wasteland , Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, The Beatles’ White album and Taxi Driver as reference points in a few paragraphs – but the overweening desire to emphasise the “importance”of Radiohead soon palls. Surely there’s an abundance of Young Turks waiting to disprove the notion that OK Computer was the last great album of the CD age? ––Gavin Martin