Radiohead

It's not easy for this writer, as for any other native of the Marche region, to maintain the due professional detachment required in describing this evening. Readers will hopefully forgive any rhetorical excess along the way.

Living in the “tranquil Marche”, as the region has recently been advertised, is an experience made of silence and landscapes. A region self-satisfied with its relative untouched state, but also often far removed from the roar of big events. How many times did you find yourself around here over a beer, among live-music fans? Groups of grown-up kids who'll bother with trains and flights “just” for a hit of adrenaline. A couple of hours of emotion, between kick-drum punches and distortion. How many times, thinking back on the last gig experienced in the middle of an ocean of people, did someone crack that well-worn joke: “Come on, let's get organized and bring them to the Sferisterio in Macerata!” It always got a laugh, the idea seemed so ridiculous paired with such a small provincial reality.

Then things happened. Suddenly, we ended up on everyone's lips after the earth started shaking. But it was fleeting fame, made of scoop-hunger and sensationalism. Soon enough, Leopardi's hills slipped back into that anonymity, once sweet, now aching from wounds that will stay open for a long time. Years, surely. Maybe decades.

Someone wasn't happy with that. It took the intervention of a foreigner with black hair and a cool quiff, like something out of a comic book. He too, like certain fictional characters, had done and seen plenty. Probably too much, given his desire to get away from so much overexposure. He wanted a hidden refuge. A paradise that others – too used to living there – might see as a boring hell, who knows. In that unknown little village in the Fermo area, Jonny Greenwood was holidaying like your typical Englishman lost in Central Italy. In a farmhouse tucked away among fields and gravel roads. Until that night of August 24th, when he nearly found that farmhouse on his head, once again because of the trembling earth. So much for the “tranquil Marche”.

How to stop the spotlight on the scene from fading for good into darkness? Perhaps no one knew better how to keep it trained and switched on than the Radiohead guitarist and his more famous bandmate, Thom Yorke. In front of seventy thousand people at the recent show in Florence (repeated shortly after in Monza), the bombshell announcement came: “We intend to play a charity show at the Sferisterio in Macerata, on August 20th”.

That's how the splendid arena, well known in opera circles, became with its scant 2,800 seats the target of tens of thousands of fans. Things were handled properly, at the artists' explicit request: named tickets, ID checks at the entrance, clear prices and seating well before sales opened. The resulting sellout within minutes was nonetheless an inevitable side-effect.

At last the day of the big event arrives: after a seemingly endless wait, the city of Macerata is overrun by people from everywhere, including English, Mexicans and residents of the Big Apple. We also spot a couple of familiar faces, such as Claudio Santamaria and Cristina Donà, the latter a regular at the English band's shows.

And the concert itself? It's not just a concert but a tribute to the region hosting it, starting with the artists – personally chosen by Greenwood – tasked with the heavy job of opening the show: the string quartet Cubis Quartet, made up of Aldo Campagnari, Cristiano Giuseppetti, Vincenzo Starace and Federico Bracalente, alongside bandoneon player Daniele Di Bonaventura. An ensemble largely hailing from the Fermo area, like good old Jonny after all, which set just the right preliminary mood moving between compositions by Schubert and Shostakovich.

Then those two walk in, the ones that the many people from the Marche who flocked there wouldn't have imagined in their own backyard even in their wildest dreams. Yes, calling what follows a mere concert is undoubtedly an understatement, because after a handful of songs the distance to the crowd has already been erased. There's a joke in shaky Italian about how hard it is to render the electronic trip of “Bloom” on piano. There are also a few little slip-ups, like Greenwood “nodding off” when it's time to change the drum-machine pattern (“Hey, Jonny…”, Thom teases him, amused), or Yorke himself fumbling trying to switch it off at the end of “Present Tense”. Fair enough, after all the Yorke-Greenwood duo has seen the light of day very few times in their career, as the over two and a half hours of afternoon soundcheck attest.

Thom is particularly cheerful, it feels like an evening among friends as he trades quips, whistling along with the crowd, or imitates the boisterous English of a particularly fired-up spectator. The intimate venue, with the Arena's distinctive arch, encourages the audience to try their luck requesting songs, earning them good-natured raspberries from the two Albion natives on holiday (“Yeah, we'll play it for you… but later!”).

But, aside from a few rough edges, the show is also and above all an impressive performance from a technical standpoint. “In Rainbows” becomes more powerful in this stripped-down guise, showing off a “Nude” so fragile and quivering it's blood-chilling, not to mention the extremely delicate interplay between piano and xylophone on “All I Need”. The two Radiohead masterminds move – marked out by the electronic beats – like two Gibsonian neuromancers amid that Stonehenge of guitars, pianos and keyboards, lit by the flickering indicator lights of the computers. Among the great classics, gems also pop up, like a nasty, abrasive “A Wolf At The Door”, paradoxically made heavier by this new stripped-back guise. Room is also found for “Cymbal Rush”, pulled out of the Albion frontman's solo discography, not to mention “Follow Me Around”.

Maybe it's the relaxed atmosphere, or perhaps the perfect acoustics of a Sferisterio more evocative than ever, but Thom's voice rings out clean and powerful among the box columns as it rarely has been heard. The alien's vocal cords gift the lucky audience an incredible, thundering “Pyramid Song”, just as “Exit Music (For A Film)” silences everyone, true to tradition.

Greenwood, for his part, sets up his usual backdrop of rhythms, piano chimes and synth textures; you can appreciate his skill even amid the usual vast lawn packed with screaming spectators, let alone on this occasion, where it feels like having him in your living room. The most beloved adopted son of the Marche region right now wields a rapier in the intricate embroidery of "The Numbers" and a sabre in the thunderous finale of "Karma Police", the final blow of an encore salvo drawing from the magic poker hand of "The Bends", "OK Computer", "Kid A" and "Amnesiac".

To use a cliché, it's one of those nights that could easily have run another three hours without wearing thin. But the dream ends here, with the sincere emotion of two Brits who turn out to be more Mediterranean than one might have thought. "Thank you guys" is their farewell as they fade into the shadows at the side of the sprawling Macerata stage.

Still dazed, the crowd disperses. For two hours, some had fun, many were moved, and a great many forgot for a while the sad reason behind the genesis of such a grand event, as if time itself had stopped.

Who knows if and when they'll realise what happened tonight, what it meant for this land. Some perhaps will never understand it; others will carry it in their hearts, within the folds of its wounds, forever.

The impossible has happened, history has been made. Now, thanks to these two, during our beers among fellow gig-goers we'll have to come up with a new line.

Photo contributions by Alfredo Tabocchini and Iuri Martelli

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