Lewis

If you know me at all, you know that I love the band Radiohead. For a large portion of my life I loved them a little bit too much. I discovered the five Brits at the very impressionable age of 14, and like many other teenage fans, I effectively made liking them my entire personality. However, that led to me getting involved with some pretty neat people and situations both online and in real life, and the story I’m about to tell you is the ultimate cake-topper in my arsenal of Radiohead related stories. Whether you know as much about the band as I do or if you have no clue who they are, stick around and strap in. Fair warning: it’s lengthy, but it’s a wild ride and it’s worth it.

THE STORY OF LEWIS, THE BENDS DUMMY

PT. 1. THE PROCUREMENT

It was a cold December night in 2022. I was cooped up in my room, as per usual, and it was probably no earlier than 1:00 AM. I was listening to an album I’d listened to hundreds of times before, but was enjoying it just as much as the first time. That album was The Bends—my fourth-favorite Radiohead album (that’s actually a pretty high ranking compared to most fans, by the way).

I’ve linked the Wikipedia page to the album here in case you want a little overview. If you don’t want to read all that, all you need to know is this: it’s Radiohead’s sophomore album, it released in 1995, and it’s depressing alternative rock from Britain. Okay, you’re basically caught up. Now onto the main event…

This is what I was staring at on that cold winter night. To some of you, this is an old friend. On behalf of everyone else, what the hell is that? I will tell you!

Some background: the making of The Bends was the first time Radiohead collaborated with visual artist Stanley Donwood, who they still work with closely to this day. For The Bends’ album cover, Donwood and frontman Thom Yorke set out with a VHS camcorder to film various objects around them. They especially wanted to find one object in particular—an iron lung. The two ended up getting into the basement of the nearby John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, and while they did find an iron lung, they also found it was quite boring to look at. They were much more enamored with the room of resuscitation dummies they stumbled upon, with Donwood later saying¹²:

“In the room where the staff practice resuscitation were some mannequins, and one of them, in particular, had a facial expression like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony, simultaneously. And that was the cover of the record.”²

The pair went home, played the footage of the dummy on Thom’s TV, snapped a photo of the screen, and then used a Macintosh computer to slightly stretch the image as well as use a primitive software to morph Thom’s face with the dummy’s face (that is a VERY little known fact!). They slapped some boxy text on the image and viola! The cover art was born.¹²³

As I stared at the said cover art, I remember thinking two distinct thoughts: what mannequin is that exactly, and how do I go about owning one? To answer those questions, I had a couple of options. The internet, of course, but also the 12000 member Radiohead fan Discord server I was in at the time. On December 13th, I told everyone my mission. I told them I was going to find this dummy no matter what, and I would name him Lewis (there’s an old Radiohead B-side from that era called Lewis). A lot of fans and friends were interested, but one fan who we’ll call Rob offered to become my partner in crime. Instead of bore you with every detail of what went down online over that week, I’m going to just blurt it all out. Imagine the following text like a movie montage, with a bunch of manic scenes of me in front of a computer in the wee hours of the night with beads of sweat dripping down my forehead.

Google search. 1990s medical dummies. Companies that made dummies. Scroll images. Eh, nothing looks quite the same. Oh wait, maybe that one does. Noted. Okay, switch search engines. Try all the English search engines. Check Ebay. No current listings for anything similar. WAIT! A couple old listings for dummies that look similar. Already sold. Damn. But more information! It’s gotta be a Laerdal. Now use that in all searches and keep parsing. Learning more model names than I ever planned on. WAIT! Rob just found a lead. Reach out to the person who took the photo Rob found. Don’t hear anything back. Oh well. Try to get Reddit involved. They don’t really care (yet). Okay, time for non-English search engines. Translating. Finding some promising images. Rob sends more promising images and model names. At this point there’s like 100 photos of damn dummies on my phone. Hey wait, this one looks a LOT like it. Laerdal ALS Trainer MPN #290020. Holy shit, that’s it, right? Dag nabbit, it’s just a tiny bit different, and it’s not for sale. Hold on, hold on. Look. Here’s an obscure website from a medical supplier in the Netherlands. It’s not in English, but that’s okay because there it is. There it really is. That’s the one.

December 20th: A message to René, the Reliable

On this fated day I sent an email to René, the owner of the Dutch medical supplier. I believe the entire company operates out of his house. I knew it looked very odd to ask him for one of his mannequins without the arms and legs and without any electronics inside, so I made sure to give him a quick rundown and photo of the album cover. After some back and forth (and maybe a bit of bewilderment on his part) I had him send me some photos to make sure I was getting exactly what I asked for. It took him three weeks, and that was hell, but the new year came and went and sure enough, he got back to me. Yep, that’s still the one. I waited another month for him to take the full-sized dummy apart amidst his busy schedule. By the end of February, it was a done deal. For the price of a used car payment plus international shipping, I was now going to be the owner of the dummy from The Bends.

Seriously, shout out René.

And shout out Rob, too.

Fast forward another month. I missed the damn dummy delivery. I missed the DDD. They required a signature and I was asleep. Whatever, in a few days I could pick it up at my local post office.

It was the most exciting Monday of my life. I woke up, rolled out of bed, and before I knew it my mom and I were out the door and headed to the post office. I didn’t really know what to expect. I felt like a red carpet roll-out may be appropriate. Maybe a personal delivery from Thom Yorke himself. In the middle of my daydreaming we see a woman appear from a side door rolling a huge box on a cart. It looked heavy. It was. My mom and I spent a good minute trying to figure out how to get it in the trunk of our Jeep Wrangler, and we were on our merry way. I got home and wielded an X-ACTO knife. Praying it wasn’t just full of rocks, I sliced the box open. And there he was.

PT. 2. VIRALITY

It is at this point I should probably give a disclaimer, an answer to a question that most people ask upon learning about Lewis. No, I cannot prove he is the actual dummy that Thom and Stanley took a photo of on that day in Oxford over 30 years ago. It’s just impossible to know. However, the mannequin which I freed from that box is about the closest you could ever get, and anyone ever will get. I can guarantee that!

So now that Lewis was home, I had to figure out what to do with him. He had been liberated from the depths of a Dutch basement, but I knew his story couldn’t stop there. I had to tell the world! But I had to tell my online friends first. Of course, I had been updating them the whole time, but this was time for celebration. After some merriments in the Discord server, I decided to test the waters of a bigger online Radiohead community.

Later that day, I made a mock AMA post on the r/radiohead subreddit, responding to comments and questions as if it were Lewis talking (check it out above!). The post immediately shot to the top of the sub, with hundreds of fans commenting and even more reacting. If you ever want an exhaustive collection of Radiohead-related puns, just go check my replies posing as Lewis in that comment thread. Unfortunately, the Reddit fun stopped after that first post, as the moderators saw any Lewis content beyond that as spam. Yes, I’m still butthurt about it.

However, I saw that if I could only tap into the broader Radiohead fandom online, I could really make a splash with my newfound inanimate sidekick. A couple weeks later, I registered the @lewisthebendsdummy TikTok handle. At first, I just regurgitated the same kind of post that I put on Reddit, and hoped for the best. That hope paid off, because within a single evening the post skyrocketed to over half a million views. I couldn’t believe the numbers I was seeing by the hour, as I had never seen them before, and you bet that my OCD ass was compulsively checking my notifications by the minute.

I wanted to keep the momentum going, so I immediately got to work on creating ideas for more posts and skits. My next post, a short clip of Lewis crying real tears to the song No Surprises, shot to a million views in no time. That 30 year old Dutch dummy joined the seven figure club. Amazing. It really is true what they say—you can make a thousand great posts trying to sell yourself or your art or your product, but the one that’s going to go viral is the dumb one completely unrelated to you. In this case, though, I wouldn’t want it any other way. It had already gone way farther than I ever thought it would.

All good things come to an end, though, especially when the person creating the said thing is definitely NOT meant to be a content creator. Or wants to be. So after a month or two of sporadic posting, things started to fizzle. The hype was dying down, and there’s only so much you can do with a mannequin. Well, there’s actually probably a lot of things you could do, but I wasn’t really interested in figuring them out. It was a good run, though! I was able to make a cool industry connection through it and get some insider insights into the band (which ended up not coming to fruition, so take the legitimacy of that connection for what it’s worth) and even got an offer from someone to buy my TikTok account outright. I declined. Lewis is priceless, especially after what happened the following summer. Lewis’ TikTok career might have been over, but he had unfinished business to attend to…

PT. 3. THE MEETING (AND MORE VIRALITY)

Lewis had achieved a lot. However, he still hadn’t accomplished the biggest feat that had been taking up a sizable chunk of space in my mind ever since I acquired him:

Man, I really want Radiohead to see this.

Now that was reaching high, I know, and I didn’t really expect for it to happen, at least not easily. I thought maybe I’d be able to tag one of the members online and get their attention. Tried that to no avail. They’re not really active guys on social media. It was made clear to me that the internet wouldn’t be my one-way ticket this time. I’d have to try another, better way.

Little do you readers know that the better way was tucked in my back pocket ever since February that year, while René the Reliable was furiously toiling over his Dutch dummy all day and night, preparing it for me. You see, in that month The Smile had announced their tour dates for summer 2023, and my eureka moment struck.

Hold up! What is The Smile, you ask? The Smile was (at the time) a brand new three-piece band comprising of Thom Yorke, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, and UK session drummer Tom Skinner. That’s 2/5 of Radiohead, for those who don’t want to do the calculations! Being that they were a young band trying to promote new material, The Smile were touring frequently and were playing relatively small venues (1500-2000 cap as opposed to the usual arena that Radiohead would play). Because of this, I had actually been able to meet them all at The Eastern in Atlanta in late 2022, right before all the Lewis hullabaloo. I could write a post about that night alone—it was surreal. It was incredibly emotional and reverent, meeting two of my biggest musical heroes and all.

I knew that if there were to be a 2nd time, it would be different. I mean, there would be quite the conversation starter this time around. As soon as I saw those tour dates announced, I told my parents (and Lewis) to get prepared, because on the night of July 2nd, 2023, our asses would be in North Charleston, South Carolina.

The July Charleston air was breezy and relaxing, but upon arriving in the colorful city center I was persistently nervy. A lot of excitement, yes, but this was my chance and I had no idea if it would be successful. The car ride to Charleston wasn’t exactly a short trip. Possibly adding to the nerves was the fact that we were staying in an old Sears department store converted into a hotel, and we agreed something just felt off about it. The ghosts of children playing hide and seek, maybe? I don’t know, I don’t believe in the supernatural. Even though what happened the next night sure felt supernatural.

After a day of exploring the city, the night of the show came around. We transported Lewis from our room to our rental car and off we went. We successfully secured a spot near the venue entrance (this will matter in a minute), and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw two South Carolinian friends from Discord walk around the corner of the building. I wasn’t surprised they were there—this had been planned with multiple fans I knew online—I just didn’t expect to see them right then. Another friend emerged not long after, and before we knew it the show was about to start. Fast forward 1.5 hours. The show was as great as everyone knew it would be, especially with the addition of some new songs since the last time I had seen the band. I had no time to stay and chew the fat, though. I was a man on a mission.

Before I could continue on that mission, though, I had a side-mission to fulfill. You see, days earlier I had posted on TikTok that Lewis would be doing a fan meetup outside the venue after the show. Though in truth I wanted to get my ass to the tour buses as fast as possible, I wasn’t about to let Lewis’ fans down. I went over to the conveniently parked car, and some thick-accented middle aged South Carolinian guys gawked as I pulled Lewis out of the trunk. “Well I’ll be, that brings me right back to ‘95?” Something like that. Also, no, I’m not sure South Carolinian is the real term. I proceeded to walk right up to the venue door, plop a fold-up chair down, set Lewis on it, and smile at any onlookers. The problem, though, is that by the time I had done all of this, 99% of people had left the venue. I think I got a couple “cool!” remarks, and then a woman came up to me and took a picture of me with the dummy, absolutely bewildered and laughing and saying I was one of the most interesting people she’d ever seen. I guess I was flattered, but it did kind of feel like I was a zoo exhibit.

I realized quickly that the fan meetup had been a sizeable fail, and I had better get back on track. The main mission. I had my dad take the chair back to the car, and at that moment all urgency kicked in. I already knew where I had to travel to behind the venue (thanks Google Earth!) and I picked that dummy up against my chest and started jogging like a slightly impeded Forrest Gump. On my journey to the tour buses I heard someone across the parking lot yell “take it to dinner first!” to which I think I yelled back “I DID!” By that point I think I’d done a lot more for that dummy than dinner.

I arrived at the back of the venue moments later where my friends along with ~15 other people were already congregated and waiting. My parents showed up soon after. We all looked through the bars of the gate like envious prisoners. You see, this wasn’t a typical wait-at-the-bus situation. The venue had a huge back lot for production parking which was gated off to the public. We were on the gate, looking in at the buses as well as the production entrance/exit door no less than 50 feet away from us.

The vibe was so high. Of course, my friends already knew how important this moment was, but over the course of the next ~30 minutes while we waited for any sign of life, everyone else there grew to recognize the importance, too. Things like that are why I love getting autographs so much. It’s about the community you can form with a small group of people in the middle of the night and then you never see them again. Here we were. This was really, truly it. This wasn’t the culmination of so many hours of passion and dedication. In a way, this was all of my teenage years of fandom coming to a head. A Radiohead.

And then one of the Radioheads walked out of the distant double doors. One of the greatest musical minds of our era, Jonny Greenwood. Frenzy. We all screamed. “JONNY, HELLO! LOOK, JONNY! JONNY, OVER HERE!” I pressed Lewis up against the gate. Nope. Not even a wave. Not even a look. Jonny quickly made his way into the tour bus, and that was it. Oh well. The man’s in his 50s and probably needed to take his nighttime vitamins and hit the sack. Dang! Shot #1 of 2 had came and went. So close, yet so far. 70ish feet far. The frenzy of voices quickly died down to a low murmur as we looked at the ground and twiddled our thumbs. But all hope was not lost—Thomas Edward Yorke was still in the building.

My dad’s voice shot out of the communal murmur and melancholy. “I think that’s him, yeah—right there, that’s him.” I squinted at the figure coming out of the door. Short man? Yep. Stringy grey hair? Yep. Blue beanie? Yep. Overalls? Yep. White Birkenstock slides? Yep. A sort of swift, awkward gait? Yep. Holy shit. That’s him. And he’s walking across the lot straight towards us.

I will never be able to describe the look on Thom’s face as he made his way over to the gate. His gaze was fixed solely on Lewis, who I was holding up above my head against the gate like Simba in The Lion King. It was a look of pure and unbridled bewilderment, awe, confusion, concern, and uneasiness all mixed into a cocktail of an expression I will never forget. I don’t think anyone has ever internally gone “what the fuck” more than he did in that moment. Maybe a little “What kind of fanbase did I create?” too. Understandable. A venue employee opened the gate, and Thom walked out followed by Radiohead’s business manager Ade Bullock. I was coincidentally standing right where the gate opened, so before I knew it there I was, in the middle of Charleston, South Carolina at 11:30 at night, with Lewis at my feet, and Thom Yorke right in front of me. What the fuck.

The following interaction went a little something like this:

Thom: (Staring down at Lewis, silent)

Me, proudly: His name is Lewis.

Thom: Where’d you find that, a hospital basement?

Me: In a basement in the Netherlands, actually.

Thom: (Still staring)

Me: He’s wondering when he’ll start getting his royalty checks, for the album cover modeling.

Thom: (Scoffs and chuckles at the same time) Ha, never. I think we copyrighted that.

Me: I was wondering if you could sign him for me? (I hand him the sharpie)

He then bent down and began signing Lewis’ chest. Now, I had gotten a Thom signature before, so I knew he takes a while to write his name. But this was taking even longer. “What could he be taking so long for?” I wondered. You’ll see in a second.

After Thom signed Lewis, I stepped back to let my friends and the other fans have their time. Ade had been watching the whole time, and I heard him say as he leaned over to Thom, “Now that’s pretty good, you have to admit.” Thom replied, “I respect it.” My mom chimed in: “I have to deal with that thing being in my house every day.” Thom replied blankly, “I’m so sorry.” He’s always gonna have that British dry humor turned on. A friend of mine was brave enough to speak up for me and ask Thom if he would break his no-photo rule to get a photo with me and Lewis. It did seem like a special case, to be fair. He politely declined. Hard sell! Then, Ade appeared in front of me with his phone out and asked for a photo of me standing with Lewis. I happily obliged. Who knows who he sent that photo to. It was at this point I bent down and snapped my own photo of Lewis on the sidewalk. I didn’t really think much of it. That would change in the coming days.

See how he wrote “the bends” on the torso like how it is on the album cover? That’s what was taking so long! He’s a slow writer.

Several minutes passed, and the group of people there had mostly dispersed. My parents had gotten in line and gotten their items signed, and I was trailing behind them. Their items were definitely not actually my items, and I definitely didn’t use them to circumvent the band’s one-item-per-person rule. Definitely not. Anyway, being behind my parents meant that I had another moment to speak with Thom again. I think I was actually the last in line.

Me, referring to Lewis: Talk of the tour bus tonight, right?

Thom: What?

Me, speaking more clearly: Talk of the tour bus tonight, right?

Thom: Oh, yeah, yeah.

And that’s the last I remember before everyone scurried off to where they came from. Who knows if there was any tour bus talk that night, let alone about Lewis. Maybe Thom didn’t think about it ever again after that moment. Couldn’t be me! The feeling was unreal—did that really just happen? My friends and parents and I were all ecstatic. I got in the car and immediately posted that image I took to the fan Discord server. The news of the signing wasn’t really meant to leave the server at that point, as my friends and I were concerned that if the larger fanbase knew, more people may try to do weird things at signings and ruin everybody’s chances. For now, it would be our little secret and we could all sleep well knowing that the impossible actually happened.

I woke up to quite the news. Somehow, the image had gotten out of the discord server, made its way to social media, and a guy on Twitter had posted my image and it was going gangbusters. Oh god… virality. AGAIN! The image was everywhere. Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, probably some Facebook group full of Gen X fans too. The viral post was simple: it was just my image with the caption “Someone got Thom to sign a fucking CPR dummy last night.” Haha…yep…I was that someone. By the way, Lewis was meant to do train way more than CPR, but I digress. The next day was even crazier. I remember walking through our hotel lobby when I opened my phone to see my own photo on my feed, posted by someone else. This wasn’t an uncommon thing for me to see anymore, so I didn’t think much of it… until I saw who posted it. Stereogum. The real Stereogum. Holy shit! They said that Lewis belongs in the rock in roll hall of fame. Not so fast, buddy. You’ll have to pry him from my cold, dead hands. I refreshed my Instagram feed. Oh look, SPIN magazine posted him. Oh look, Sleeping On Gems posted him. Within a day, multiple of the biggest music and media publications had all added fuel to the Lewis fire. It was time for his second 5 seconds of fame. A total of 10 whole seconds! The Dutch dummy had done it again.

PT. 4. THE MEANING OF IT ALL

So what happened to Lewis, now being three years later? Well, as with all things, the virality died down again after the media hoopla, and since then Lewis has been living a retired life in the corner of my home studio. He’s actually my part-time headphone holder. He even has a little mini-me of himself, a limited collectible figure made by Marquee Marauders Club (hello Jacob, if you’re reading this!). Though he’s not in the spotlight anymore, he’s doing well and keeps me company when I’m cooped up sitting at my computer. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon!

Okay, I’ll finally quit the anthropomorphic talk, as much fun as it is. As I’ve been writing this post off and on for the past several days, I’ve been trying to think about what this whole story means to me. It’s been great fun going back and reliving it all, and trying to piece it together in one place.

When I look at Lewis the Bends Dummy, I don’t just see a priceless memorabilia piece which lies at the pinnacle of my collection. I see a real, tangible manifestation of a crazy idea becoming reality. A representation of the stars aligning. A symbol of something existing and dreams coming true even when the odds are all stacked against it. I see that kid in his bedroom in December 2022, thinking “What if.” So to that I say indulge your what ifs. Indulge your curiosities. Indulge your crazy ideas and absurd endeavors. Send the email. Splurge on the thing that costs too much. Drive to another state. Do whatever you have to do. It’s cliché, yes. But in the end, whatever makes you look like a dummy might not be so dumb after all. I know that much.

REFERENCES

1. Eastaugh, Martin. “Radiohead Album Cover Image Taken In Hospital Basement.” BBC News, 2 Aug. 2025, www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3nyy9q8po.

2. Staff. “How the Artwork of Radiohead’s ‘the Bends’ Was Created.” Far Out Magazine, 6 Jan. 2023, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/radiohead-the-bends-album-artwork-explained.

3. BitingPixie. “Radiohead Interview at Bubblepop (1995) pt. 1.” YouTube, 1 Jan. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLEZu-Hh70w.