CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Just about every musician you can name started out playing with buddies in high school or earlier, forming bands that played sock hops, graduation parties, anyplace they could plug in and rock out.

Not too many, though, stuck it out with those guys (or gals), and certainly not without lineup changes. For most, success was recording a demo, touring in a dilapidated van, eating really bad food and having those stories to tell their kids when they “grew up and got real jobs.”

Then there’s Radiohead, which has gone from a collection of boys attending Abingdon School in England to five guys who will be onstage for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Well, maybe they’ll be on the stage. Or at least some of them.

The band has told representatives of other media outlets, such as Rolling Stone, that as Britons, they’re not quite sure what the big deal is when it comes to induction in a U.S. institution. All five declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this story.

Right now, at least according to Loudwire.com, four of the five will be there: brothers Jonny and Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway. The expected absentee is singer Thom Yorke.

To be fair, Yorke’s stated reason for skipping the ceremony wasn’t so much an anti-U.S. thing as it was an anti-awards-show thing. At least that’s what he said in an interview with Variety, according to the Loudwire.com report.

“Every awards ceremony in the U.K. stinks. We grew up with the Brit [Awards], which is like this sort of drunken car crash that you don’t want to get involved with.”

He continued, “We don’t want to offend anyone. We just think that we just don’t quite understand it. We’ve had it explained to us, so it’s cool. But we don’t really understand it as English people.”

With no singer, it’s conceivable that Radiohead will be the lone inductee that doesn’t do the traditional three-song post-induction performance.

It won’t be the first time — Kiss didn’t play a few years ago, over a dispute between Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley and former members Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, and Steve Perry didn’t join his former Journey band mates for their time in the spotlight.

Then of course, there was the snub of the entire event last year by Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, a fellow Brit whose disdain for the Hall of Fame is pretty well documented.

Given the temperamental nature of rock stars in general, it probably won’t be the last snub. The thing to do, though, is not let that cloud the actual induction itself.

For while the induction of Radiohead is a surprise to some — the band finished 10th in the Rock Hall’s own fan ballot with 140,458 votes, about 400,000 votes behind winner Def Leppard — Radiohead’s deeply loyal fan base has no doubt that it’s deserved.

Of course, that vote isn’t exactly a harbinger of who’s getting in; Todd Rundgren finished third this year, and once again was left off the list of inductees, while Roxy Music, which drew 200,000 fewer votes than Rundgren, made it into the Rock Hall.

And the debate does rage over the band itself. Writer Riley Fitzgerald, on the website hhhhappy.com, tackles it in his own analysis of a book on the band by Barney Hoskyns, called “Present Tense: A Radiohead Compendium.”

As Fitzgerald notes, although Hoskyns acknowledges the almost fanatical fervor of the gloomy band’s followers — among fans and critics alike — there are questions as to whether Yorke & Co. are that good. That’s really left to history to decide, but it’s clear from his piece on the book that Fitzgerald sees it from all sides:

“Yet so unlike most music press darlings they also commanded a mass and middlebrow audience. Radiohead’s enormous commercial success afforded them a footing in established society as well. They were going to make it whether the critics liked them or not.

“And in that sense, they can seem almost superhuman. But for all their mythical musical chops and intelligence, Radiohead can still come off as a big dumb rock band. ‘Present Tense’ holds its Spinal Tap moments. The band are often at pains to play up their moderation. If you can believe their self-instigated public relations campaign, Radiohead are the good boys.”

Whether they are or not is, of course, up to debate. It’s clear, though, that the members’ upbringing wasn’t one of wild parties and such.

Abingdon School by all accounts was a strict institution. The band’s Wikipedia bio, citing a 1998 Guitar World story called “The Golden Age of Radiohead,” even notes that at one time, the headmaster charged them for using a rehearsal room on a Sunday.

Though “Creep” was not an instant hit, it did give the band enough fame to get extra chances in the studio and do something bands are not able to do today: evolve. As a result, Yorke was able to turn the band into something other than MTV’s flavor of the month, with the EP “My Iron Lung.”

It was this eight-song album, including another track of “Creep,” that writer Mac Randall, in his book “Exit Music: The Radiohead Story,” said helped them build a fan base and prove that they were not “a one-hit wonder.”

Indeed, the band has spent its ongoing career not merely trying to avoid re-creating “Creep,” but evolving its sound in other ways. Most of that has involved adapting other instruments — Jonny Greenwood is fond of the glockenspiel, for example — and especially the electronica sound known by the pejorative “Krautrock.”

Whatever effects or sounds they get, it’s all tailored to fit Yorke’s haunting, sometimes morose vocals. Radiohead music is hardly what you want to play to lift up someone’s spirits.

And that’s OK. We all have our navel-contemplating moments, when we wonder whether we fit into the world. Honestly, that’s the true gist of music in general and rock ’n’ roll in particular. Alternative Press founder Mike Shea once said he created the ’zine that evolved into a respected music publication to serve a disenfranchised community that was being ignored and sometimes even snubbed.

Not so ironically, that same sentiment could be applied to music by everyone from Elvis to Dylan, from Al Green to Green Day, from New Order to N.W.A. In that respect, Radiohead was and is the musical spokesperson for a community.

Which is hardly a creepy thought.