Shift Magazine - June '96

Radiohead's lead man Thom Yorke confesses to Krishna Rau that he's a famous, frustrated and depressed fish-killer

Q- You don't seem to fit into the current crop of Britpop bands. Are you musical outcasts in Britain?

Thom- I've always though we were. But recently, I've got very nervous to discover that we're probably not. We were very much part of that Brit awards night, but I was just scowling in the corner. I couldn't handle it.

Q- Well, your last record, The Bends, was nominated, so you must have enjoyed the awards night.

Thom- Oh, I just recovered from it. We spent most of the night talking to Massive Attack and Tricky because they were at the tables nearby, and we got on with them really well. But there was a lot of booing that night that got edited out on the television. It made me feel pretty ashamed to be part of it.

Q- What were people booing about?

Thom- Everybody and everything. It was like a wedding that had got out of hand: everyone making wedding speeches and nobody wanting to listen, everybody dressed up and looking ridiculous.

Q- It sounds ghastly.

Thom- It was foul. I got into the music business thinking it was really radical, that it wasn't really a business at all, that it was a lot of people being artistic and creative. Not true, and it made me very depressed.

Q- I understand you have a degree in English literature from Cambridge.

Thom- It's from Exeter, which is not quite as top-notch. Colin Greenwood's the one who got the degree in English from Cambridge, fo which I'll be eternally jealous because he got in and I didn't. I did English literature and fine art.

Q- Does that have any relevance to writing music?

Thom- Sometimes it really hampers me because I'll start analyzing what I've written or I'll worry about the metre, but I think art college was helpful.

Q- Do you think you fit into the Oxbridge class in Britain?

Thom- Well, Colin does. He loves to go to all those dinners and wear bow ties. You've got to print that because he'll kill me.

Q- Punting along the rivers?

Thom- Yeah, he loves all that. In fact, his favourite thing is to have these dinners where everyone starts speaking in Latin and throwing food at each other. He loves all that.

Q- Britain's been under Conservative rule for, well, God know how long now. Has the music scene dealt with that?

Thom- Actually, I've not written about it because I've never though you could really write about it in a song. Britain's just been completely fucked over by the Tories, and I think that bands haven't wanted to write about it because there's nothing you can do about it. Music's just because escapism, and I can't really stomach it any longer. I want to try to redress that balance in the stuff we're writing now. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but it seems to be the only thing worth doing right now.

Q- Well, I hear you're going to build your own studio first.

Thom- Yeah, it's going in a huge fruit storage building we've bought. It's basically a huge metal box.

Q- Sounds somewhat less than inviting.

Thom- It doesn't have a toilet either. But don't worry, it's got Nintendo, so that's all you need.

Q- All right, I have to ask a few rock critic questions. Who are you listening to at the moment?

Thom- Captain Beefheart.

Q- Well, that's interesting. What are you getting out of that?

Thom- It's funny, it makes me laugh. And Zappa, as well, wow! I was up really late the other night and on TV they were showing this Zappa film. We were all thinking of learning to read music so we could play in 7/8....Do you know Lou Reed's "Berlin"?

Q- Depressing.

Thom- Yeah, that's about as bad as it gets, I think. You know when the children start crying, oh dear. What else? The Beastie Boys' "Ill Communication", good record. Brilliant. Oh, and Tortoise.

Q- Are you anxious about your latest tour?

Thom- I'm in a mad panic. At the moment I can't remember any of the words.

Q- Isn't that encouraging. Here's an odd question: do you own any pets?

Thom- My girlfriend's allergic to all fur, so we can't have anything except goldfish. We had some really exotic Oriental fish in this pond in our garden. Over Christmas, they died. It was down to me being completely vacant, because you have to keep a hole in the ice to keep them from suffocating. That was my only encounter ever with pets and it didn't work out very well.

Q- That's tragic.

Thom- I know. I thought so too. People look at me like I'm a bit weird when I start talking about it, but it really upset me.

Q- In general you don't seem to have a particularly cheerful outlook on life.

Thom- It's just that I'm surrounded by a world of grinning idiots and I don't think I want to be another one.

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