December 3, 2024 • 51 mins
Thom Yorke, Radiohead and Atoms for Peace frontman, admits that, even after over 25 years in the business, performing is “either wicked fun or really awful.” He talks with Alec about his pre-show ritual—"I stand on my head for a bit"—and how he and his bandmates have been able to stick together since they were teenagers. Originally aired April 1st, 2013
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here before we launch our next
season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I
thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives.
In nineteen ninety two, Radiohead released their stunning debut single
Creep When Youful. It was quiet yet explosive, even haunting,
(00:26):
and its refrain had a powerful hook.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I wish how special?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So fucking special? Radioheads frontman and principal songwriter Tom York
is my guest, and if it was his wish to
be special, the world granted it. York's band has become
a commercial and critical success, selling over thirty million albums.
(01:03):
Radiohead's music actively resists definition. Each new album explores a
different sound, delighting their followers and scooping up more fans
along the way. The New York Times called Radiohead rock's
(01:27):
most experimental top ten band, and this spirit of experimentation
isn't limited to their music. In two thousand and seven,
York and his bandmates released In Rainbows on their website.
First fans were invited to pay what they wanted for
the album. Radiohead may not have been the first to
thummets nose the music industrial complex, but they might be
(01:49):
the first to do so and sell out a major arena.
That said, Tom York hasn't necessarily been comfortable under the spotlight.
He complains about celebrity worship and I wasn't sure what
to expect.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Actually, I got you a health food snack, did you Yeah,
because someone told me you were like all vegetarian and that.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Tom Yorke has a new record out a mark. The
band calls themselves Adams for Peace. You don't do a
lot of press, were you doing? It was an on
an as needed basis.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, on a need to know basis, Yeah, yeah, kind of.
I kind of need to explain what I'm doing a
bit with the Adams for Peace thing, just a little
bit because it's something different and some vague effort to
explain myself occasionally I think is morally acceptable.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Tell us about the Adams for Peace.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, it's just it was. I did a record on
my own called The Eraser a few years ago.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Was that your first solo record?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yes, first time. I sort of worked on my own
with Nigel who when he produces Radiohead, and it came
out it was okay, people liked it a bit. A
couple of years after I suddenly thought I really want
to actually because it was all done, it was all programmed,
it was all computers and stuff, and I thought, actually,
I really I'm curious to know what it would be
(03:16):
like to actually get a band together to play this.
And it was an excuse to go on a jolly
to LA and hang out. And I emailed friends of
mine who I knew like the record. One was Flee
from the Chili Peppers. One was my friend Joey, who's
drummed with everybody's genius drummer from LA. And anyway, we
got it together and it turned into this thing became
(03:38):
really exciting, and we ended up calling the band Atoms
for Peace and making a record out of the excitement
of that. And it was all brand new to me
because I'd been in the same band since I was
seventeen sixteen.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
And when you do that, when you go into another
room with people, it's not so much assuming and you
can help me that you want to not play with
those guys anymore. You just want to play with different
people for a change.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It was a good. Yeah, it was a totally different process.
I mean, it's always fun if you know what you're
aiming at. If you know what the tunes are, you're
not trying to write them, you're just emulating what's already
been written. That makes it fun straight away, because it's
a different sort of creative process, So you're not struggling
around in the dark for a way into a piece
of music. You're figuring out how to strip it down
(04:30):
to its all essentials, especially if it's something's been written
on a computer, and then you have to humanly learn
how to play it. It brings in this quite interesting
thing with the feel of what you're playing. Anyway, it's
loads of different things, but it's a lot more fun
and a lot more relaxed if you're not trying to write,
you know, which is what also all the time what
we're trying to do with Radiohead.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
What's the first time or first experience you had with
using computers to create music?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
That was I think after we did Okay Computer I
finally in the late late nineties you could like go
on tour with the laptop and it was powerful enough
that you could record, edit, use synthesizers built into it
and it wouldn't crash and it was fairly stable. So
I first started getting into it then, And what I
(05:18):
thought was really interesting is when we were working on
Okay computer, I started using learning the software that we
were using the studio to edit. We were still mostly
working on tape old school, but I suddenly thought, well,
hang on a minute, if I can learn how all
this equipment works, I'll have a completely different way of
thinking about how to write. So I forced myself to
(05:41):
learn all this equipment and learn to use the laptop
because a lot of music I was into was being
made electronically anyway, and I kind of thought it would
be interesting to do it within the band, because you
know a band. Normally musicians don't fall into doing the
production side of it or building the tracks. They're like,
(06:04):
stay this side of the studio of fence with the
mics and let someone tell me. So I definitely was
much more into blurring that up.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Did Naj produce both your solo albums?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah he does. He does the lot and all of
the radio Head album, Yeah he does. Well.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
When you attribute that to having that kind of faith in.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Someone, for me, it's sort of you find someone you trust.
I mean not all the time, and we do argue
a lot, but to have someone who's like a sounding
board all the time. It makes everything so much more
fun because if you're if you're knocking out ideas, you
can't edit them and knock them out at the same time.
(06:45):
Like if you're on stage and you're trying to get
through your part or whatever, you have to have someone
out front saying, okay, that's not working. I mean I
do on my own a lot. I do work. You know,
you generate ideas, but all I then have is a
mountain ideas that gradually I then have to sit through
and it just takes so long. It's so much more
fun sharing it with someone.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
What did he think about your forays into computerized music?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Oh, he was into it. I did wonder when I
first started doing it, but he was into it because
he watched me doing it in such a different way
to him. I mean, I was like a kid being
given a hammer. I was just hammering away and stuff.
I didn't really know what I was doing, but he
was kind of fascinated about that, you know, and he'd
come and literally tidy up the mess down on the computer.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
What were other people who were other people that were
working in that in that area that you listened to,
who are making the now?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, then it was. I was obsessed with AFX twin
then and O Tekra. There was a lot of really
interesting things happening Britain. Then on this label called Warp
and it was it was a.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Funny Spells warp w arp, like the floor is warped, Yeah,
after the fun Yeah. And then I say, with your accent,
that could have been anyone in four wards when I said, on.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
This label called Warm Warm, Wall w Warp, Yeah, say
it like we say it here in the United States.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
War it's war country and Western record bit.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Your bottom down there, boy? So you were you is?
You were? You were obsessed with the music that was
on Warp Records.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Because it didn't have any guitars and I was having
a troubled relationship with my guitar at the time.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well not really. It's just like I ended up being
in a band signing this to this big record label,
and it's a band with big letters, so certain things
go with that. But yet when I was at college,
I was listening to a lot of other things, and
after a while it was like, oh, this is is
really annoying that I felt like we couldn't break out
(08:55):
of that. So I just started forcing us to break
out of that because it didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
You've been with those guys for how long now we.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Started when we're sixteen Radiohead, which is now I'm forty four,
so that's quite a while.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And some bands that have had tremendous longevity, obviously the
Rolling Stones are the premier example. They've changed partners over there,
like they were the New York Yankees. You know, there's
somebody else playing third base every four or five years. Yeah,
but you guys, it's the same cast of people all
this suff What do you attribute.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That to persistence? My great diplomatic skills.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Not but there must be times when they've I mean,
I'll never forget McCartney said to me even the Beatles
got tired of being the Beatles. Were the times you
guys sat there and looked at each other and said,
I think we're done.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I do that frequently, frequently. I mean, at least the
others two not as much. They just wait for me
to do it. But it changes.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
It's like, yeah, it's like to stick around.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I'm feeling it's coming up. I mean, you know, something
to do with the fact we haven't done any useful
for three weeks. It goes through these phases. You know,
we've grown up together. It's weird. I mean, So, we
just did a tour last year, right, and it was probably,
in theory, the scariest one we've ever done, because it
was lots of big gigs, which I normally am spending
(10:15):
my time trying to shy away from.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Why because you can't achieve technically in a large space
where you normally want.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
To exactly that you can't get across to people the
right way, I felt. So we did spend a lot
of time and effort coming up with like a stage
design which used screens in a certain way which made
it intimate, even though you know, some nights was like
thirty or forty thousand people trying to create some sort
of intimacy with that, and when it worked, it was insane.
(10:42):
It was because the upside of playing to that many
people is you have this really crazy collective energy that
you can tap into like a crowd, you know. Thing.
There's one show we did in Phoenix that sticks in
my mind where there was something about maybe that it
was in Phoenix and people don't get the opportunity. Those
(11:03):
sort of people don't get the opportunity to get together
that often or something. There was some sort of excitement
within the crowd that was so great to play with.
When we hit it musically, it felt like the whole room,
the whole of the building was moving. Honestly, we both
came off their you know, yeah, and it's bombed.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
I understand that not from my own experience, but from
seeing artists perform.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
You know, I often ask myself, why the hell would
you put yourself through this? Because it's very stressful. It's
a lot of pressure, and for me mentally, I just
build myself up to it in my head gradually and
it sounds really precious, but it messes with my head.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I want to get to that, but I want to
come around it and say, your music has such a
spiritual quality to it. There's a spiritual element to it,
and not a stated one. It just emanates a vibe.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
To me, it comes to me that yeah, but to me,
that comes off the audience. That's what I find. It's
something that's developed. It's not like we're not going into
this intending to do any of that. It just sort
of happens when when the waves go right, you know,
when the waves fall into place. Then you'll get to
the end of the song and you can feel, Okay,
(12:17):
we've done whatever it is. That was it.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
What's your preparation before you do a live show before
you go because in the studio it's obviously a whole
different animal.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Correct, Yeah, there's no preparation for the studio. Do you know?
It's bull in a china shop most of the time,
which is how it should be, I think.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And performing live, yeah, what's give it to me a
couple of hours before you go out there and you've
got to blow this thing out for all these people.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Just stone cold silence, basically almost meditative. Well, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I do that and focused.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I stand on my head for a bit and I
basically I'm completely on my own until five minutes before
we go on, and then we're all in the room together,
pacing up and down like wild animals, and then then
we're on. But when we first started doing big shows,
it was with my from Michael Stipe, and he does
the total opposite. He literally he'll be talking to you
(13:34):
and then someone taps in the shoulder and then they're on.
And I was like, how the hell do you do that? Man?
And I tried to do it like that, couldn't it?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And so I ended up going, did you get any
indication why Stipe could do that? There's a lot of
nice spiritual tones inside of r EM's music too.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, No, I don't know. I think what he used
to do was you'd stand there for the first two
tunes move. He was a sort of lightning conductor, and
he was just waiting for it to hit, and then
when it hit, he was off, but he would wait
and if it wasn't going to hit, he was still
there three or four tunes later, and waiting. He kind
(14:13):
of warmed up in front of everybody, gauging it all,
whereas I can't do that because I have to sort
of be clear of everything before, you know whatever. I
need to be completely empty.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
We're taking a break, stay with us.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I started playing guitar when I was seven. I sat
down and said I was going to be Brian May
and not a bad thing to be. Yeah, And then
I tried to do I read like when I was
ten or something. I read that he'd built his first
guitar himself, which is the one he still plays. So
I tried to do that, but my efforts was and.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Then said she were not Brian may in s handcrafting
the guitar, and I.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Had to cheat with the neck on the guitar I
found in old someone a neighbor gave me a neck
of an electric guitar. That's great, Okay, that's good. But
you know I was ten or eleven, so I was
trying to like bolt it to get to this other
piece of wood that I'd cut out, and it was
just a disaster. But it kind of worked, but it
was ugly.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Was your family musical?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Not really?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
No.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
The only one that sticks out is apparently my great grandmother.
She'd get really hammered and then stay up playing her
pump organ thing downstairs all night and keep the family up.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You were around, did you witness that?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I met her once and she was kind of she
wore black and was quite scary when I was really tiny.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
But neither of your parents were artists musicians?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
When the guitar came into your life when or seven,
Brian may or, no, was it music itself? And were
you moved by music itself? Or was it like many
people when they're very young? Was it rock stardom? Was never?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Then? It was?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
It was you weren't running around your bedroom imitating Jagger
and you thought like you.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And my whole thing was we didn't have any sound
system in the house. We had nothing, no high fi
nothing except for in my dad's car and had a
tight player in it. So I went and would sit
for hours. I would sit for hours, and you know,
it was the sound of Brian May's guitar. Actually, it's
(16:40):
one of those funny things where you know, when you
turned something up and you're in a very controlled, loud environment,
just that sound was just, you know, nothing else was that.
When you're that small and you've never I've never really
heard music particularly at all up until that point. You know,
(17:01):
it's funny. It's got a weird thing. But I mean,
lots of kids of that age, you know, their parents
didn't really have high fires or anything as such. The
only guy I did know who had a high fight
down the road only played abbat, which I thought was
worse than not having one. But that was me somehow.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Those and then and then the guitar, and you're trying
to fashion your own guitar by the time you were eleven,
And then when you take another step toward deepening your
commitment how old are you when you form the band sixteen?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I did have a band when I was eleven, But
what's an eleven year old band sound like? Yeah? No,
it were not very good at all, but it was.
It was very exciting, like going around to a friend's
house is setting up and jamming, and all our mates
would come and hang out and girls, which I thought,
this is interesting. Yes, as puberty hit, but that sort
(17:55):
of fell to bits because I kept fighting with the drummer.
And then when I was six, then I was thinking, well, okay,
I need to get this together really and just went
around the school sort of choosing people.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So you went around picking people.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I got it because he was dressed like Morrissey and
he had some cool socks, and I saw he'd had
a guitar. I had no idea whether he could play
or not. I didn't really care. I got Colin because
I knew Colin could play very well, and I needed
a bass player. He could play very well, but he
had never played bass before. And his brother Johnny was
this mythical musical prodigy. So wroped him in. And then
(18:32):
Phil was the only drummer we knew anyway, So and
and he had a house down the road that we
could rehearse him.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And you're all and you lived where you grew up
were well, this.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Was at Abingdon School in near Oxford.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
And then when you form Radiohead when you're.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Sixteen, basically, yeah, we started sort of writing, doing demos
and messing about and it was, you know, it was
quite interesting straight away that it was quite I think
because Field had quite a lot of experience. He was
a bit older and he'd had his own band, so
he knew how to put things together a bit. And
(19:07):
in fact we used to go and do demos in
his sister's bedroom, like right from the beginning, which which
was great. I mean, there's nothing better than just starting
off by just trying to write demos from scratch, even
though you can't really play, even though you don't know
each other. That's where you start, you know. It's kind
of a nice way to figure out where you're about.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
What do you think you do best? You lead a band,
you well, you play guitar, you write music, you produce music,
you do and you're sing. What do you think your
greatest strength is? If you had to pick one.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I don't know what I'm doing. I like the fact
that I still don't know what I'm doing, I think, well,
not honestly, I can't go. I'll go through whole phases
of months where i'n't got a clue. I regularly lose
complete confidence in what I'm doing. Why do you think
that is? Umm, because I have the same condition. Why
(20:07):
partly because I think I don't quite understand how it
happens after the fact, When.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
When what happens when the appreciation comes.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
To you know, when you're piecing something together right, things
will fall into place how you make it. Yeah, I mean,
in some ways, the nicest bit about the creative thing,
or nicest bit about recording and writing, is this sort
of weird limbo where you in between scratching away scratching away,
nothing really happening, nothing really happening, and then something wants
(20:40):
to be built and starts to get built. You just
have to let it happen. And then it gets to
the end and you and you look at it a
few months later and go, huh that it's sort of
weird amnesia that goes with it. Something will happen, one
little sound goes off, and you go, well, that's really
nice for me. When I was at school. I didn't
(21:02):
get on with the school system at all. I see it,
and my son the same, that sort of the mechanics
of how a school operates and how you're supposed to
blend in or whatever. So I hid in the music
stroke art department and had a great time there and
discovered that actually that's what I wanted to do. Straight away,
(21:23):
the heads of both schools just saw what I was
up there.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Is this the teacher that you often credit with you
or yeah, what was the teacher's.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Name, Terry James, But it was him and my art
teacher as well. Actually it was like someone sort of
takes you under their wing and say, well, you know what,
you're actually quite good at that mentoring.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Is it a very critical thing in this business?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, because it's it's enough at that age, it's enough
to just get a little push and then okay.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Or does someone push you in a different direction?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, well yeah, that would be bad. Yeah, how about
you go to the other I think my father used
to think I used to get too advertising, which is
like really brilliant. Yeah, I'd really be good at that.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Other people, well, one thing you're good at is avoiding.
My original question, which was what do you think you're
best at? And let's try to choose if you can,
if you may, if you don't mind, confine yourself to
the list, I provide, what do you think you're best at?
This is multiple choice guitar band, kind of paternal figure, songwriting, producing, singing.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I guess singing.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Okay, I'm glad you chose that one. I was driving,
I was I think when I popped the words singing
the way I did, I was trying to do or singing.
What was singing to you? How did your singing evolve
where you arrived, at where you are now, where most
people say you have one of the most evocative singing
voices in all of music.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Today, melancholy to the point of well, people who.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Loved who loved radio, they crave their music, and they
crave particularly you were singing.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Well, basically I went to music. I went to a
few singing lessons, but that was basically just so I
could literally breathe. Right, you know, my favorite singers like Bjork.
When I watched Byork sing, I've been lucky enough to
(23:25):
sort of sing with her and watch you do it.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And I was gonna say, you're one of the few
people going to use that phrase when I watched B.
York sing, Yeah, most of us say, well, when I
listened to B.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yorky and it's in here, it's right here, they say,
you know, with with with in yoga and stuff that
whatever it is, can't remember that that spot at the
top of the forehead that you really Most singers like
Neil Young's the same. He sings into this spot in
his head and what he's singing he's already heard. Do
(23:58):
you know what I mean, He's hearing it come out.
The same with Buork when she's singing, she's singing what
she's hearing, So there's no force. It's a force in itself.
It took me a while to get that, you know,
(24:18):
even when we were on tour with Iram back when
we're doing the Benz in ninety six or whatever it was.
I was still trying to figure it out. Then watching
Michael and wanting to sound like Michael, but I couldn't,
you know, because my voice is in a different tone
completely and so on. But what I did learn, what
(24:40):
you know, watching him, was again that thing of like
watching someone who their voices in sort of command of
them rather than the other way. Around. Yeah, but it's
very natural. But it takes a long time for that
to become natural. I think, like any singer, it takes
a long time to find that thing and it keeps
(25:03):
changing to me how I sing now, or to me
it feels different to a few years ago. Why it
just does it? Just do it? Well, Yeah, there's probably
some physical element to it, but also just where you're at,
you know, because singing is nothing but like probably like acting,
sing is nothing but being in a moment.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
That's it, and where you're at.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, when you do like when I used to be
like you know, when when you're trying to singing or whatever, chrele,
I remember sort of okay, computer, I still had this
thing like, well, I need to be a little bit
half cut when i'm you know, I need to do
something or other beforehand. So I thought I'm in the
right space, man, where it's all bollocks because basically you've
(25:48):
just got to learn to be there with it. When
you do it, you're not trying to prove anything. You're
not trying to get anywhere, you're not trying to achieve anything.
You're not trying to get this emotion across. You're not
in this space trying to get this space across. You're
not trying to get this mindset across or anything. You're
just letting it happen.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
When you do this now, when you live inside your
life now, whether you're performing live or you're producing and
recording music, do you feel different now that you're older?
I mean, the chasm between when you're sixteen when you're
forty three is extraordinary, isn't it. It's just mind bending?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Do you feel like you're sick of it and you
want to be done with it?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah? You do sometimes, but not it's never really. The
music is everything else, you know, primarily what we'll just
stresses of life. Whatever. You know, something's good.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
So your life is not like I mean a lot
of people think they think that successful artists, whether it
just walk across this bed of rose petals all day,
the greatest torment of our life is do we go
to Paris on spring break or Anguilla? My god, I
can't I can't answer. It is a problem. It is
a problem, but it's not we're supposed to say that.
(27:32):
But what I'm saying is is that they think that, like,
do you ever sit there? You're very active socially. Yes,
I guess you care. You've made some comments about world affairs.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I don't care about the world.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, you care about what's going on. If I said
to you that, I snapped my fingers and you go
back to having a very normal life and you're not
you at all? What everything that goes with it, and
the rest of the world is elevated and the rest
of the world gets better. Things you care about. Think
of an issue you care and I say to you, Tom,
yorke Tom, your Tom. You go back and the world
(28:05):
gets better, would you make that change.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
To find better?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
It's a tricky question, but you do. It's not an
either or, But you do care about other things. Is
there an issue that you are embracing now? Is there
something you're involved with that or where I'm going?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I well, in my slack asked fashion, I was helping
Greenpeace do this thing, which was trying to stop drilling
in the Arctic. But it sounds like it's kind of
working because the company seemed to be pulling out because
they can't. Yeah, that's right. I don't think that's entirely
down to us, but I think it definitely helped that
we were making their life extremely difficult everywhere they turned.
(28:41):
But challenge now is to turn the Arctic into a reserve,
so it can't happen because what that was going to
do is create this gold rush, you know, or rush
up there, which was just going to be insane. And
this at the same time where the ice is melting. Basically,
they only started considering it was a possibility because the
eyes was melting. They thought, Okay, great, maybe got a
(29:02):
better chance for drilling, which is like.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
A global global less oil to him, it means more well.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah, so I was kind of stuck in that for
a while because, yeah, the to me, the irony of
it was too much. I don't know where I'll go next.
I don't I find it very stressful. I did get involved.
A few years ago. We did this thing in Britain,
the first Climate Change Act, which meant the government is
committed to reducing CO two emissions twenty fifty by ninety percent.
(29:33):
And now lots of countries have got it, but it
was the first one and the government didn't want to
do it. Blair didn't want to do it. But we
found this interesting loophole and got thousands of people to
send letters in and said at the bottom of the
letter to the at the MP police, can you pass
this on to Blair? Right? And apparently they were obliged
to pass on these letters. So Blair was literally getting
(29:54):
thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of letters,
which doesn't normally happen. And he did pass the law
after much arguing and me refusing to meet him because
it was during the Iraq War and all sorts of
critical of Yeah, well, any normal human being would be anyway.
I was very glad I did it, and the people
(30:16):
I was working for at the time it was with
Friends of the Earth, and it was really inspiring and
I became really good friends with the guy who's running
Friends of the Earth at the time, Tony Juniper, who
now works with Prince Charles. And it was a great period.
But I just burnt me out getting that close to politics.
The most fascinating figure that we work with was the
(30:38):
lobbyist that we had, our one lobbyist, so like we
went into this Port Colis House in Britain. You probably
have the equivalent here. I don't know what it's called,
but Port Cullis House was built for the lobbyists. It
was built for special interests to go and sit with
a cup of coffee, round table about this size and
wait for MPs to go past colin of them, sit
(31:01):
them down and lobby them in.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Bigit Congress the Capitol building.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Anyway, I found it completely fascinating, you know, because it's
there's hundreds of these people walking around, and I'm like,
none of them are lobbying for us, except when you
maybe possibly could argue that our one mate, Friends of
the Earth, who was like technically, you know, maybe speaking
for the people a little bit. But basically they were
all special interest and they had the ear of government.
(31:29):
And I just thought, hang on, hang on a minute,
how did this happen? Anyway? Where where were we a
minute ago?
Speaker 1 (31:35):
I know where I want to go?
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Okay, go on and go there.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Then your children, Oh no, no, that's too much for
a jump.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Hang on where we Let's finish with this first? H
Then your children. I'm lost.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Now do your children know who you are and what
you do?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, they're used to it. They're used to people coming
up and saying hello. But most of the time it's
very friendly and that's normal. That's their normal. That's what
they've grown up and how old are they? Twelve and seven?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
So one seven the age that you decided you wanted
to be Brian may The's twelve and by then he's
he he would already have made his guitar with that
neck that was eleven. I think you said to the
other kids, where are they at?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Basically, my son is a great drummer, but I don't
know if you want to do that forever or not.
He's like not bothered really, which is cool. You know,
he just and he comes and hangs out with me
when I'm working in my studio. We just hang out.
You know, we're friends. But I don't think you know
that there's a burning ambition to be musicians or anything. Really,
even though he's really good, he's for pleasure. I mean
(32:41):
at that age that's good, right. His fatherhood affected your work, yes,
but not really that you have the obvious things where
you would go out on the road more if you
didn't have children. Yep, absolutely, but that's not necessarily a
(33:03):
bad thing at all. You know, being on their road
is it's a it's not a great necessary it's it's
you don't want to do it all your life. You
get a little bit on it gets a little unhealthy
quite quickly mentally, if not physically.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Has it been difficult for you mentally.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Uh, it can be different. It means it's it's wicked
fun a bit too much. It's either wicked fun or
really awful, like when you're sick. Then it gets really
it's a roll bumber man.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Have to get out there.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, try to sing your way through the notes that
you can't find because you're so sick or whatever. That's
really super stressful. But you know, it is a massive
buzz and there's no denying it. It's great.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
But Tom Yorke is the first to admit that it
takes work to keep it fun in the studio and
on tour.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
It's very difficult to play with people you don't if
there's problems between you, for example, if the issues come up,
I mean, I'm very much I'm a librin and I
need to sort it out. I can't have stuff hanging around,
you know, because it gets in the way.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
More in a minute with Tom Yorke, this is Alec
Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Given the
level of success that Radiohead has reached, I did have
certain expectations of Tom's lifestyle. I mean, I'm assuming you're
(34:39):
in a world where that your phone must have rang it.
Maybe it stopped because you kept saying no. But maybe
everybody's like, you know, Bonno wants to pick you up
tomorrow and fly you to Saint Bart's.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Yeah, that never appealed. I don't hang out with people
because they are who they are, necessarily unless I'm a
big admirer of them, Like I mean, I stalked ed
Norton for ages until eventually he gave it because I'm
a big admirer of him. I think it's brilliant. So
I hang out with him a bit occasionally. And Flea.
I've always really admired Flea anyway, so even before it
(35:15):
became an issue of sort of playing with.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
No tangentially related to that. As you've gotten older and
you look around the musical landscape, what you see, does
it appeal to you? Meaning of the music that's popular music,
I mean, what's selling now the most successfully. Have you
moved into a different place with that or do you
admire a lot of what's being done.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Is in the mainstream. In the mainstream, there's nothing in
the mainstream. The mainstream is just avoid you know, to me,
I mean, what's weird about putting a record out? Now?
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Really?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And this is not like sour grapes at all. It's
just the fact the volume, literally the sheer volume stuff
that gets put out. It's like this huge fucking waterfall
and you're just thrown your pebble in and it carries
on down the waterfall. That's that, right, Okay. Next, basically,
you know, like in this country the radio is tied
up and people don't really listen to radio in the
(36:08):
same way. It's it's music's going through a weird time
because on the one hand, as ever, there's always really
exciting music being made. It's never not being made. It's
a question of whether you're going to get to hear
it or not. And I mean I kind of I
kind of knew the game was up a few years
(36:28):
ago when one of our sort of team of people
came in saying Nokia wanted to offer you millions of
pounds because they want content for their phones. And this
is like in two thousand, I don't know, early two thousands,
and you're like content, what you know, content? What you
mean music?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yes? Okay? Content? Maybe that? Yes? Yeah, just could be music. Stuff. Yeah,
stuff could be got snoring.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Have you got some stuff? You know, and you're like, oh, okay,
And I think, really my problem with it is it's
like it's now like something to fill up the hardware with,
you know, the music itself has become secondary to that,
which is a weird thing to me. It's like, and
I think that will change because there's only so many
different permutations of the same hardware you can make before
people go, well, actually, I have an iPod now, so thanks.
(37:19):
So I think things will change, and I think the
radio will change, and sooner the better, because no matter
what way you look at it, the most pleasurable experiences
you ever have is like when something's played to you
you don't know. We'll like going around to friend's house
and they'll stick a tune on you, Like what the
hell is there? You know, which is what it's about.
(37:39):
You know. That's why we're like going into a store
when I was a kid, like and the new Smith's
records come out, and like and I'm going up to
the guy. I think that's like he's really cool, like
the indie store in town, and just talking to him
about music for twenty minutes, you know, and you know you.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Share now everywhere you go. Music is everywhere.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's everywhere, but it's not nice. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
It's content.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Ye, content is king that bullshit will change, And when
it does, then I think we'll have a resurgence. The
underbelly will come back overbelly and then well.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
If it's middle age, it'll be overbelly. Well you have
a ways to go there.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I'm gonna be taking some slimming pill.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, but we know in the way that you talked
about this pebble in the borderfall and content and music marketing. Now,
so if that changes, certainly, which it has, does your
willingness to release your music into that world change? I mean, like,
for example, an obvious example, maybe too obvious, is you
don't want to play Creep anymore. Now do you sit
there and say, like, if the Sultan of Brunei called
(38:39):
you up and said, I want you to come to
Brunei and we give you a million pounds, just play Creep.
I would play Creep and you can go home.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
I would say to the Sulting of Brunei, why do
you have that house near me that you never use?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
I can just meet you down the block.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
I mean, come on, it's an empty house, man, it
must be worse whatever. That's what I'd say, trillion and
I'd say no, but I'm up.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
He will you retire a song that way? Why do
you do that?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well? I don't not necessarily retire it. I mean I
don't recognize it as me, which is kind of quite
interesting when I expecting it, just that voice, I don't
even recognize that. It's kind of odd. Whatever you want,
you're so fucking special. But then I remember hearing I
(39:46):
remember hearing Lou read like on some radio station in
the Dublin years and years ago, and they were asking
inevitably about the underground and they said, yeah, or sometimes
it comes on. I'm like, oh, this is cool. What's this?
And then I realized it's about an underground? Wow? Yeah,
I kind of know what he means to sort of
you get to the point where like, what's that? Like?
Speaker 1 (40:07):
I sounds pretty good.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Blood.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
So you're forty three years old, forty four, forty four
years old, but it's just our professional courtesy that we
shave a year off of all of our already, Yeah,
all of them. You're in the now and you're in
the here, what have you. And I'm not saying that glibly,
and you're know what I'm saying, but you're not somebody
who like Mick Jagger, for example, Like I wonder if
Mick Jagger is going to hit a day, like does
(40:39):
it happen in a day? Like as Mick Jagger in
bed one day and he picks it the phoney, He's like,
you know, I just can't do it anymore. I can't
get out of this bed. I can't do another fucking
show again. And it's over. Like do you think of
other things? I think all the time of the next
thing I'm gonna do. Yeah, the next thing. You don't
(41:01):
have to tell us what it is, but you.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Or no, I mean, it would end if something happened
to my voice. I don't know. Certain things could make
it physically stop, and it will stop at some point,
something will happen. But for me, yeah, I'm always hearing
different things. There's always half finished things, which you ask
(41:26):
poor old Nigel he knows about that. There's always a
mountain of half stuff. I want to get into stuff
I've started stuff I want to you know. But I
also think it's good to sort of take breaks because
I've gone straight from this radio tour last year, which
was a really heavy mother but really good fun, straight
into doing sort of atoms for stuff and not really
(41:48):
had a break. And so breakers do a breakers do
because what I've found with a breaker can be an
incredibly exciting thing with that thing of like you just
all the stuff you want to do, but you just
force yourself not just force yourself to wait and get
back into just time and space and yeah, not being
(42:09):
in music all the time, I think, because it's like anything,
you start to go in small circles, so you've got
to stop when that happens.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I've had to practice that now. I mean, I got
married again and my wife is pregnant and I'm going
to have a kid, and I really sat and thought
about that way that I want to have a more
ordinary and more normal handling of my emotions. I think
the best way to put it is what people in
my business say, which is would you rather live it
(42:38):
in real life or words you rather play it on screen?
And I'm thinking I want to walk away from it
because I'd rather live it in real life now than
play it on screen.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
I think with what I do is slightly different because
what I do it Actually, unless you're literally spending, unless
you are just literally working too hard, it's a regenerative thing.
I find that I'm well. I mean, my family, my
friends know that I'm a nicer person if I'm working
(43:06):
and I'm into what I'm doing than if I stop.
There is a period where I'm fairly unbearable if I
do stop too long, Yeah, for too long time probably, Yeah,
there's a threshold. But like, if you want to shift
right with your work, if you want to shift, if
you're writing, if you're being creative at all, you kind
(43:28):
of have to stop to make that shift because if
you just I'm constantly creating, I've got this mounting of
brilliant ideas. You're making the basic mistake that you're assuming
all your ideas are brilliant, where in fact, the more
you do they're probably the more it kind of your
thing in reverse, because actually, I need to go and
(43:50):
do normal shit. I need to. I can't write unless
I have a period where restored. Well no it's not restored,
just just reset. I'm like just normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Speaking of normal, do you have siblings? Yeah, do you
have a brother, What does he do?
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Russian politics and stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
He teaches.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
No, he's the mayor of all what do you mean
all sorts of ship investigations on people? He studied Russian
Oxford and then went into various.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Are your parents all there? What do your I would
love people in your business? Above all? What are your
parents and your brother make of you? Going from being
Tom York Tom to becoming Tom York.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Well, my brother was in a band of his own
for a while as well, so he has a slightly
like he can see what it is from another point
of view. What do my parents think? I don't know.
They like when I was a kid, they didn't approve.
Now that I'm happy, Why do you go into advertising? Yes? Well,
you know it was like fair enough. I was pissed
off with them at the time, but you know it's
(45:05):
kind of what that's what you do, isn't it. I mean,
well to everybody's parents.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Right when I left a pre law program and I
was destined to go to law school and I went
into the acting program, my mother was She literally screamed
at me out.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
My mom was very upset when I when I chose
to go to art college because she'd been to art
college and she says, it's complete waste of time, doesn't mother.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
But when it became successful with my business, mother was like,
I'm so proud of them. Oh my god, this is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, it's kind of bonkers, like seeing them backstage at
a really big show that will come to a big
show and there's all sorts of shit came off with
my mates. They're doing whatever, you know, and there's my
mom and I going that was fun, corny beer or whatever.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
When you do step away from it, what are their
art are you? Are you interested in art? Photography?
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Well, my mate theater film, my mate Stanley don Wood
who I went to art college with, who does all
our art work with. I mean, I do it with
him kind of thing. We always have these lovely plans
about we want to go and live in Berlin for
a month and just paint and get in trouble and
things like that. We call ourselves the Sunday Painters and
we go on bad painting trips. We did one where
(46:16):
people well they're bad painting trips because I'm involved there
was one of my favorite ones was we went on
the moors down in Cornwall. Do you know what I
mean by the moors and Dartmore basically, which is very
very very bleak, but really beautiful. We were in the
stone Circle, drove part of the way, walked the rest
away with these big canvases and paints. But we only
(46:40):
we discovered we only had purple and blue and yellow,
so we thought, well, okay, we'll use that, and we
painted landscape all afternoon. But they were purple and blue
and yellow. Some poor women I remember coming like late afternoon,
coming and ask us, asking us for directions. We're both
sitting there, you know, canvases up like this, all huddled
(47:00):
up with the hoods on, you know, just in this,
and this ball woman comes up, asks for asks, directions
somewhere rather and then looks at the paintings. That just
wanders off, like.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Have another career. I hope you're not counting on.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
It was like, didn't think the purple is working.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
It was like me being in Italy and this beautiful
couple they were like late, they were older, and the
men walked up to me in a camera and he said,
schools a schooser is a photo and he's pointing to me,
and his wife is triangularly and I go oh, and
I put my arm around his wife to take a photo.
He goes, no, no, you photo of you? Take the
photo the mountain in the background. I was like, oh god,
(47:45):
bless Yeah, they don't know who I am. I should
move here, I should move here. You mentioned someone gave
you that push his mentorship in your career. Do people
come to you and do you give them a push
a little bit? I mean, you must have a lot
of people in the music world, young people who look
(48:05):
up to you.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
One of the best buzzes really is that thing where
someone comes up who's new and they're really into you know,
I'm really into what they're doing. It's really fascinating and
it's really totally new to me. But yet the occasions
when they yeah, and You're like, how could you? How
could you feel off me? I don't see any of
(48:28):
my stuff, but they see it and I'm like, Wow,
that's so cool, especially when it's like like it's in
hip hop, like really you know people within hip hop
who are into Radiohead. I'm like, I find that so
fascinating because i mean, obviously I'm massively into hip hop,
and we we use hip hop as a reference point
and the way we build tracks and stuff. But but really, wow,
(48:51):
that's bonkers. Obviously that's one of the really good bits.
But it's not really mental ship. It's just people who
admire good at their ship, you know.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
And when it happens, it happens. How does success make
you feel?
Speaker 2 (49:09):
How does it make me feel? Something which I think
is well, has it make me feel? It's always been
a little bit far away from me, And the only
time it sort of makes sense is when we play
(49:29):
in front of people, you know, and the rest of
the times like, well, it's it's just it's who I've
been for so long. I can't tell you because it's
just that's what it is. And I think I've probably
been doing it more than I haven't in my life
in terms of years, in terms of time. So most
(49:49):
of the time I don't really notice and people come
up and I go, well, it's nice, you know, thanks
very much, And it's not like I'm not grateful. I'm
just I just don't notice. And then sometimes some thing
will whack you over the head and you go, BlimE me,
things like doing the first time we did Saturday in life,
for example, and you go, really, people give a shit,
because sometimes you can't you don't know you don't know
(50:12):
you've got on the inside. You can't see it. And
also you spent so long running away from it, and
I don't feel like I run away from it now
because there's nowhere to run.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
To run.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
And also it is like, yeah, I'm really grateful for
I'm it's very incredibly lucky.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
There's a very good point. There's nowhere to run and
still do it.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, I mean, I just think I'm well Jammy. As
we take it's just really jammy, especially in the US,
you know, like people really give a shit, and it's like, well,
that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I guess I have one more question, was what does
well Jammy mean.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I don't know, really, you don't know Jammy is like
you're so Jammy, like you just I'm dating myself. No, no, no,
it's a total floke, man, it's not really. You're just lucky.
I mean, I'm British, right, so I assume I'm just lucky.
There's no skin involved. I'm Jammy goes on.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
This is from Tom Yorke's most recent album, Amok. He'll
be touring in support of the album later this year.
Find out more on our website Here's the Thing dot Org.
This is Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing comes from w
(51:41):
NYC Radio
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here before we launch our next
season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I
thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives.
In nineteen ninety two, Radiohead released their stunning debut single
Creep When Youful. It was quiet yet explosive, even haunting,
(00:26):
and its refrain had a powerful hook.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I wish how special?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So fucking special? Radioheads frontman and principal songwriter Tom York
is my guest, and if it was his wish to
be special, the world granted it. York's band has become
a commercial and critical success, selling over thirty million albums.
(01:03):
Radiohead's music actively resists definition. Each new album explores a
different sound, delighting their followers and scooping up more fans
along the way. The New York Times called Radiohead rock's
(01:27):
most experimental top ten band, and this spirit of experimentation
isn't limited to their music. In two thousand and seven,
York and his bandmates released In Rainbows on their website.
First fans were invited to pay what they wanted for
the album. Radiohead may not have been the first to
thummets nose the music industrial complex, but they might be
(01:49):
the first to do so and sell out a major arena.
That said, Tom York hasn't necessarily been comfortable under the spotlight.
He complains about celebrity worship and I wasn't sure what
to expect.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Actually, I got you a health food snack, did you Yeah,
because someone told me you were like all vegetarian and that.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Tom Yorke has a new record out a mark. The
band calls themselves Adams for Peace. You don't do a
lot of press, were you doing? It was an on
an as needed basis.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, on a need to know basis, Yeah, yeah, kind of.
I kind of need to explain what I'm doing a
bit with the Adams for Peace thing, just a little
bit because it's something different and some vague effort to
explain myself occasionally I think is morally acceptable.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Tell us about the Adams for Peace.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, it's just it was. I did a record on
my own called The Eraser a few years ago.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Was that your first solo record?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yes, first time. I sort of worked on my own
with Nigel who when he produces Radiohead, and it came
out it was okay, people liked it a bit. A
couple of years after I suddenly thought I really want
to actually because it was all done, it was all programmed,
it was all computers and stuff, and I thought, actually,
I really I'm curious to know what it would be
(03:16):
like to actually get a band together to play this.
And it was an excuse to go on a jolly
to LA and hang out. And I emailed friends of
mine who I knew like the record. One was Flee
from the Chili Peppers. One was my friend Joey, who's
drummed with everybody's genius drummer from LA. And anyway, we
got it together and it turned into this thing became
(03:38):
really exciting, and we ended up calling the band Atoms
for Peace and making a record out of the excitement
of that. And it was all brand new to me
because I'd been in the same band since I was
seventeen sixteen.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
And when you do that, when you go into another
room with people, it's not so much assuming and you
can help me that you want to not play with
those guys anymore. You just want to play with different
people for a change.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It was a good. Yeah, it was a totally different process.
I mean, it's always fun if you know what you're
aiming at. If you know what the tunes are, you're
not trying to write them, you're just emulating what's already
been written. That makes it fun straight away, because it's
a different sort of creative process, So you're not struggling
around in the dark for a way into a piece
of music. You're figuring out how to strip it down
(04:30):
to its all essentials, especially if it's something's been written
on a computer, and then you have to humanly learn
how to play it. It brings in this quite interesting
thing with the feel of what you're playing. Anyway, it's
loads of different things, but it's a lot more fun
and a lot more relaxed if you're not trying to write,
you know, which is what also all the time what
we're trying to do with Radiohead.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
What's the first time or first experience you had with
using computers to create music?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
That was I think after we did Okay Computer I
finally in the late late nineties you could like go
on tour with the laptop and it was powerful enough
that you could record, edit, use synthesizers built into it
and it wouldn't crash and it was fairly stable. So
I first started getting into it then, And what I
(05:18):
thought was really interesting is when we were working on
Okay computer, I started using learning the software that we
were using the studio to edit. We were still mostly
working on tape old school, but I suddenly thought, well,
hang on a minute, if I can learn how all
this equipment works, I'll have a completely different way of
thinking about how to write. So I forced myself to
(05:41):
learn all this equipment and learn to use the laptop
because a lot of music I was into was being
made electronically anyway, and I kind of thought it would
be interesting to do it within the band, because you
know a band. Normally musicians don't fall into doing the
production side of it or building the tracks. They're like,
(06:04):
stay this side of the studio of fence with the
mics and let someone tell me. So I definitely was
much more into blurring that up.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Did Naj produce both your solo albums?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah he does. He does the lot and all of
the radio Head album, Yeah he does. Well.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
When you attribute that to having that kind of faith in.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Someone, for me, it's sort of you find someone you trust.
I mean not all the time, and we do argue
a lot, but to have someone who's like a sounding
board all the time. It makes everything so much more
fun because if you're if you're knocking out ideas, you
can't edit them and knock them out at the same time.
(06:45):
Like if you're on stage and you're trying to get
through your part or whatever, you have to have someone
out front saying, okay, that's not working. I mean I
do on my own a lot. I do work. You know,
you generate ideas, but all I then have is a
mountain ideas that gradually I then have to sit through
and it just takes so long. It's so much more
fun sharing it with someone.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
What did he think about your forays into computerized music?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Oh, he was into it. I did wonder when I
first started doing it, but he was into it because
he watched me doing it in such a different way
to him. I mean, I was like a kid being
given a hammer. I was just hammering away and stuff.
I didn't really know what I was doing, but he
was kind of fascinated about that, you know, and he'd
come and literally tidy up the mess down on the computer.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
What were other people who were other people that were
working in that in that area that you listened to,
who are making the now?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, then it was. I was obsessed with AFX twin
then and O Tekra. There was a lot of really
interesting things happening Britain. Then on this label called Warp
and it was it was a.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Funny Spells warp w arp, like the floor is warped, Yeah,
after the fun Yeah. And then I say, with your accent,
that could have been anyone in four wards when I said, on.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
This label called Warm Warm, Wall w Warp, Yeah, say
it like we say it here in the United States.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
War it's war country and Western record bit.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Your bottom down there, boy? So you were you is?
You were? You were obsessed with the music that was
on Warp Records.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Because it didn't have any guitars and I was having
a troubled relationship with my guitar at the time.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well not really. It's just like I ended up being
in a band signing this to this big record label,
and it's a band with big letters, so certain things
go with that. But yet when I was at college,
I was listening to a lot of other things, and
after a while it was like, oh, this is is
really annoying that I felt like we couldn't break out
(08:55):
of that. So I just started forcing us to break
out of that because it didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
You've been with those guys for how long now we.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Started when we're sixteen Radiohead, which is now I'm forty four,
so that's quite a while.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And some bands that have had tremendous longevity, obviously the
Rolling Stones are the premier example. They've changed partners over there,
like they were the New York Yankees. You know, there's
somebody else playing third base every four or five years. Yeah,
but you guys, it's the same cast of people all
this suff What do you attribute.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That to persistence? My great diplomatic skills.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Not but there must be times when they've I mean,
I'll never forget McCartney said to me even the Beatles
got tired of being the Beatles. Were the times you
guys sat there and looked at each other and said,
I think we're done.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I do that frequently, frequently. I mean, at least the
others two not as much. They just wait for me
to do it. But it changes.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
It's like, yeah, it's like to stick around.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I'm feeling it's coming up. I mean, you know, something
to do with the fact we haven't done any useful
for three weeks. It goes through these phases. You know,
we've grown up together. It's weird. I mean, So, we
just did a tour last year, right, and it was probably,
in theory, the scariest one we've ever done, because it
was lots of big gigs, which I normally am spending
(10:15):
my time trying to shy away from.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Why because you can't achieve technically in a large space
where you normally want.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
To exactly that you can't get across to people the
right way, I felt. So we did spend a lot
of time and effort coming up with like a stage
design which used screens in a certain way which made
it intimate, even though you know, some nights was like
thirty or forty thousand people trying to create some sort
of intimacy with that, and when it worked, it was insane.
(10:42):
It was because the upside of playing to that many
people is you have this really crazy collective energy that
you can tap into like a crowd, you know. Thing.
There's one show we did in Phoenix that sticks in
my mind where there was something about maybe that it
was in Phoenix and people don't get the opportunity. Those
(11:03):
sort of people don't get the opportunity to get together
that often or something. There was some sort of excitement
within the crowd that was so great to play with.
When we hit it musically, it felt like the whole room,
the whole of the building was moving. Honestly, we both
came off their you know, yeah, and it's bombed.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
I understand that not from my own experience, but from
seeing artists perform.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
You know, I often ask myself, why the hell would
you put yourself through this? Because it's very stressful. It's
a lot of pressure, and for me mentally, I just
build myself up to it in my head gradually and
it sounds really precious, but it messes with my head.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I want to get to that, but I want to
come around it and say, your music has such a
spiritual quality to it. There's a spiritual element to it,
and not a stated one. It just emanates a vibe.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
To me, it comes to me that yeah, but to me,
that comes off the audience. That's what I find. It's
something that's developed. It's not like we're not going into
this intending to do any of that. It just sort
of happens when when the waves go right, you know,
when the waves fall into place. Then you'll get to
the end of the song and you can feel, Okay,
(12:17):
we've done whatever it is. That was it.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
What's your preparation before you do a live show before
you go because in the studio it's obviously a whole
different animal.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Correct, Yeah, there's no preparation for the studio. Do you know?
It's bull in a china shop most of the time,
which is how it should be, I think.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And performing live, yeah, what's give it to me a
couple of hours before you go out there and you've
got to blow this thing out for all these people.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Just stone cold silence, basically almost meditative. Well, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I do that and focused.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I stand on my head for a bit and I
basically I'm completely on my own until five minutes before
we go on, and then we're all in the room together,
pacing up and down like wild animals, and then then
we're on. But when we first started doing big shows,
it was with my from Michael Stipe, and he does
the total opposite. He literally he'll be talking to you
(13:34):
and then someone taps in the shoulder and then they're on.
And I was like, how the hell do you do that? Man?
And I tried to do it like that, couldn't it?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And so I ended up going, did you get any
indication why Stipe could do that? There's a lot of
nice spiritual tones inside of r EM's music too.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, No, I don't know. I think what he used
to do was you'd stand there for the first two
tunes move. He was a sort of lightning conductor, and
he was just waiting for it to hit, and then
when it hit, he was off, but he would wait
and if it wasn't going to hit, he was still
there three or four tunes later, and waiting. He kind
(14:13):
of warmed up in front of everybody, gauging it all,
whereas I can't do that because I have to sort
of be clear of everything before, you know whatever. I
need to be completely empty.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
We're taking a break, stay with us.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I started playing guitar when I was seven. I sat
down and said I was going to be Brian May
and not a bad thing to be. Yeah, And then
I tried to do I read like when I was
ten or something. I read that he'd built his first
guitar himself, which is the one he still plays. So
I tried to do that, but my efforts was and.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Then said she were not Brian may in s handcrafting
the guitar, and I.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Had to cheat with the neck on the guitar I
found in old someone a neighbor gave me a neck
of an electric guitar. That's great, Okay, that's good. But
you know I was ten or eleven, so I was
trying to like bolt it to get to this other
piece of wood that I'd cut out, and it was
just a disaster. But it kind of worked, but it
was ugly.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Was your family musical?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Not really?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
No.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
The only one that sticks out is apparently my great grandmother.
She'd get really hammered and then stay up playing her
pump organ thing downstairs all night and keep the family up.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You were around, did you witness that?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I met her once and she was kind of she
wore black and was quite scary when I was really tiny.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
But neither of your parents were artists musicians?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
When the guitar came into your life when or seven,
Brian may or, no, was it music itself? And were
you moved by music itself? Or was it like many
people when they're very young? Was it rock stardom? Was never?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Then? It was?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
It was you weren't running around your bedroom imitating Jagger
and you thought like you.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And my whole thing was we didn't have any sound
system in the house. We had nothing, no high fi
nothing except for in my dad's car and had a
tight player in it. So I went and would sit
for hours. I would sit for hours, and you know,
it was the sound of Brian May's guitar. Actually, it's
(16:40):
one of those funny things where you know, when you
turned something up and you're in a very controlled, loud environment,
just that sound was just, you know, nothing else was that.
When you're that small and you've never I've never really
heard music particularly at all up until that point. You know,
(17:01):
it's funny. It's got a weird thing. But I mean,
lots of kids of that age, you know, their parents
didn't really have high fires or anything as such. The
only guy I did know who had a high fight
down the road only played abbat, which I thought was
worse than not having one. But that was me somehow.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Those and then and then the guitar, and you're trying
to fashion your own guitar by the time you were eleven,
And then when you take another step toward deepening your
commitment how old are you when you form the band sixteen?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I did have a band when I was eleven, But
what's an eleven year old band sound like? Yeah? No,
it were not very good at all, but it was.
It was very exciting, like going around to a friend's
house is setting up and jamming, and all our mates
would come and hang out and girls, which I thought,
this is interesting. Yes, as puberty hit, but that sort
(17:55):
of fell to bits because I kept fighting with the drummer.
And then when I was six, then I was thinking, well, okay,
I need to get this together really and just went
around the school sort of choosing people.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So you went around picking people.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I got it because he was dressed like Morrissey and
he had some cool socks, and I saw he'd had
a guitar. I had no idea whether he could play
or not. I didn't really care. I got Colin because
I knew Colin could play very well, and I needed
a bass player. He could play very well, but he
had never played bass before. And his brother Johnny was
this mythical musical prodigy. So wroped him in. And then
(18:32):
Phil was the only drummer we knew anyway, So and
and he had a house down the road that we
could rehearse him.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And you're all and you lived where you grew up
were well, this.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Was at Abingdon School in near Oxford.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
And then when you form Radiohead when you're.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Sixteen, basically, yeah, we started sort of writing, doing demos
and messing about and it was, you know, it was
quite interesting straight away that it was quite I think
because Field had quite a lot of experience. He was
a bit older and he'd had his own band, so
he knew how to put things together a bit. And
(19:07):
in fact we used to go and do demos in
his sister's bedroom, like right from the beginning, which which
was great. I mean, there's nothing better than just starting
off by just trying to write demos from scratch, even
though you can't really play, even though you don't know
each other. That's where you start, you know. It's kind
of a nice way to figure out where you're about.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
What do you think you do best? You lead a band,
you well, you play guitar, you write music, you produce music,
you do and you're sing. What do you think your
greatest strength is? If you had to pick one.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I don't know what I'm doing. I like the fact
that I still don't know what I'm doing, I think, well,
not honestly, I can't go. I'll go through whole phases
of months where i'n't got a clue. I regularly lose
complete confidence in what I'm doing. Why do you think
that is? Umm, because I have the same condition. Why
(20:07):
partly because I think I don't quite understand how it
happens after the fact, When.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
When what happens when the appreciation comes.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
To you know, when you're piecing something together right, things
will fall into place how you make it. Yeah, I mean,
in some ways, the nicest bit about the creative thing,
or nicest bit about recording and writing, is this sort
of weird limbo where you in between scratching away scratching away,
nothing really happening, nothing really happening, and then something wants
(20:40):
to be built and starts to get built. You just
have to let it happen. And then it gets to
the end and you and you look at it a
few months later and go, huh that it's sort of
weird amnesia that goes with it. Something will happen, one
little sound goes off, and you go, well, that's really
nice for me. When I was at school. I didn't
(21:02):
get on with the school system at all. I see it,
and my son the same, that sort of the mechanics
of how a school operates and how you're supposed to
blend in or whatever. So I hid in the music
stroke art department and had a great time there and
discovered that actually that's what I wanted to do. Straight away,
(21:23):
the heads of both schools just saw what I was
up there.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Is this the teacher that you often credit with you
or yeah, what was the teacher's.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Name, Terry James, But it was him and my art
teacher as well. Actually it was like someone sort of
takes you under their wing and say, well, you know what,
you're actually quite good at that mentoring.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Is it a very critical thing in this business?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, because it's it's enough at that age, it's enough
to just get a little push and then okay.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Or does someone push you in a different direction?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, well yeah, that would be bad. Yeah, how about
you go to the other I think my father used
to think I used to get too advertising, which is
like really brilliant. Yeah, I'd really be good at that.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Other people, well, one thing you're good at is avoiding.
My original question, which was what do you think you're
best at? And let's try to choose if you can,
if you may, if you don't mind, confine yourself to
the list, I provide, what do you think you're best at?
This is multiple choice guitar band, kind of paternal figure, songwriting, producing, singing.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I guess singing.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Okay, I'm glad you chose that one. I was driving,
I was I think when I popped the words singing
the way I did, I was trying to do or singing.
What was singing to you? How did your singing evolve
where you arrived, at where you are now, where most
people say you have one of the most evocative singing
voices in all of music.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Today, melancholy to the point of well, people who.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Loved who loved radio, they crave their music, and they
crave particularly you were singing.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Well, basically I went to music. I went to a
few singing lessons, but that was basically just so I
could literally breathe. Right, you know, my favorite singers like Bjork.
When I watched Byork sing, I've been lucky enough to
(23:25):
sort of sing with her and watch you do it.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And I was gonna say, you're one of the few
people going to use that phrase when I watched B.
York sing, Yeah, most of us say, well, when I
listened to B.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yorky and it's in here, it's right here, they say,
you know, with with with in yoga and stuff that
whatever it is, can't remember that that spot at the
top of the forehead that you really Most singers like
Neil Young's the same. He sings into this spot in
his head and what he's singing he's already heard. Do
(23:58):
you know what I mean, He's hearing it come out.
The same with Buork when she's singing, she's singing what
she's hearing, So there's no force. It's a force in itself.
It took me a while to get that, you know,
(24:18):
even when we were on tour with Iram back when
we're doing the Benz in ninety six or whatever it was.
I was still trying to figure it out. Then watching
Michael and wanting to sound like Michael, but I couldn't,
you know, because my voice is in a different tone
completely and so on. But what I did learn, what
(24:40):
you know, watching him, was again that thing of like
watching someone who their voices in sort of command of
them rather than the other way. Around. Yeah, but it's
very natural. But it takes a long time for that
to become natural. I think, like any singer, it takes
a long time to find that thing and it keeps
(25:03):
changing to me how I sing now, or to me
it feels different to a few years ago. Why it
just does it? Just do it? Well, Yeah, there's probably
some physical element to it, but also just where you're at,
you know, because singing is nothing but like probably like acting,
sing is nothing but being in a moment.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
That's it, and where you're at.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, when you do like when I used to be
like you know, when when you're trying to singing or whatever, chrele,
I remember sort of okay, computer, I still had this
thing like, well, I need to be a little bit
half cut when i'm you know, I need to do
something or other beforehand. So I thought I'm in the
right space, man, where it's all bollocks because basically you've
(25:48):
just got to learn to be there with it. When
you do it, you're not trying to prove anything. You're
not trying to get anywhere, you're not trying to achieve anything.
You're not trying to get this emotion across. You're not
in this space trying to get this space across. You're
not trying to get this mindset across or anything. You're
just letting it happen.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
When you do this now, when you live inside your
life now, whether you're performing live or you're producing and
recording music, do you feel different now that you're older?
I mean, the chasm between when you're sixteen when you're
forty three is extraordinary, isn't it. It's just mind bending?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Do you feel like you're sick of it and you
want to be done with it?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah? You do sometimes, but not it's never really. The
music is everything else, you know, primarily what we'll just
stresses of life. Whatever. You know, something's good.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
So your life is not like I mean a lot
of people think they think that successful artists, whether it
just walk across this bed of rose petals all day,
the greatest torment of our life is do we go
to Paris on spring break or Anguilla? My god, I
can't I can't answer. It is a problem. It is
a problem, but it's not we're supposed to say that.
(27:32):
But what I'm saying is is that they think that, like,
do you ever sit there? You're very active socially. Yes,
I guess you care. You've made some comments about world affairs.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I don't care about the world.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah, you care about what's going on. If I said
to you that, I snapped my fingers and you go
back to having a very normal life and you're not
you at all? What everything that goes with it, and
the rest of the world is elevated and the rest
of the world gets better. Things you care about. Think
of an issue you care and I say to you, Tom,
yorke Tom, your Tom. You go back and the world
(28:05):
gets better, would you make that change.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
To find better?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
It's a tricky question, but you do. It's not an
either or, But you do care about other things. Is
there an issue that you are embracing now? Is there
something you're involved with that or where I'm going?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I well, in my slack asked fashion, I was helping
Greenpeace do this thing, which was trying to stop drilling
in the Arctic. But it sounds like it's kind of
working because the company seemed to be pulling out because
they can't. Yeah, that's right. I don't think that's entirely
down to us, but I think it definitely helped that
we were making their life extremely difficult everywhere they turned.
(28:41):
But challenge now is to turn the Arctic into a reserve,
so it can't happen because what that was going to
do is create this gold rush, you know, or rush
up there, which was just going to be insane. And
this at the same time where the ice is melting. Basically,
they only started considering it was a possibility because the
eyes was melting. They thought, Okay, great, maybe got a
(29:02):
better chance for drilling, which is like.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
A global global less oil to him, it means more well.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah, so I was kind of stuck in that for
a while because, yeah, the to me, the irony of
it was too much. I don't know where I'll go next.
I don't I find it very stressful. I did get involved.
A few years ago. We did this thing in Britain,
the first Climate Change Act, which meant the government is
committed to reducing CO two emissions twenty fifty by ninety percent.
(29:33):
And now lots of countries have got it, but it
was the first one and the government didn't want to
do it. Blair didn't want to do it. But we
found this interesting loophole and got thousands of people to
send letters in and said at the bottom of the
letter to the at the MP police, can you pass
this on to Blair? Right? And apparently they were obliged
to pass on these letters. So Blair was literally getting
(29:54):
thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of letters,
which doesn't normally happen. And he did pass the law
after much arguing and me refusing to meet him because
it was during the Iraq War and all sorts of
critical of Yeah, well, any normal human being would be anyway.
I was very glad I did it, and the people
(30:16):
I was working for at the time it was with
Friends of the Earth, and it was really inspiring and
I became really good friends with the guy who's running
Friends of the Earth at the time, Tony Juniper, who
now works with Prince Charles. And it was a great period.
But I just burnt me out getting that close to politics.
The most fascinating figure that we work with was the
(30:38):
lobbyist that we had, our one lobbyist, so like we
went into this Port Colis House in Britain. You probably
have the equivalent here. I don't know what it's called,
but Port Cullis House was built for the lobbyists. It
was built for special interests to go and sit with
a cup of coffee, round table about this size and
wait for MPs to go past colin of them, sit
(31:01):
them down and lobby them in.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Bigit Congress the Capitol building.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Anyway, I found it completely fascinating, you know, because it's
there's hundreds of these people walking around, and I'm like,
none of them are lobbying for us, except when you
maybe possibly could argue that our one mate, Friends of
the Earth, who was like technically, you know, maybe speaking
for the people a little bit. But basically they were
all special interest and they had the ear of government.
(31:29):
And I just thought, hang on, hang on a minute,
how did this happen? Anyway? Where where were we a
minute ago?
Speaker 1 (31:35):
I know where I want to go?
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Okay, go on and go there.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Then your children, Oh no, no, that's too much for
a jump.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Hang on where we Let's finish with this first? H
Then your children. I'm lost.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Now do your children know who you are and what
you do?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, they're used to it. They're used to people coming
up and saying hello. But most of the time it's
very friendly and that's normal. That's their normal. That's what
they've grown up and how old are they? Twelve and seven?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
So one seven the age that you decided you wanted
to be Brian may The's twelve and by then he's
he he would already have made his guitar with that
neck that was eleven. I think you said to the
other kids, where are they at?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Basically, my son is a great drummer, but I don't
know if you want to do that forever or not.
He's like not bothered really, which is cool. You know,
he just and he comes and hangs out with me
when I'm working in my studio. We just hang out.
You know, we're friends. But I don't think you know
that there's a burning ambition to be musicians or anything. Really,
even though he's really good, he's for pleasure. I mean
(32:41):
at that age that's good, right. His fatherhood affected your work, yes,
but not really that you have the obvious things where
you would go out on the road more if you
didn't have children. Yep, absolutely, but that's not necessarily a
(33:03):
bad thing at all. You know, being on their road
is it's a it's not a great necessary it's it's
you don't want to do it all your life. You
get a little bit on it gets a little unhealthy
quite quickly mentally, if not physically.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Has it been difficult for you mentally.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Uh, it can be different. It means it's it's wicked
fun a bit too much. It's either wicked fun or
really awful, like when you're sick. Then it gets really
it's a roll bumber man.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Have to get out there.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, try to sing your way through the notes that
you can't find because you're so sick or whatever. That's
really super stressful. But you know, it is a massive
buzz and there's no denying it. It's great.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
But Tom Yorke is the first to admit that it
takes work to keep it fun in the studio and
on tour.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
It's very difficult to play with people you don't if
there's problems between you, for example, if the issues come up,
I mean, I'm very much I'm a librin and I
need to sort it out. I can't have stuff hanging around,
you know, because it gets in the way.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
More in a minute with Tom Yorke, this is Alec
Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Given the
level of success that Radiohead has reached, I did have
certain expectations of Tom's lifestyle. I mean, I'm assuming you're
(34:39):
in a world where that your phone must have rang it.
Maybe it stopped because you kept saying no. But maybe
everybody's like, you know, Bonno wants to pick you up
tomorrow and fly you to Saint Bart's.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Yeah, that never appealed. I don't hang out with people
because they are who they are, necessarily unless I'm a
big admirer of them, Like I mean, I stalked ed
Norton for ages until eventually he gave it because I'm
a big admirer of him. I think it's brilliant. So
I hang out with him a bit occasionally. And Flea.
I've always really admired Flea anyway, so even before it
(35:15):
became an issue of sort of playing with.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
No tangentially related to that. As you've gotten older and
you look around the musical landscape, what you see, does
it appeal to you? Meaning of the music that's popular music,
I mean, what's selling now the most successfully. Have you
moved into a different place with that or do you
admire a lot of what's being done.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Is in the mainstream. In the mainstream, there's nothing in
the mainstream. The mainstream is just avoid you know, to me,
I mean, what's weird about putting a record out? Now?
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Really?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And this is not like sour grapes at all. It's
just the fact the volume, literally the sheer volume stuff
that gets put out. It's like this huge fucking waterfall
and you're just thrown your pebble in and it carries
on down the waterfall. That's that, right, Okay. Next, basically,
you know, like in this country the radio is tied
up and people don't really listen to radio in the
(36:08):
same way. It's it's music's going through a weird time
because on the one hand, as ever, there's always really
exciting music being made. It's never not being made. It's
a question of whether you're going to get to hear
it or not. And I mean I kind of I
kind of knew the game was up a few years
(36:28):
ago when one of our sort of team of people
came in saying Nokia wanted to offer you millions of
pounds because they want content for their phones. And this
is like in two thousand, I don't know, early two thousands,
and you're like content, what you know, content? What you
mean music?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yes? Okay? Content? Maybe that? Yes? Yeah, just could be music. Stuff. Yeah,
stuff could be got snoring.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Have you got some stuff? You know, and you're like, oh, okay,
And I think, really my problem with it is it's
like it's now like something to fill up the hardware with,
you know, the music itself has become secondary to that,
which is a weird thing to me. It's like, and
I think that will change because there's only so many
different permutations of the same hardware you can make before
people go, well, actually, I have an iPod now, so thanks.
(37:19):
So I think things will change, and I think the
radio will change, and sooner the better, because no matter
what way you look at it, the most pleasurable experiences
you ever have is like when something's played to you
you don't know. We'll like going around to friend's house
and they'll stick a tune on you, Like what the
hell is there? You know, which is what it's about.
(37:39):
You know. That's why we're like going into a store
when I was a kid, like and the new Smith's
records come out, and like and I'm going up to
the guy. I think that's like he's really cool, like
the indie store in town, and just talking to him
about music for twenty minutes, you know, and you know you.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Share now everywhere you go. Music is everywhere.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's everywhere, but it's not nice. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
It's content.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Ye, content is king that bullshit will change, And when
it does, then I think we'll have a resurgence. The
underbelly will come back overbelly and then well.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
If it's middle age, it'll be overbelly. Well you have
a ways to go there.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I'm gonna be taking some slimming pill.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, but we know in the way that you talked
about this pebble in the borderfall and content and music marketing. Now,
so if that changes, certainly, which it has, does your
willingness to release your music into that world change? I mean, like,
for example, an obvious example, maybe too obvious, is you
don't want to play Creep anymore. Now do you sit
there and say, like, if the Sultan of Brunei called
(38:39):
you up and said, I want you to come to
Brunei and we give you a million pounds, just play Creep.
I would play Creep and you can go home.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
I would say to the Sulting of Brunei, why do
you have that house near me that you never use?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
I can just meet you down the block.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
I mean, come on, it's an empty house, man, it
must be worse whatever. That's what I'd say, trillion and
I'd say no, but I'm up.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
He will you retire a song that way? Why do
you do that?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well? I don't not necessarily retire it. I mean I
don't recognize it as me, which is kind of quite
interesting when I expecting it, just that voice, I don't
even recognize that. It's kind of odd. Whatever you want,
you're so fucking special. But then I remember hearing I
(39:46):
remember hearing Lou read like on some radio station in
the Dublin years and years ago, and they were asking
inevitably about the underground and they said, yeah, or sometimes
it comes on. I'm like, oh, this is cool. What's this?
And then I realized it's about an underground? Wow? Yeah,
I kind of know what he means to sort of
you get to the point where like, what's that? Like?
Speaker 1 (40:07):
I sounds pretty good.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Blood.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
So you're forty three years old, forty four, forty four
years old, but it's just our professional courtesy that we
shave a year off of all of our already, Yeah,
all of them. You're in the now and you're in
the here, what have you. And I'm not saying that glibly,
and you're know what I'm saying, but you're not somebody
who like Mick Jagger, for example, Like I wonder if
Mick Jagger is going to hit a day, like does
(40:39):
it happen in a day? Like as Mick Jagger in
bed one day and he picks it the phoney, He's like,
you know, I just can't do it anymore. I can't
get out of this bed. I can't do another fucking
show again. And it's over. Like do you think of
other things? I think all the time of the next
thing I'm gonna do. Yeah, the next thing. You don't
(41:01):
have to tell us what it is, but you.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Or no, I mean, it would end if something happened
to my voice. I don't know. Certain things could make
it physically stop, and it will stop at some point,
something will happen. But for me, yeah, I'm always hearing
different things. There's always half finished things, which you ask
(41:26):
poor old Nigel he knows about that. There's always a
mountain of half stuff. I want to get into stuff
I've started stuff I want to you know. But I
also think it's good to sort of take breaks because
I've gone straight from this radio tour last year, which
was a really heavy mother but really good fun, straight
into doing sort of atoms for stuff and not really
(41:48):
had a break. And so breakers do a breakers do
because what I've found with a breaker can be an
incredibly exciting thing with that thing of like you just
all the stuff you want to do, but you just
force yourself not just force yourself to wait and get
back into just time and space and yeah, not being
(42:09):
in music all the time, I think, because it's like anything,
you start to go in small circles, so you've got
to stop when that happens.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I've had to practice that now. I mean, I got
married again and my wife is pregnant and I'm going
to have a kid, and I really sat and thought
about that way that I want to have a more
ordinary and more normal handling of my emotions. I think
the best way to put it is what people in
my business say, which is would you rather live it
(42:38):
in real life or words you rather play it on screen?
And I'm thinking I want to walk away from it
because I'd rather live it in real life now than
play it on screen.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
I think with what I do is slightly different because
what I do it Actually, unless you're literally spending, unless
you are just literally working too hard, it's a regenerative thing.
I find that I'm well. I mean, my family, my
friends know that I'm a nicer person if I'm working
(43:06):
and I'm into what I'm doing than if I stop.
There is a period where I'm fairly unbearable if I
do stop too long, Yeah, for too long time probably, Yeah,
there's a threshold. But like, if you want to shift
right with your work, if you want to shift, if
you're writing, if you're being creative at all, you kind
(43:28):
of have to stop to make that shift because if
you just I'm constantly creating, I've got this mounting of
brilliant ideas. You're making the basic mistake that you're assuming
all your ideas are brilliant, where in fact, the more
you do they're probably the more it kind of your
thing in reverse, because actually, I need to go and
(43:50):
do normal shit. I need to. I can't write unless
I have a period where restored. Well no it's not restored,
just just reset. I'm like just normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Speaking of normal, do you have siblings? Yeah, do you
have a brother, What does he do?
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Russian politics and stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
He teaches.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
No, he's the mayor of all what do you mean
all sorts of ship investigations on people? He studied Russian
Oxford and then went into various.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Are your parents all there? What do your I would
love people in your business? Above all? What are your
parents and your brother make of you? Going from being
Tom York Tom to becoming Tom York.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Well, my brother was in a band of his own
for a while as well, so he has a slightly
like he can see what it is from another point
of view. What do my parents think? I don't know.
They like when I was a kid, they didn't approve.
Now that I'm happy, Why do you go into advertising? Yes? Well,
you know it was like fair enough. I was pissed
off with them at the time, but you know it's
(45:05):
kind of what that's what you do, isn't it. I mean,
well to everybody's parents.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Right when I left a pre law program and I
was destined to go to law school and I went
into the acting program, my mother was She literally screamed
at me out.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
My mom was very upset when I when I chose
to go to art college because she'd been to art
college and she says, it's complete waste of time, doesn't mother.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
But when it became successful with my business, mother was like,
I'm so proud of them. Oh my god, this is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, it's kind of bonkers, like seeing them backstage at
a really big show that will come to a big
show and there's all sorts of shit came off with
my mates. They're doing whatever, you know, and there's my
mom and I going that was fun, corny beer or whatever.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
When you do step away from it, what are their
art are you? Are you interested in art? Photography?
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Well, my mate theater film, my mate Stanley don Wood
who I went to art college with, who does all
our art work with. I mean, I do it with
him kind of thing. We always have these lovely plans
about we want to go and live in Berlin for
a month and just paint and get in trouble and
things like that. We call ourselves the Sunday Painters and
we go on bad painting trips. We did one where
(46:16):
people well they're bad painting trips because I'm involved there
was one of my favorite ones was we went on
the moors down in Cornwall. Do you know what I
mean by the moors and Dartmore basically, which is very
very very bleak, but really beautiful. We were in the
stone Circle, drove part of the way, walked the rest
away with these big canvases and paints. But we only
(46:40):
we discovered we only had purple and blue and yellow,
so we thought, well, okay, we'll use that, and we
painted landscape all afternoon. But they were purple and blue
and yellow. Some poor women I remember coming like late afternoon,
coming and ask us, asking us for directions. We're both
sitting there, you know, canvases up like this, all huddled
(47:00):
up with the hoods on, you know, just in this,
and this ball woman comes up, asks for asks, directions
somewhere rather and then looks at the paintings. That just
wanders off, like.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Have another career. I hope you're not counting on.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
It was like, didn't think the purple is working.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
It was like me being in Italy and this beautiful
couple they were like late, they were older, and the
men walked up to me in a camera and he said,
schools a schooser is a photo and he's pointing to me,
and his wife is triangularly and I go oh, and
I put my arm around his wife to take a photo.
He goes, no, no, you photo of you? Take the
photo the mountain in the background. I was like, oh god,
(47:45):
bless Yeah, they don't know who I am. I should
move here, I should move here. You mentioned someone gave
you that push his mentorship in your career. Do people
come to you and do you give them a push
a little bit? I mean, you must have a lot
of people in the music world, young people who look
(48:05):
up to you.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
One of the best buzzes really is that thing where
someone comes up who's new and they're really into you know,
I'm really into what they're doing. It's really fascinating and
it's really totally new to me. But yet the occasions
when they yeah, and You're like, how could you? How
could you feel off me? I don't see any of
(48:28):
my stuff, but they see it and I'm like, Wow,
that's so cool, especially when it's like like it's in
hip hop, like really you know people within hip hop
who are into Radiohead. I'm like, I find that so
fascinating because i mean, obviously I'm massively into hip hop,
and we we use hip hop as a reference point
and the way we build tracks and stuff. But but really, wow,
(48:51):
that's bonkers. Obviously that's one of the really good bits.
But it's not really mental ship. It's just people who
admire good at their ship, you know.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
And when it happens, it happens. How does success make
you feel?
Speaker 2 (49:09):
How does it make me feel? Something which I think
is well, has it make me feel? It's always been
a little bit far away from me, And the only
time it sort of makes sense is when we play
(49:29):
in front of people, you know, and the rest of
the times like, well, it's it's just it's who I've
been for so long. I can't tell you because it's
just that's what it is. And I think I've probably
been doing it more than I haven't in my life
in terms of years, in terms of time. So most
(49:49):
of the time I don't really notice and people come
up and I go, well, it's nice, you know, thanks
very much, And it's not like I'm not grateful. I'm
just I just don't notice. And then sometimes some thing
will whack you over the head and you go, BlimE me,
things like doing the first time we did Saturday in life,
for example, and you go, really, people give a shit,
because sometimes you can't you don't know you don't know
(50:12):
you've got on the inside. You can't see it. And
also you spent so long running away from it, and
I don't feel like I run away from it now
because there's nowhere to run.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
To run.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
And also it is like, yeah, I'm really grateful for
I'm it's very incredibly lucky.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
There's a very good point. There's nowhere to run and
still do it.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, I mean, I just think I'm well Jammy. As
we take it's just really jammy, especially in the US,
you know, like people really give a shit, and it's like, well,
that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I guess I have one more question, was what does
well Jammy mean.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I don't know, really, you don't know Jammy is like
you're so Jammy, like you just I'm dating myself. No, no, no,
it's a total floke, man, it's not really. You're just lucky.
I mean, I'm British, right, so I assume I'm just lucky.
There's no skin involved. I'm Jammy goes on.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
This is from Tom Yorke's most recent album, Amok. He'll
be touring in support of the album later this year.
Find out more on our website Here's the Thing dot Org.
This is Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing comes from w
(51:41):
NYC Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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