[recording starts here]

Terry Gross (narration): "This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. When rock critics write about the British band Radiohead, they often use the words 'best' and 'greatest'. A review in Time Magazine was headlined 'Radiohead May Just Be the Best Band in the World'. Last year, Spin Magazine named their album OK Computer the top album of the past 20 years. Radiohead's last album Hail to the Thief came out three years ago and during that time the band's contract with their label ran out. They've been trying out new material on the road the past few months and deciding if they're going to sign with a major record company or distribute their music themselves.
This week Radiohead singer Thom Yorke came out with an album called The Eraser, which he and the band's longtime producer Nigel Godrich made largely on computers. Thom Yorke stopped by Fresh Air for an interview. Let's start with Radiohead's first hit from 1993, 'Creep'."

[plays 'Creep']

Terry: "That's Radiohead, 'Creep'. Thom Yorke, welcome to Fresh Air."

Thom: "Hi."

Terry: "When you recorded that, what kind of future did you think the band had?"

Thom: "Whoa. Err... (laughs) ummm, I had no idea what I was doing or... no idea about the future at all. That was the first vocal I ever did where I came out the end of it and thought, 'oh, ok, I could do this for a living, perhaps'."

Terry: "You know, the lyric is 'you're so expletive special, I wish I were special but I am a creep'."

Thom: "Didn't really think about that at the time. Not expecting anyone to play it, so..."

Terry: "What was your life like when you wrote that song, and the lyrics suggest somebody with low self esteem. (laughs)"

Thom: "It was very hip around then. It was kind of written when I was at college. I mean, we'd only just signed like a few months before that, I think."

Terry: "You met the other people from, uh, Radiohead when you were in high school, right."

Thom: "At school, yup."

Terry: "I just think it's amazing that you stuck together for so long. It's kind of remarkable."

Thom: "I constantly think it's amazing. (laughs)"

Terry: "And part of me, like after... people change so much after high school."

Thom: "Yup."

Terry: "Have you changed in different directions and managed to stay together in spite of that?"

Thom: "Yeah, I don't know how. I mean, one of the biggest challenges recently staying together was actually having families and, like, umm, having real lives outside work. Ummm, but I think we're kind of through the worst of that, really. It's actually kind of cool now. But a strange shift in the general dynamic of things, really, because you have to, like, reassess, you know, day-to-day existence, obviously, like every parent does."

Terry: "When you first started playing, as a band, when you were in high school, what were you playing? Were you playing original songs or doing covers?"

Thom: "I used to... oh well, we didn't really do, we didn't really do much at school. I mean, we talked about it a lot (laughs) and we'd endlessly rehearse, but we never really played any shows."

Terry: "What were you rehearsing? I mean, what kind of music was it?"

Thom: "We were really into REM, umm, and... well, I mean, everyone was into different stuff. Phil was a punk freak, and, uh, Ed was a Smiths freak. Jonny and Colin were into Joy Division and The Magazine."

Terry: "And you?"

Thom: "I was the REM guy."

Terry: "You were the REM guy."

Thom: "Right."

(both laugh)

Terry: "Um, what did music mean to you when you were growing up?"

Thom: "Umm, I came to it really quite late, actually. Uh, I managed to... we didn't have any sort of music system in our house till I was 8, 9 and I think - naturally enough - it started making a lot of sense when I hit puberty, which I did fairly early. And then music was absolutely everything to me and has remained so ever since."

Terry: "Well, I'm going to jump ahead to another CD. This is OK Computer."

Thom: "Oh, ok."

Terry: "So, this was like a huge success for you. Didn't it like go to number one on Billboard?"

Thom: "Um, yeah. Not quite sure how that happened. I think it was something to do with the record company, but that may be me being cynical. Anyway."

Terry: "What do you think of as different on this CD from your proceeding work?"

Thom: "Umm, when we did The Bends, we were still figuring out, I think, the basics even of, of how to make records. And in the process of doing that we met Nigel, who was the engineer on it, who then went and did OK Computer with us and has stayed with us. Umm, and then when we did OK Computer, I think the difference was that it was like the kids being let loose in the lab, you know. That's how it felt. I mean..."

Terry: "What were you trying that you hadn't tried before?"

Thom: "Umm, well we bought all our own equipment from, from some of the proceeds from The Bends and it was all transportable... and so it, you know, the equipment and the concept of recording became part of the creative process, rather than something that was happening in another room over there and we were just told to do it again. Um, so we were trying everything we could think of (laughs) really within limits, um, I guess, since then. That's gotten a little bit out of hand."

(both laugh)

Terry: "So, were your musical tastes changing at about this time?"

Thom: "Um, well, you know, they're always changing and we're always listening to different things. I mean, one of the most important things about being in a band - other than just playing together, obviously - is, is actually what music you're sharing, what music you're choosing to play to each other. Um, and around that time, there was a serious sort of Ennio Morricone obsession going on in the band, which really, obviously, fed across into the way we were recording."

Terry: "And, yet, there's no whistler."

(both laugh)

Thom: "No, but there's a lot of pathetic attempts to sort of to do some of the similar sort of things. You know, we bought an old Mellotron and, you know, we were using a lot of the soft distortion, like old, you know deliberately trying to sort of emulate old recordings, which Nigel is especially good at."

Terry: "Mmm-hmmm."

Thom: "Old recording techniques and stuff, you know."

Terry: "Well, the track I thought we'd play from OK Computer is 'No Surprises'."

Thom: "Ah."

Terry: "Um, do you want to say anything about writing this?"

Thom: "Well, that was, um... that's one of the songs that we refer to a lot because, just in terms of when we're in the midst of a song and we don't know whether we're just completely wasting our time. And 'No Surprises' was like that all the way through. It was just... 'I don't know, I don't know about this' and 'I mean, yes it's a beautiful song'... but it just seemed to be too much, too much and, um, we gradually sort of chipping away and trying lots and lots of different things and then... it's amazing how - as soon as you got a little bit of distance from it as we were finishing the record, and placing it in the record - how powerful it was, really, considering how difficult it was to make. The nice thing about it, I think, is that you kind of forget about all the hard stuff. You forget about how difficult it is to do things. Nigel is very fond of reminding me of that."

Terry: "(laughs) On 'No Surprises' was there anything that... any moment where you realized 'ok, this is actually a good track, this works.'"

Thom: "Ah, it was... as often happens... it was actually sort of finally getting a vocal that made sense. Because it was so slow and we had to do... we ended up... we physically couldn't play it that slow. So we used the old Beatles technique of... record it at the natural speed you want to play it and slow it down and get this sort of strung out effect. And then singing to that was just a really... quite a weird experience."

Terry: "Wait, so you slowed down the instrumental track?"

Thom: "Yeah, yeah."

Terry: "With, with..."

Thom: "We recorded everything and then slowed it down and then I sang to it."

Terry: "Oh, I didn't realize that."

Thom: "Yeah, I mean you can hear it, you can hear it in some of the... especially the way the drums play. That's what they used to do with Ringo all the time, that's why his fills used to - God, I'm Beatle obsessive... um, sad but true - um, yeah, they used to get those amazing drum fills on lots of Beatles records. They used to make him play lots faster, and then it would sound really strung out."

Terry: "Is the pitch different though...

Thom: "Yeah."

Terry: "...if they're playing on a pitch and then it's slowed down, it's going to change the pitch."

Thom: "Yeah."

Terry: "So does that as the singer, who's trying to sing..."

Thom: "Yeah."

Terry: "...on key on the record put you in a strange position."

Thom: "Yeah, but being on constant pitch has never been a problem for me, I mean (both laugh) as I have no idea what it is. So, you know, um, it doesn't matter that it's a little bit out of tune."

Terry: "Alright, well let's hear the results."

(both laugh).

Terry: "This is 'No Surprises' from OK Computer."

[plays 'No Surprises']

Terry: "That's 'No Surprises' from the Radiohead album OK Computer and my guest is Thom Yorke."

Thom: "Hi."

Terry: "I'm wondering if, um, I've read this and I know that it's no secret that you've had..."

Thom: "I have no secrets."

Terry: "...an issue with depression..."

Thom: "Oh, right."

Terry: "...over the years."

Thom: "Oh, that secret."

Terry: "That secret, yes. So how do you think that that's affected you as a songwriter or singer, just in terms of, like, you know, your subject matter or your tempos or, you know, the kind of mood you are going for..."

Thom: "I think, erm, it's both destructive and highly creative. And in some ways it's a blessing, because when you're in the midst of it, you hear things and see things in a different way. I mean, actually some people do literally see things in a different way. Things actually do actually get darker and sounds actually change and blah, blah, blah. And I find that it's, uh, in a way, it's, um... you know, my brain is set to receive other things and you know the trouble with it is really that, uh, it's debilitating as well, because you have a problem... you don't have energy, you don't... in order to... especially in a band, actually... but just generally, to be creative you need to have a lot of energy, you can't just... you know, um... so you can be extremely negative unnecessarily and I think over the years as I've grown older and got grey hair, um, I've realized that there are times that I just sort of have to like chill out and go away and sort of, um, just get my head straight. So, it's all about dealing with it and managing it now. Which is good, you know, ultimately it's a good thing. But, it's really not a big deal. I mean, I choose to talk about it publicly, because I've always had a problem with the fact that people call our music depressing, because it's like 'what, you don't get depressed? What, your whole life is roses, is it?' That to me is like you're in denial and you are the one with the problem. I mean, yeah, I want to go out and I listen to disco music, I do this stuff but it just so happens that I'm built to do this. This is what I do, I mean, that's fine, but, you know... And I think that's why, you know, that was why I chose to make a thing out of it, because it was just really annoying me."

Terry: "I know that after - or during - the OK Computer tour, which ended up being like a really long tour... and it sounds like you had real trouble towards the end of it."

Thom: "There was just a general madness going on and it started out as being fun. And then it, um, ceased to be fun and ceased to be relevant to the music, I think. People started projecting all this [beep] onto me which was no, no, no..."

Terry: "People were projecting things onto you?"

Thom: "Yeah. People were sort of... like people come up and start talking to you in a certain way, which I found really disturbing, you know. I, um, I'm a musician. I sing songs, that's it. I'm not taking any of this, whatever weirdness you're giving me is not my responsibility, you know. Suddenly there was this responsibility to live up to this thing that was nothing to do with anything. I mean, it was a feedback thing. Feedback noise, media noise, blah, blah, blah, you know, cultural crap. I don't really understand why exactly it was a problem (laughs), but it was. I should have been enjoying it. What happened ultimately was a good thing, you know. Ultimately it was really quite amazing time."

Terry: "From what I read, it sounds like there were times on stage that during that tour where you were kind of unravelling."

Thom: "Yeah, that was weird. I mean, I don't know, I don't know quite why. I think a lot of the shows were very big and, um, it was not interesting. Mostly, it was just not interesting. It just got boring, which sounds incredibly selfish, but why would you just carry on playing these tunes. I mean, you know, the trouble with it was that by the time we'd done that record we were so sick of those tunes. And then you're faced with the prospect of, like, having to play them for another year-and-a-half. Which, you know, you got to do, 'cause you got to let people know what it's about and one of the things we're good at is playing the tunes and blah, blah, blah. But, you know, there just sort of comes a point where it's like this is, this is... you're going through the motions. And as soon as you realize 'I am going through the motions', this is sounding tired, that's it. You know, there is kind of no point... this is rock'n'roll. There is no point of you being there. It's like it ceases to be rock'n'roll and becomes some sort of dodgy circus."

Terry: "So did you feel like you were basically forced into the position of being phony, because you were no longer feeling the songs with the same intensity and yet you had to play them as if you did."

Thom: "That, that was the thing for me. I refused, I refused to sort of stand on stage and pretend I was really into it, when I wasn't. So I would stand on stage for about a half a minute looking out at the audience going 'I'm not really into this', because that was me trying not to be fake about it."

Terry: "But, of course, that's a real insult to the people that have paid a lot of money to come hear you."

Thom: "Yeah, but then it's like, what do you want? Do you want me to be genuine or do you want me to just pretend, which do you want, you know. The genuine thing for me to do at this point would just get on a train and go home."

Terry: "I want to play another track, and this is from the latest Radiohead album, it's called Hail To The Thief."

Thom: "Ok, cool."

Terry: "And the track I want to play is 'We Suck Your Blood'."

Thom: "'We Suck Young Blood', yeah. (laughs)"

Terry: "Oh, did you want to say anything else about this song? There's handclaps in it."

Thom: "Yeah."

Terry: "And, um..."

Thom: "It's long. It's very long. The band says it's too long. I still really like it, though. Anyway."

Terry: "This, this really stands out as being, like, very different, I think, than other songs you've recorded? I just..."

Thom: "Really?"

Terry: "Yeah, I just think that it's a different something."

Thom: "Yeah, it's um... I think the reference points... there was like lots of Bowie in there, which you probably can't hear. But lots of Mingus as well. That whole... my absolute favourite Mingus track is the first one on, um, on the The Town Hall Concert. It's called 'Freedom', 'Freedom Part 1' and it has that sort of slow handcl... it's the deliberate sort of slave ship rhythm, you know, the torturously slow... erm, like the whip being cracked or whatever it is, the drum being hit, you know, that sort of thing was kind of what the whole vibe of it was, really."

Terry: "Ok, so this is 'We Suck Young Blood'..."

Thom: (laughs)

Terry: "...from, from Radiohead's latest album, which is called Hail To The Thief. And my guest is Thom Yorke."

Thom: "Hey."

[plays 'We Suck Young Blood']

Terry (narration): "This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. We're talking with Thom Yorke of Radiohead. The band was described by critic John Pareles as rock's most experimental Top 10 band. It's been three years since the band's latest album, but Yorke has a solo album of his own that was released this week, called The Eraser. Here's a track from it."

[plays 'Skip Divided']

Terry (narration): "That's 'Skip Divided' from Thom Yorke's new CD The Eraser. Let's get back to our interview with Yorke."

Terry: "If you don't mind, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about your eye."

Thom: "Ok."

Terry: "Um, I know when you were young you had five or six operations on your eye."

Thom: "Mmmh."

Terry: "And, um, for what, what was the problem?"

Thom: "Oh, it was shut when I was born. There was no..."

Terry: "It was shut, the eye was shut?"

Thom: "Yeah. Which, you know, it apparently happens quite a lot. I mean, not that much, obviously. But it is known to happen."

Terry: "So can you see out of your eye now?"

Thom: "Yeah, kind of. They kind of messed up the last operation, so it's a bit messy."

Terry: "So, did people give you a hard time because of your eye? Kids pick on kids for anything that's different."

Thom: "Um, not really, no. I was a bit of a psycho when I was a kid. (laughs)"

Terry: "Were you really? How was that expressed?"

Thom: "Throwing other kids around and, uh, you know."

Terry: "Really?"

Thom: "Yeah, so, I wasn't really a shrinking violet by any description."

Terry: "Well, I want to play another track. And this is from your album Kid A."

Thom: "Hoorah."

Terry: "And I thought we could play 'Idioteque'."

Thom: "Hoorah!"

Terry: (laughs)

Thom: "I like that one."

Terry: "And you got a real like electronic thing going on here. When did you start getting interested in electronic instruments? And I've been really wondering if you went back and listened to a lot of the early electronic avant-garde music of, say, the Sixties."

Thom: "I did actually. Yeah, when did I do that? I mean, I didn't know much about it until... I guess I started really collecting it up during The Bends, um, and OK Computer. I mean, my... the things that I was really, really into at college was electronic music. I was massively into it."

Terry: "Like what kind? What were..."

Thom: "All the Detroit techno stuff that was coming out and I was getting... I mean, I didn't know what it was, half of it, you know. And there was all this British answer to it as well. There's the Warp label in Sheffield, and they were coming out with just amazing stuff. I mean, the reason it was amazing was because I was DJing every Friday at college and the stuff that sounded the most exciting coming out of the speakers was not the rock music. It was, it was this minimal techno, it was just... it just sounded fantastic coming out of your Technics 1200s, the needle's a bit damaged and the speakers are kind of blowing up and you've had a little bit too much to drink and some twit is asking for The Pogues again."

Terry: (laughs)

Thom: "So you just whack on, like, some Warp record really loud and clear the dance floor."

Terry: (laughs)

Thom: "But you are having the best time and that was my sort of formative thing with electronic music. It wasn't sort of actually Kraftwerk, um, and I knew that was the reference point and I had Autobahn, but I didn't know, you know, the real history behind Kraftwerk at all, you know. I came to it all backwards, as one does. And then I got really heavily back into it after OK Computer, because I'd absolutely had enough of rock music, predictably enough. You know, I hadn't had enough of being in the band, but I had enough of those sounds. Um, I mean, like, OK Computer was a very conscious... consciously acoustic record using acoustic spaces very, very deliberately, hardly using any fake reverbs, using real reverbs and real room sounds, putting mikes in the wrong end of the room and all this sort of stuff. We'd all read this - me and the Greenwoods anyway - we'd read this book on how recording music had changed the way music was. And it was like this thesis on different techniques and how actually writing music and recording music had changed since it was coming out of speakers and it wasn't live. And the logical conclusion of this book was electronic music - to me - was, was, was, um, it was like... if you put a microphone in front of something, and then you play it out of a speaker, then there's all this extra distance between what's really happening and you. And, um, what was so exciting about electronic music is it's like literally there's no distance between the music and the speaker, it's just straight out of the speaker, there's nothing else there, at all."

Terry: "Now, I could see you being really interested in this and then you could create this, you know, like, electronic environment that you could then sing over."

Thom: "Yeah."

Terry: "What about the guitarists and the bass player..."

Thom: "Yeah."

Terry: "...in your band? How did they feel about it?"

Thom: "Yeah, it was a bit of a brain mash. They were definitely not into it to begin with. Erm, but at the same time, you know, the recordings didn't really end up like that. I mean, both Kid A and Amnesiac were lots and lots of different stuff. There's been a bit of a focus on 'oh, that's when they went all electronic'. Well, ok, you could say the first song on Kid A, 'Everything In Its Right Place', is electronic, but, you know... we'd actually tried it every other way and it didn't work, and that's how it worked. So, that's that. You know, it wasn't like, 'yes, now we are making an electronic record, you're either with me or you are against me'..."

Terry: (laughs)

Thom: "It wasn't really like that, but um..."

Terry: "But what about 'Idioteque'? Did you intend for that to be electronic?"

Thom: "'Idioteque' wasn't... this is, this is the good thing about being in a band, 'Idioteque' wasn't my idea at all. It was, it was Jonny's. Jonny handed me this DAT that he... he'd gone into our studio for the afternoon, and um, the DAT was like 50 minutes long, and I sat there and listened to this 50 minutes, and some of it was just 'whoa...'. But then there was this section of about 40 seconds long in the middle of it, erm, that was absolute genius. And I just cut that out and that was it."

Terry: "And you wrote the song around it?"

Thom: "Yeah. And that's... for me that was my most exciting time, is when someone just hands me something and goes 'listen to this'. And it's got nothing to do with me and I just respond to it immediately like that. I don't have to pick up a guitar, I don't have to this and this and this, it's just there."

Terry: "Is that how you write a lot of the songs?"

Thom: "Yeah, it's still how we write. I mean, you know, obviously it's still fun crafting songs using chords and stuff, but when it's sort of found like that, like you weren't there when it happened, you were just given it, it's... I find that... it's a really pure sort of response to whatever it is."

Terry: "Ok, well let's hear 'Idioteque'. From Kid A, this is Radiohead and my guest is Thom Yorke."

[plays 'Idioteque']

Terry: "That's Radiohead from their CD Kid A. So, um, we were talking a little bit about your kind of electronic, or electronica influence there."

Thom: "Yes."

Terry: "And you have a new solo CD, it's not Radiohead, it's a Thom Yorke CD."

Thom: "That's right, yeah. It's got my name on it, which is a bit weird."

Terry: "So, you have a new Thom Yorke CD, and that's very electronica-influenced."

Thom: "Yes."

Terry: "Did you feel freer to head in that direction without..."

Thom: "I thought that...."

Terry: "...the other musicians?"

Thom: "Yeah, I wanted to do, uh... Doing electronic music is a very, um... or can be a very, um uh, mono experience. It's like, you're just sitting there and you're looking at a computer, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's not fun for a group of musicians to sit in a room and watch a screen. It's not, it's not very interesting, really. Um, and if you work... well, I mean, in this case it was very much a collaboration between me and Nigel, and when you're just sort of sitting there, and there's only two of you... there was very little discussion going on, you're just doing it. Which, when it's electronic music, seems to make quite a lot of sense, really. I mean, even that's... that was the case when we were doing Kid A as well. I mean, lots of the stuff on that was just... well, would be one or two people involved. It's just in this particular instance we were taking a break and I said 'I really want to just go off and try doing something on my own, I wanna know what it feels like', you know. And everyone was cool with that."

Terry: "And how does it feel?"

Thom: "Erm, it was... the coolest thing about it is that it really got my confidence back. And I was suffering from a serious lack of confidence at the end of sort of Hail to the Thief."

Terry: "As a songwriter or as a singer?"

Thom: "Everything. But, yeah, about all that stuff."

Terry: "As a father, a man and a human being too? (laughs)"

Thom: "That, too. Absolutely. (laughs) Yeah, you know, usual stuff. Um, uh... yeah, it was just sort of something that I was burning to do, I really, really wanted to do. And it was like, you know, when it came up, I think there was a sort of sense of relief that I was going to get it out of my system, to be honest. Which doesn't mean... that doesn't necessarily means like, 'yeah, yeah, go off and do your techno record and get it out of your system', it was like, 'whatever it is, just go and get it out of your system'. I mean, it doesn't mean that we're never going to do that stuff again, either. In fact, I think one of the interesting things about it was just how, you know, you have to work on intuition. And it was done very quickly and very fast. And you get your sense of, um, instinct sort of back on things. And hopefully that will feed well into working with the band. Well, it is doing, already, really."

Terry: "On the first track of your new CD..."

Thom: "Yeah."

Terry: "...it sounds like you did something to electronically process the piano."

Thom: "(laughs) Yeah, it's cool, it is."

Terry: "I'm wondering what you did?"

Thom: "That's because... those are Jonny's chords. Um, I sort of recorded them on the dictaphone. I don't even know if he remembered me doing it."

Terry: "On a dictaphone?"

Thom: "Yeah, like on one of those 20 quid dictaphones that you get, um, and then just processed it, not much really. I mean, it sounded so bad anyway, I had to process it."

Terry: (laughs)

Thom: "But I couldn't... I had absolutely no idea what the chords were. I couldn't emulate them, so it was like, well, we had to use that. And then when we were sort of putting together the basic ideas that I got on my laptop with Nigel, Nigel was... one of the things that he responded to initially with the ideas was the fact that it was kind of small sounding. And it wasn't... you know, it was... they were very... they were not elaborate. It was very sort of 'out of a box', although there are some big sounds on there. I quite like the fact that occasionally it just goes 'bang'."

Terry: (laughs)

Thom: "You get all these huge sounds coming in and then it shuts down again. It's kind of cool."

Terry: "Well, Thom Yorke, thank you so much..."

Thom: "Thanks, Terry."

Terry: "...for talking with us."

Thom: "That was cool."

Terry (narration): "Thom Yorke of Radiohead. His new solo CD is called The Eraser. Here's another track from it."

[plays 'The Eraser']

[recording ends]