Thom Yorke on MuchMusic

Thom Yorke and Colin Greenwood talk to MuchMusic about Radiohead's June show at the Opera House in Toronto, a big old theatre with the seats taken out, where much of the sound was trapped on stage behind the proscenium arch. They have known each other since they were between 11 and 13, and one of them remembers the other running out of a classroom with the whole class chasing him.

Asked whether Yorke has changed, Colin says he found it “extremely distressing and upsetting” for years when people saw Yorke in a way that was nothing like the man he knew, and thinks it has taken four or five years to shake off. Touring with R.E.M., while some of that band were still recovering from illness, showed them friendship mattered more than the business, and at the Tibetan Freedom Concert, with their peers there and no egos, they felt accepted. Their one manifesto, one of them says, is that they live in Oxford rather than London. Two days before this interview Yorke recorded a song with DJ Shadow, one of his heroes, at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch, for UNKLE, the project of their Oxford friend James Lavelle. When they started, the record company said they needed a stylist; they said no, and were given £300 each and three hours to spend styling themselves. One of them bought a suit that creased if anyone looked at it, and saw it two months later in a Paul Smith sale for £80.