Thom Yorke on VPRO

Thom Yorke tells VPRO's 3VOOR12 that making The Eraser, and being responsible for every musical decision, showed him “how incredibly sketchy I am and actually it's the band that usually picks up the pieces”. When Radiohead stopped for a while, he formally asked the others whether they minded him trying, expecting nothing to come of it. With Radiohead his lyrics come out of rehearsals, so being handed a finished track that needed only a vocal was a nightmare. Ed O'Brien is on a big rant at him and Jonny Greenwood to bring their side projects to the band instead of assuming they won't fit, and Yorke thinks he is right. O'Brien is trying to bring it all back because one of the upsides of the Kid A period, Yorke says, was having to do everything inside the band.

“Harrowdown Hill” is named after the place where Dr David Kelly, the weapons expert on Iraq, died, and Yorke felt sorry for him well before that, for the way he was outed and used as a scapegoat. On energy, Yorke's complaint is that nothing is done. If Tony Blair told the country its energy was running out and life had to change, he says, the big companies would move their investment elsewhere.

After Hail to the Thief the band tried to record, and nobody, Yorke included, was in the right frame of mind. It was tough for the others watching him enjoy himself on his own record, and without all those years of friendship, 16 or 17 at his rough guess, a time that hard could have been enough to split the band.