Thom Yorke blames the recession for British radio dropping “Creep”

Algemeen Dagblad runs David Kleijwegt's interview with Thom Yorke today, as Radiohead's Dutch club tour opens at Doornroosje in Nijmegen and “Creep” climbs the Dutch Top 40 from 27 to 21. In Britain, Kleijwegt writes, the national radio station played the song exactly three times in one week and then never again, because the DJs' bosses at the BBC found it too depressing. Yorke puts it down to the recession. The stations are trying to cheer the country up with nothing but upbeat music, and Radiohead are the victims.

If you listen to the radio in England, it's as if the next world war has broken out.

Thom Yorke¹

He calls the music industry by a distance the most ridiculous business there is. The major labels see themselves as an exclusive club where an album has to cost at least a million guilders or it counts for nothing, and anyone who thinks that much is needed to make a nice record needs professional help. The bosses are show-offs who like to flaunt the CDs in their stable.

They remind me of the people in the posh parts of London who knock out their garage door in case the neighbour doesn't notice their new Jaguar.

Thom Yorke¹

Every Whitney Houston song sounds the same to him, where every Beatles single sounded new.

Singles have turned into the cartons of milk in the supermarket.

Thom Yorke¹

Radiohead started in 1991, when shoegazing ruled in Britain, and Yorke never liked its seas of sound and half-hearted singing. The band are a reaction to it, if perhaps not a conscious one, which is why many in England hear them as old-fashioned rock. He would rather build a career the way R.E.M. and U2 did, in the clubs, where the people a band wins over stay with it, than on image or trends. Radiohead have no single style and look for the sound that suits each song.

You won't hear me say Radiohead are brilliant, but at least we try to surprise ourselves.

Thom Yorke¹

Dutch dates