Thom Yorke tells Radio 1 how Mike Mills set him straight on “Creep”

Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are Johnnie Walker's guests on BBC Radio 1 today, talking about “Creep” and its second release in Britain before they play “Black Star”, the tenth track on The Bends. The band are at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia tonight, so the conversation was recorded earlier.

Yorke tells how, very drunk one night, he moaned about the song to Mike Mills of R.E.M. until Mills told him to shut up. Mills's point, as Yorke tells it, was that a band with one, two or three songs like that should be glad of them. So stop moaning, and just get on with it, and write some more, and shut up. And he was exactly right.¹

The call to put “Creep” out again reached them by fax on their tour bus in America. The music papers and radio wanted it, Yorke says, and the band agreed without much thought. Greenwood remembers a mini-argument in the band over whether it was cynical, but thinks it gave people who had panned the song the first time round a chance to like it. For Yorke it made it even more difficult to kill the beast¹, but he calls “Creep” a great song and is sure they will write four or five like it given the chance.

Then Greenwood announces “Black Star”, and Yorke, remembering that this is a daytime show, says he will shut up.