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Thom Yorke covers his ears at Rolling Stone's dinner with Radiohead
Thom Yorke put his hands over his ears and hummed rather than listen to a round of favourite bands at dinner with Rolling Stone's Jon Wiederhorn, whose feature is in the issue of 7 September. Mercury Rev, Supergrass and the Geraldine Fibbers had come up. It was opinions, not music, Yorke told the table, and he asked to talk about something else.
The rest of the band are politer. A few weeks earlier, when their support act, David Gray, wrecked Radiohead's dressing room, the band tidied it up themselves.
We were all brought up in middle class Oxford [England], and there's an air of politeness there that's hard to escape
Yorke tells Wiederhorn that the only place he feels comfortable is in front of a microphone, and that he fears losing touch with who he is. Phil Selway says Yorke throws things off balance whenever they go well, and works best that way. Colin Greenwood says Yorke's songs arrive like a bleaker Elvis Costello, and he adds the chords and structure.
The piece goes back to Yorke's childhood in Scotland, near a beach of wartime bunkers and barbed wire, before the family moved to Oxford when he was eight. Of The Bends, Yorke says it is cynical and nervous, and does not make sense.