Thom Yorke tells Time Out how two history books made “Electioneering”

“Electioneering” grew out of two books, Thom Yorke tells Peter Paphides in this week's Time Out: Will Hutton's The State We're In and Eric Hobsbawm's history of the 20th century. Having done no history at school, he came away from them convinced that politicians control nothing. He talks about Third World debt and the banks. Elvis Costello's “Tokyo Storm Warning” he sets beside “Electioneering”. Five months after its release, he is still surprised that OK Computer hangs together so well.

They talk in the back of the tour bus, in Strasbourg after a two-hour show built mostly on The Bends and the new album. Yorke thinks Brussels was better.

Much of the talk goes back to America, where KROQ in Los Angeles picked up “Creep” and the band spent about a year playing it in TV studios and concert halls. They could not get out from under it, Yorke says, and the rest of Pablo Honey never had a chance. American success is the weirdest thing. It's like being given these really great drugs and not being told they have any side-effects.¹

The British press hurt as well. His 1993 description of Radiohead as a feeble excuse for a rock band was lifted from an NME review the week before, and he half agreed with it. An NME caption saying he pulled faces for a living hurt more, and coloured the next two years. The Bends sessions were so short on talk and self-belief that he thought the band might break up. The last row was over “Sulk”, which the others wanted as a single.

Yorke's records, from the feature's panel