Thom Yorke halts “Myxomatosis” for a fan in Time Out's cover story

Time Out London's Radiohead cover story, “New York Yorke” by Chris Salmon in the issue of 12 to 19 November, is now online at Notrock.

It opens at Toronto's SkyDome in front of 18,000 people, where Thom Yorke stops the band in the middle of “Myxomatosis” after seeing a young man having a fit near the front, and calls for security and an ambulance. The fan is carried out and, as Yorke later tells the crowd, is soon sitting up and chatting backstage. Once he is away, Yorke tells the band to go from the third verse, and they drop straight back into the song as if someone had released a pause button, which delights the crowd. Two days later, on a Central Park bench near the band's New York hotel, he admits he wasn't sure he had picked the right verse until it was too late.

Yorke says he forced himself to enjoy the tour, and credits talks with Michael Stipe and Polly Harvey for easing the guilt that made the OK Computer arena shows so hard; back then, he says, Those big gigs fucked with my head¹. Phil Selway says that ten years in he no longer feels a fraud as a musician. Colin Greenwood puts some of it down to the band's sweat lodges, and Ed O'Brien to shorter tours and less promotion. Three of the band are now fathers, which O'Brien says has made Thom, Phil and Jonny happier.

They agree that their popularity has peaked. They had hoped Hail to the Thief would be heard as a pop album, and it has sold around 200,000 copies in Britain. It's like being released from the clutches¹, says Yorke.