Thom Yorke tells the Sydney Morning Herald the album is not a protest record

Thom Yorke tells Craig McLean of the Sydney Morning Herald that Hail to the Thief is not a protest record, and that its title is not aimed at George Bush. He first heard the phrase, which is sung in “2+2=5”, on Radio 4 in a discussion of John Quincy Adams, and it struck him whatever its context. Pinning it on the president would cheapen a record he hopes will outlast him.

It will annoy me if people say it's a direct protest because I feel really strongly that we didn't write a protest record

Thom Yorke¹

That is despite his recent trip with the Oxford writer George Monbiot to a peace rally outside RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire base of American B-52 bombers, where he told a crowd of 2,000 that America was run by religious bigots who had stolen their election. Protesters chanted “hail to the thief” at Bush's inauguration, as Michael Moore's Stupid White Men recounts.

McLean finds him in Fifty Acre Wood outside Bristol, three days into four filming the “There There” video with the director Chris Hopewell, creeping along a forest trail in time to a slowed-down playback of the song. He is making videos, he jokes, because otherwise he would be doing interviews while the rest of the band fly round Europe being asked about the war. He is also pushing the record company to pay for plenty of singles. This is a pop record, it's really direct. I'd love to know that it was on the radio.¹

After Kid A and Amnesiac, he says, the band found themselves asking what unexpected lurch they would make next, the kind of theorising he mocks as the press's, and it was getting to him. He took six months off, and it was his girlfriend, Rachel, who suggested simply making a record and letting it happen, with no agenda. He credits working with Björk on Selmasongs, and watching Michael Stipe from the side of the stage on the REM tour, with making him want to sing and front the band again. He is not sure whether becoming a father is why the band tried to keep things simpler this time.

The energy of the music, Yorke says, gave him licence to write the lyrics he did, and only at the end did he see how angry they were. “I Will” he calls the angriest thing he has written. The whole record keeps trying to understand how one person's decision can affect thousands of lives. Told of Noel Gallagher's view that protest is a waste of time, he pauses and smiles. He needs to read some books.¹