Thom Yorke says Radiohead are not bound to make another album

Thom Yorke says nothing obliges Radiohead to make another album, and that the band are not about to start another nine months in the studio. All five and their producer, Nigel Godrich, spoke to Mark Binelli in Oxford in mid-December for a long feature in Rolling Stone's 7 February issue.

Radiohead is not a contract signed in blood. Every time we do a record, that is not a validation of us carrying on.

Thom Yorke¹

What he would love to do instead, with downloads, is put out singles, perhaps just before a tour, or new work in twos and threes.

The name-your-price download of In Rainbows was dreamed up by the band's managers, Chris Hufford and Bryce Edge, in the gap after Hail to the Thief. Jonny Greenwood says they were a bit stoned at the time. Unlike a lot of Radiohead stuff, this idea really was boredom-driven. Just about avoiding the old.¹

The band have kept their own figures to themselves and say comScore's estimates are too low. The research firm counted 1.2 million visitors to the site in October and reckoned that two in five downloaders paid anything, at an average of $6 each. Yorke is glad they went their own way. If I die tomorrow, I'll be happy that we didn't carry on working within this huge industry that I don't feel any connection with¹

Godrich says he and Yorke argue about pretty much everything, but they agreed on how In Rainbows should begin. If it was up to Thom and I, 'Videotape' would have been the first song on In Rainbows. It's both of our favorite.¹ The rest of the band told them they were crazy.

For In Rainbows the band spent three weeks in a decaying 1830s mansion, living in camper vans on the estate, recording in the old library and staying up till three in the morning playing bad blues rock. Yorke first played “Nude” to Jonny ten years before it was finished.

Yorke has stopped flying. The band considered not touring at all, and turned down the idea of playing near home and beaming the shows into cinemas, before deciding to move their gear and stage by ship and rail wherever they can. Rehearsals began in the last weeks of December, with covers of Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Smiths and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' “The Night”.