Thom Yorke tells Esquire how a red tracksuit got him to hospital

Thom Yorke is the subject of Esquire's What I've Learned, the magazine's page of first-person lines, put online on 13 February ahead of the March issue. Cal Fussman talked to him in December.

He was born with his left eye shut, and as a small boy had four or five operations to graft in a muscle that would open the lid. By the age of five he was complaining about going back, so his parents offered him anything he wanted. He chose a red tracksuit, top and bottoms, and was happy to face the anaesthetic and being sick afterwards. He wore it until it was ridiculously small on him.

As a student his bank kept cutting off his card. After he signed a big record deal he went in and paid off everything he owed, and when the banker came round the desk to shake his hand, Yorke told him to fuck off.

A crowd of 20,000 can look like one mass, he says, but within ten minutes on stage he can feel its mood, and Monday audiences take a long time to relax. When Radiohead first started supporting R.E.M., they played some shows to people ordering chicken dinners, which got to him.

I only started singing because I couldn't find anybody else to sing. Everybody I asked was a bloody idiot.

Thom Yorke¹