Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood disagree over playing Israel

Thom Yorke says he would not play Israel now, and Jonny Greenwood, sitting next to him on the sofa, says he would politely disagree. Absolutely not. I wouldn’t want to be 5,000 miles anywhere near the Netanyahu regime but Jonny has roots there. So I get it.¹ The two talked side by side to Jonathan Dean for The Sunday Times Magazine in the band's first interview together in years; Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway and Colin Greenwood talked to him separately. The interview was done before this month's ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Jonny, who is married to the Israeli artist Sharona Katan and spends much of his time in Israel with family, says he has no loyalty to the government, only to the artists born there. I would argue that the government is more likely to use a boycott and say, ‘Everyone hates us – we should do exactly what we want.’ Which is far more dangerous.¹ He is making a new record with Israeli and other Middle Eastern musicians, and says it is mad that he feels frightened to admit it.

Yorke goes back to the 2017 show in Tel Aviv, when a well-connected man came over at the hotel to thank him and it horrified Yorke to see the gig being hijacked. At the time I thought the gig made sense, but as soon as I got there and that guy came up? Get me the fuck out.¹⁰ The campaign against the band wakes him up at night, he says; he calls it a purity test and a low-level Arthur Miller witch-hunt. Strangers have shouted “Free Palestine!” at him in the street, and with Jonny beside him he sends the charge up himself. But you are whitewashing genocide, mate. And so am I, apparently, by sitting next to you on this sofa.²

O'Brien says they should have played Ramallah, in the West Bank, as well as Tel Aviv. Selway says what the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement asks of them is impossible, because distancing themselves from Jonny would end the band.

On the break, Yorke says the wheels came off a bit by 2018 and they had to stop. He needed to stop anyway, because he had not given himself time to grieve for Rachel Owen, his former partner and the mother of his children, who died of cancer in December 2016. O'Brien says he was effectively over Radiohead in 2018 and told the others so. He went through a deep depression that hit bottom in 2021, and came out of it knowing how much he loves the bandmates he met at 17.

For the tour Yorke sent round a list of 65 songs, which Jonny says they are frantically learning before Yorke turns up and suggests dropping half, and Yorke, O'Brien and Selway will pick each night's set hours before the show. As for new songs, they have not thought past the tour. Jonny doesn't know, and Yorke is just stunned they have got this far.

The tour