Song · OK Computer era (1996–98)
Rabbit in Your Headlights
Jonathan Glazer was unhappy with his video for “Karma Police”, and made this one as its companion.
1997–98
yorke and dj shadow
UNKLE wanted Radiohead and got Thom Yorke on his own. UNKLE were James Lavelle and DJ Shadow. After OK Computer, Lavelle reckoned, Yorke was able to stand a little apart from what Radiohead needed of him, and Yorke wrote this with Josh Davis, DJ Shadow, whose Endtroducing had been an influence on OK Computer.
Yorke recorded the vocal in California in 1997, on tour. The words are Yorke's, and the spoken fragments are sampled from the film Jacob's Ladder. It is the 11th track, piano taken apart, on Psyence Fiction, which came out on Lavelle's label Mo' Wax on 24 August 1998 and went into the British album chart at number four. Chris DeVille at Stereogum, writing on the album's 20th birthday, heard it as a jazz horror show.
1998
glazer's tunnel
Jonathan Glazer had directed “Street Spirit” and “Karma Police”, and was unhappy with the second, feeling he had missed emotionally and dramatically. He made this video as its companion, and considers it the one that worked.
The actor Denis Lavant walks down a road inside a tunnel, muttering. Cars hit him and he gets up each time. He takes off his coat and keeps walking bare-chested, and then a car hits him at full speed and he is the one left standing, arms out, in the smoke. Pitchfork, putting it eighth among the best videos of the 1990s, saw in the tunnel the one where Princess Diana had died the year before, and in any tunnel a walk towards the light at the end of a life.
2002–2026
yorke keeps it
Radiohead have never played it. Yorke walked on towards the end of DJ Shadow's set at the Bristol Academy on 19 May 2002 to sing it, after Shadow had told the crowd a special guest would be along. In 2013 Nigel Godrich posted a clip of Atoms for Peace rehearsing it, Yorke at the piano and Flea behind him with his shirt off, and when Atoms for Peace reached the Roundhouse in London that July it was Flea who took the spoken part. It stayed with Yorke into his solo shows of 2024, and it is in the film of his two Sydney Opera House shows, cut from overhead and over-the-shoulder shots.
on stage
Live, Unkle - Radiohead - Non album tracks.· Radiohead Horizonwatch on youtube →
Live history
| Times played | 7 shows · all of them Thom Yorke solo shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | by Thom Yorke, solo, Saturday 9 April 2022 · Zermatt |
| Last played | by Thom Yorke, solo, Tuesday 26 November 2024 · Kyoto |
Thom Yorke, solo 9 April 2022 Zermatt, 23 October 2024 Christchurch, 26 October 2024 Auckland, 30 October 2024 Melbourne, 2 November 2024 Sydney, 23 November 2024 Tokyo, 26 November 2024 Kyoto
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. Thom Yorke’s solo nights are counted and marked as his; the openers, closers, longest absence and chart are Radiohead’s own. All setlist stats →
Tabs (2)
sources11
- John Burgess, “The Horror! The Horror!”, Jockey Slut, August–September 1998.
- Mac Randall, Exit Music: The Radiohead Story, Omnibus Press.
- Anthony Kaufman, “Shooting the ‘Beast’: Jonathan Glazer tames the gangster genre”, IndieWire, 12 June 2001.
- Chris DeVille, “Unkle's Psyence Fiction turns 20”, Stereogum, 24 August 2018.
- “The top 50 music videos of the 1990s”, Pitchfork, 23 August 2010.
- Jonathan Dean, “Nuclear energy”, The Times, 14 July 2013.
- The site's news story on the release of Psyence Fiction (1998), for UNKLE, the date, the label and the chart place.
- “THOM FOR A SPECIAL GUEST!”, nme.com, 20 May 2002, for Bristol.
- NME, 25 July 2013, report of Atoms for Peace at the Roundhouse on 24 July, for Flea on the spoken part.
- Uncut and Fact, 3 June 2013, for Nigel Godrich's rehearsal clip.
- The site's news stories on Yorke's solo show in Christchurch (2024) and the Sydney Opera House film (2026), for the later performances.