Thom Yorke

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

You know you're in trouble when people stop listening to sad music because they're turning themselves off. So speaks this week's castaway, Tom York. And if anyone would know, it's him. Along with his bandmates in Radiohead, he has expanded ideas about what pop music can be and what it can do. As a child, he learned to play the guitar and then built his own. He wrote his first song at 11 about an atomic bomb and has been performing in a band since his school days. Radiohead have endured for 34 years, been critically acclaimed the world over and sold over 30 million albums. Beyond the band, Tom has continued to push boundaries as a solo artist and now as a composer. He recently created his first classical piece Don't Fear the Light and scored the horror film Suspiria. He says, when an artist starts repeating themselves because they think that's what people want, it's all over. All I've done with the band is try and create enough of a space of safety around what we're doing creatively to feel free. Essentially, you've got to be prepared to torch it at any moment. Tom York, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Thom Yorke1:49

Thank you for having me.

Presenter1:50

So that idea of torching it then, does that mean that as music fans we're hearing a tiny proportion of your total creative output of your recordings?

Thom Yorke1:59

No, I mean I wish there was vaults full of other stuff, but no, it's more you need to feel an unsuredness is that a real word? About where it is you're going. Oftentimes in the studio, someone's recording something and they come in and they go, Mm, was that good? And the people in the control room are going, oh my god. That's sort of it. The torching it is saying to yourself, I don't know what I'm doing. Good music comes because you are there ready to receive it.

Presenter2:31

I've heard you talking about being in the studio and describing the search for a hit, not as in a hit single, but as in the hit of a drug almost. What's that like? What's it like when you reach that moment?

Thom Yorke2:39

Oh yeah.

Thom Yorke2:42

Um, suddenly something happens and you get this elation. It can feed your soul for like months or even years, which probably sounds incredibly precious, but honestly, that's what I've choosed to do with my life for how many years?

Presenter2:56

Thirty-four I think is radio hit now. Good while

Thom Yorke2:57

I think is ready.

Thom Yorke2:58

That's me. You know, and if it's really powerful, it's almost visual for me. I see things.

Presenter3:04

Yes, you've described having synaesthesia.

Thom Yorke3:06

It's not like synesthesia in the sense that I can't see anything else, but especially when a piece of music first happens in the way you've been hoping it happens, I get that thing. It's a colour or a shape or or a movement. I can see it in my head. Yeah. I mean, that's normal, right?

Presenter3:22

Well, I think it might be common, but I'm not sure about normal. How long's that been going on?

Thom Yorke3:27

I I guess since I started m making music I've always had that. But then of course the Eureka moments didn't really happen when I was twelve.

Presenter3:35

It's time to go to the music. Tell us about your first piece today. Why have you chosen this?

Thom Yorke3:39

These are friends of ours, the Lebec sisters, and they are two virtuoso piano players. And I recently actually wrote, for the first time in my life, I wrote piano music for them, even though I can't read music. And I was thinking, okay, you're on the desert island, and I'm a musician, so I'm going to struggle with my choices, because by the nature of being a musician, I'm going to hate them.

Presenter3:40

Yeah.

Thom Yorke4:03

Go on.

Presenter4:03

Go on, tell me more about that for the non-musicians listening.

Thom Yorke4:03

Thank you.

Thom Yorke4:04

The non-musician

Thom Yorke4:06

I spend my life listening to the same thing over and over and over and over and over again until I've got it right. And the same goes with any piece of music. If you listen to it enough times, you're gonna see through it or you're gonna hate it or you're gonna your relationship with it changes. And I would not want that to happen. So the choices on a desert island, they'd have to be small doses of something very, very sweet at the time when I really, really need something. So this particular piece starts sad, tentative, cautious, you know, feeling around where it wants to be and then it opens up and it opens up and it flowers, you know, literally like the dawn to me. And I felt I'm gonna need that because I'm gonna be going completely out of my mind.

Presenter5:59

Uh Yeah.

Presenter6:03

Ravel's Le Jardin Férique by the Lebec sisters Katia and Marielle. Tell me what you were spellbound, Julia.

Thom Yorke6:09

I was also thinking'cause the only reason I chose that to make it look like I'm smart.

Thom Yorke6:15

So I could whack one classical piece in and like, okay,

Presenter6:19

No false modesty on this programme, because you have taken in a new route into classical music, as you said.

Thom Yorke6:24

In fact, encouraged by them, they kept saying, You should write something for us I'm like, Ha ha ha ha Can't read music And then I realized actually I didn't really need to read music, I'd just do it on the computer

Presenter6:34

Radiohead have enjoyed 34 years together. What about being a lead vocalist for all those years? Do you have to take care of your voice when you're not on stage or recording?

Thom Yorke6:43

I used to have when we first started I have a lot I had a lot of problems with my voice because I'd not really ever done it before and because I was drinking myself senseless well at the time that didn't help and I'd sort of had a wake-up call I had to give up smoking I found myself in a Harley Street doctor's one time and he was really cool and he explained the exact physics of the voice and why you need to do this and this with it and blah blah blah and then there was a time when I was working with Bjork we went out somewhere I kind of got really trashed and then the next morning I woke up to the sound of her warming up.

Presenter7:20

What's that like?

Thom Yorke7:21

That's pretty wild. Can you imagine? Anyway, it was pretty beautiful. But also like, wow, it's ten thirty in the morning and you're warming up and we're only going to be like singing for a bit. And then I started taking it seriously.

Presenter7:23

Yeah.

Thom Yorke7:33

But I was winging it for many years. But I think mostly it's I have to say, being a musician and being someone who has been in the fortunate position to do all these big shows and so on, there's one really awful feeling, and that's when a singer loses their voice on tour. It's awful because you don't want to let anyone down. Every single time this happens, my band have been just amazing. They always supported me because they can see me freaking out. I remember doing a show in Brisbane once, walking on stage, and I'd just convinced myself that I could do it. I'd been to see a doctor and they were like, well, and they'd give me God knows what to try and make it work. And 20 minutes in, my voice just went completely went. I couldn't speak, nothing. And there was 20,000 people there and I walked off and there was booing. And the guys went back on and they explained. People weren't happy about it. And honestly, there's the most terrible. You don't want to let people down. But it's I've got my head around it now and I forgive myself because it's not my fault. You know, if it happens, it happens.

Presenter8:44

It's interesting hearing you relay that experience. It's literally like an anxiety dream that's a one of us.

Thom Yorke8:48

Yeah, we're down.

Presenter8:48

Would have, but real.

Thom Yorke8:50

Actually that particular night I had like this for some peculiar reason I thought it would be a good idea to get someone to come in to do like do one of those you know what they call it Reiki things where they're like they do I'd never done it before in my life, good choice. So there I am after going through this terrible experience. This person doing this and I have a complete out of body experience, like a flat out, out of body, like I'm

Presenter9:00

Oh yeah.

Thom Yorke9:11

Above myself, going, Well, that's not good at all. Not only have I just let down all these people, now I'm not inside my body. This is really not going very well. Oh, Tom.

Presenter9:21

Let's gather ourselves. Time for the next track. Tell us about this one.

Thom Yorke9:25

Speaking of golden voices.

Presenter9:29

Yeah, go on, stay with it, commit.

Thom Yorke9:30

I'm vying for a job on Radio 6. 6 Music. Scott Walker, one of my heroes. This song because it's a desert island, right? And it's going to rain. It's in a sort of tropical style-y. And I was thinking, I'll put it on when it rains and I'll listen to this lovely love story, remind myself of what it feels like to be on a train, see someone in the distance, that whole romance thing, sort of something from a film. It's such a sort of beautifully whimsical piece, but weirdly, so profound musically. The way he sings it leaves me gobsmacked every time. It's saying, I'm here now, this is happening now, and then it's going to be gone, and I'm going to be moving on, trying to relay my dreams to someone else. As we all want to do, as we all need to do, and there I am on my desert island, not able to do that. So it felt a good choice for that.

Presenter10:26

Yeah.

Thom Yorke10:26

It's raining today.

Thom Yorke10:30

And I'm just about to forget

Speaker 310:36

The train. Window Girl

Thom Yorke10:46

That wonderful day we met

Speaker 310:53

She smiles through the smoke

Presenter11:00

From my cigarette. It's raining today, Scott Walker.

Presenter11:06

Tom Yorke, you were born in Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, nineteen sixty eight. Apparently so. Along with your brother Andy and your parents Barbara and Grabe, you eventually settled in Oxford in the late seventies. How would you describe family life?

Thom Yorke11:10

Apparently so.

Thom Yorke11:17

How much is it?

Thom Yorke11:19

Well actually before the seventies we were in uh Scotland. I had a thick Scottish accent, which I can still recall now.

Thom Yorke11:26

Uh yeah, what was it like? It was very normal, suburban, lived in a house down a cul-de-sac. Father was a sort of complicated chemical engineering stuff I didn't understand. I spent a lot of time on my bike because we lived near gravel pits and I would go off on my own for the day cycling for miles and then doing stunts on the gravel pits which I realised now was a bit stupid because I was on my own and if I'd help myself no one would ever found me. But anyway, I spent a lot of time listening to music, obviously. More realistic. Breaking things. In fact I listened to Jerry Madella talking about this. It's very similar to him. I started off recording stuff off the radio, watching Top of the Pops, getting excited when something weird happened like Gary Newman and I got really obsessed with music and I thought everyone was and I realized they weren't quite in the same way I was.

Presenter12:02

More realistic.

Presenter12:23

You said you like breaking things.

Thom Yorke12:25

Yeah, I was really fond of breaking electrical things. I took one of an old T V of my parents and I had it in my room and I pulled all the back out and it was probably incredibly dangerous, but I liked the fizz of the cathode ray when you turned it on and I liked the smell of the old electronics and I would try and pull baits out and see if it still worked. Younger than that I was obsessed with Lego. Always building things I guess.

Presenter12:48

You uh built a guitar. You'd started playing when you were quite young.

Thom Yorke12:50

Quite young. I started playing when I was seven, eight, and I was obsessed with Queen when Bohemian Rhapsody came out. I lay down in front of these big speakers in my friend's house and we just listened to Bohemian Rhapsody. And at that point, I decided, Yep, this is what I'm doing. And then soon after that, I decided I was going to do what Brian May did, Build a Guitar. And it sort of worked, but I mean it was like rough, literally rough cut out with a saw. You know, it was terrible.

Presenter13:09

Um

Presenter13:19

I think that's quite impressive for that idea. Do you really know what?

Thom Yorke13:20

But it wasn't. It really wasn't, believe me, it really wasn't. And then shortly after that, my dad felt sorry for me and eventually bought me one. Why did you?

Presenter13:26

Why did you want to sing them?

Thom Yorke13:27

I didn't want to sing originally, and we used to go to a friend's house who had a very, very tolerant mum, who let us play for hours, just make terrible noise, and uh no one else would sing.

Presenter13:38

I want to go back a little bit. I mean, you did have quite a tough time when you were little. You had eye surgery when you were really young. Tell me about that.

Thom Yorke13:45

Um

Thom Yorke13:46

I mean

Thom Yorke13:48

It was probably tough. When I was born, uh the the the left eye was was shut, there was no muscles that would open it. So they uh and this was in the seventies where they take a bit of muscle from elsewhere, in my case my ass, and they um graft it on to make it work. But it's quite a tricky operation, I won't go into the details, but it's pretty bug. And uh this was an initial operation when I was just about old enough to deal with it. And I woke up, my mum said and I said

Speaker 414:08

Pink.

Thom Yorke14:17

Mum, mum, mummy, mummy, what's I got? What's I got? Because I couldn't understand what was going on, you know. And then I went for like three or four operations after that.

Thom Yorke14:30

You know, it's people go through this stuff, it's not a big drama, but um I started trying to work it in my favor by the end because my parents were saying, So for this last operation you can ask for anything you like I was like, Anything I like. What am I, like four or something? So I asked for a Adidas red track suit.

Presenter14:47

Did you get it?

Thom Yorke14:47

Yeah.

Presenter14:48

That is a hard thing to go through, you know, where you tease kids can be quite cruel.

Thom Yorke14:53

Yeah, they were cruel. There's always a few arseholes.

Thom Yorke14:56

But the one point for me was the last operation went wrong and it's kind of blind. So it looks good, but I can't really use it much. And then after that, I went to see this amazing old surgeon. He said, Well, mate, you're never going to fly in the RAF, but at least it looks right. And he said, I can do one operation, which means it comes up to exactly the same level as the other, and you'll look normal. But this means you won't be able to close it properly and you'll have to probably put a patch over your eye when you sleep. So at that point, I decided I liked the fact that it you know, it wasn't the same. And I've liked it ever since. And when people st say stuff, I kind of thought it was like a badge of pride. I still do. I think we're all born with something wrong with us, and that was mine.

Presenter15:47

Let's go with the music. Tell me about your next choice.

Thom Yorke15:50

Talking Heads. So going back to my friends with a tolerant mother, John, he was called. Right, John? I remember him one weekend saying, I've got this new record, Talking Heads. It was Remain in Light. He puts this thing on and it was like a bomb going off in my head. I literally never heard anything like it and didn't realize that you could put people into a trance like that. I later realized that his influences were from Fellakuti and Afrobeat and all that stuff. But Talking Heads did something with a studio that had never been done before. And even at a young age, I could kind of see that. And still now, it's not like anything else ever.

Presenter16:01

Uh

Thom Yorke16:36

And I would ask, and you're going to say no, because there's rules about these things, but I'd have to say, I'd have to take the whole record. Come on, come on. Come on, don't kill me.

Presenter16:43

Oh, come on, come on. Don't kill me that way, Tom. It's a bold play, but it's

Thom Yorke16:47

It's not going to happen, is it?

Presenter16:48

It's a disclaimer. 1942 started doing this. Come on now.

Thom Yorke16:52

Anyway, I'll just have to imagine the rest of the record, won't I?

Presenter16:56

Yeah, you will.

Speaker 317:01

Come look at me.

Speaker 317:05

Take a look at me!

Thom Yorke17:09

The hands beats.

Thom Yorke17:13

Well done,

Thom Yorke17:17

Well I'm a tumbler

Thom Yorke17:21

Yeah.

Presenter17:21

Oh no, punches!

Presenter17:25

I'm so thin, all I want is to breathe.

Speaker 417:33

Yeah.

Presenter17:35

Talking Heads and Born Under Punches. Tom York Radiohead are of course named after a Talking Heads song. Yes. And you met your bandmates, brothers Johnny and Colin Greenwood, Philip Selway and Ed O'Brien at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire. So it's your music teacher there, Terence Gilmore James, remembers you as, I quote, forlorn and a little isolated. Oh, really? Yeah.

Thom Yorke17:57

Oh really?

Thom Yorke17:58

Thanks, Gary.

Presenter17:59

Yeah.

Thom Yorke18:01

You wouldn't have thought it, would you? Judging by what I've been saying so far. Um w w yeah, probably right. I mean to me the music school and the art school was my sanctuary. That's where I spent all my time. Sanctuary?

Presenter18:13

Sanctuary from what?

Thom Yorke18:18

Uh, a posh private boys' school full of arseholes. Not completely, obviously. Um, there were some good teachers, but the system of it I didn't really get on with. I'm not really a what do you call it?

Thom Yorke18:33

I don't blend well. Um anyway, there I was, mostly with my headphones on or playing guitar or playing piano. And I guess I was really lucky. Two of these teachers, the head of the art department and and the head of music department, sorta saw something in me and were incredibly supportive. I couldn't read music, but Terry's like, I'm not bothered about that. I can see you have something.

Presenter18:59

Did you try to learn to to read music?

Thom Yorke19:00

To the

Thom Yorke19:01

I tried and tried, I I can't, I still can't. And the same with um Mr Hunter, the art teacher. I didn't really see myself as an artist and he came to me and said, I can see something in what you're doing that's very different. And you don't realize until after how important that is.

Presenter19:19

Mm-hmm.

Thom Yorke19:20

I'm absolutely convinced that if both those kind men if they had not done that, I wouldn't be here today doing this.

Thom Yorke19:35

Convinced.

Presenter19:36

Have you ever thought about where you might have ended up if that hadn't gotten to the point?

Thom Yorke19:39

Courtney

Presenter19:41

So you had music to kind of shield you from what was going on. Did you feel like you'd found your place, or did you still kind of feel like you hadn't found a place that you fit in?

Thom Yorke19:44

Yeah.

Thom Yorke19:49

Well, what's weird about it is that music became like my escape, but also the only thing that I could use to resolve the schisms of life, right? And I could not do without it. I physically not possible. I mean, I've read a lot about what music does to people now. You know, the mathematics of music, the the the frequencies, what they do to human beings, you know, the these emotions that music can give you, they're real things and they're precious things to me. And I might sound completely gaga these days because music is now seen as just another product. I mean, I'm one of many, many content uh providers, but I've never seen it like that and I never will see it like that. It's it's a sacred thing to me because I thi I believe that human beings need it. Uh I never ever say this stuff publicly, so this is a good time to do it, right?

Presenter20:49

Let's get it out to. I think now's the time.

Thom Yorke20:49

Yeah.

Thom Yorke20:51

Uh where was I? I have no idea. We were talking about school. How did I get to that point? Anyway.

Presenter20:55

You couldn't be without it. How did your parents react to that?

Thom Yorke20:56

Aaron's react

Thom Yorke20:57

They were pretty tolerant actually, I gotta be fair. Especially when I got like my big amp and then the amp was above the T V room.

Thom Yorke21:09

And my dad would come up and say, I literally cannot hear the television. At the time I'm like, I'll go away, I'm doing my thing, man.

Thom Yorke21:17

But uh it's like, yeah, you know what? Fair enough.

Presenter21:18

Uh

Thom Yorke21:20

They would, you know, take me along to gigs when I had gigs, but I was really very, very determined to do what I did. You know, there was a few times when they said you you can't do something this weekend and I would just go AWOL and uh report back sheepishly on a Sunday because I was gonna do a concert and that was that.

Presenter21:38

Because

Presenter21:41

It's time for your fourth disc. Tell us about this one.

Thom Yorke21:44

This is Square Pusher and Apex Twin, Freeman Hardy and Willis Acid. I chose this because this was one of those pivotal musical moments in one's life when I had just been on tour for too long at the end of this massive cycle of endlessly, endlessly, endlessly playing the same songs, being in a band, playing with guitars. And I'm driving through the night down to Cornwall. And John Peel is on, and he, in his dawah manner, announces this track. And I'm driving quite fast down country lanes. Halfway through, something happens in this track. It's like I'm having a seizure or something. I slam the car to a halt, pull into the side, and just drive. I'm like completely transfixed. It's so intense. It's electronic, but it's got jazz in it. It's just really vicious. But it also harkens back to this whole period that I felt like I'd missed because I'd decided to be in a rock band. And you know, sometimes you hear a piece of music and like, thank God someone's done that. Thank God. This track came on and it was like a door opening up for me. It was like, this is really important to me. There's something in here that I need.

Presenter23:46

Freeman Hardian Willis Acid, Square Pusher and Aphex Twin.

Thom Yorke23:50

Bangin'

Presenter23:50

Banging it is, it is, but but also jazz, but also jazzy, isn't it, really?

Thom Yorke23:52

Also jazz, but also jazzy, isn't it really? Basically.

Presenter23:54

Uh

Presenter23:55

Tom York, you took a a gap year after you left school.

Thom Yorke23:58

Guya.

Presenter23:59

How come?

Thom Yorke24:00

Because I wanted to figure out whether I was completely insane, whether I really wanted to be a musician or or not.

Thom Yorke24:05

I just did a bunch of dead-end jobs and made a demo tape.

Presenter24:09

Working in a shop, would that be one of the dead end jobs that

Thom Yorke24:12

Oh yes, Debenhams. I sold suits. That that was one of the jobs.

Presenter24:17

Were you good at that?

Thom Yorke24:17

Were you good at that? Well, what do you think? No. No, I think no. No.

Presenter24:19

No, I think no.

Presenter24:22

Sorry.

Thom Yorke24:23

My first fatal flaw was being brutally honest. My second fatal flaw was that the old boy I worked with was an amazing guy. And these old boys would come in and they'd try on these brown suits and they were all brown and tweedy and whatever. None of them fit right. Me and this lovely old man would say, I'm sorry, that really doesn't look very good. And then they would leave. And then I got called up to the manager's office. He said, you really don't have the right motivation. And I said, well, you really don't have the right suits. So it really didn't go very well after that.

Presenter24:52

Yeah.

Presenter24:53

So you can see that.

Thom Yorke24:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Presenter24:55

You made a demo, you said. And I think that that was quite well received, right?

Thom Yorke25:02

Yeah, I made this demo. This was what I was really doing in my life. Sent it in. There was this free magazine in the music shop. Of course, I went to the music shop every weekend, annoyed the people in there and tried drum machines, whatever. And in this music monthly magazine, they had a demo review thing. So I sent this demo in there with Ed's help. And Ed put his name at the bottom because I was too nervous to put my name at the bottom. I didn't think really much of it. And then I was back in the shop a few weeks later and pick up the magazine and there's my face and it says, Who is this guy? This is amazing. Top demo. He sounds just like Neil Young. To which my response was.

Presenter25:12

Yeah.

Thom Yorke25:49

Who's near young?

Thom Yorke25:51

So I went and bought, after the gold rush, the record.

Presenter25:55

So Ed O'Brien had his name on there as well. Was it him that they contacted? Yes. Because you were offered a record.

Thom Yorke26:00

I forget. Yeah, they continue that. Me and Ed found ourselves in in the offices of Ireland Records shortly afterwards.

Presenter26:08

What was that like?

Thom Yorke26:08

What was that like? It was cool. Neither of us felt mentally ready for what was going on. So we kind of just basically said, Listen, we don't think we're ready for this yet. And the head of A and L was like, That's cool, don't worry. Come back when you're finished'cause we're like

Thom Yorke26:23

You know, we want to be good boys and get to university and in the back of mind we're a game to

Thom Yorke26:27

Don't do it!

Thom Yorke26:28

But we did it. We went to University instead.

Presenter26:31

And why did you make that choice?

Thom Yorke26:33

I don't know. I don't know. I felt like I I really wanted to go and study art especially and I wanted I didn't feel I was mentally ready to spend my life on tour and it was like actually the best decision I made because I did English and I did fine art and the art college thing just blew my mind and without that those three years I wouldn't have been creatively prepared for then what happened after.

Presenter26:35

Um

Presenter27:03

We've got to go to the music now. It's your fifth disc today, Tom. Tell us about it. Why have you chosen it?

Thom Yorke27:08

Well, I feel like one of the things I've been thinking about on this Desert Island is when I first started thinking about what music to choose, obviously I gravitated towards weirdness and ambience and electronic. And then I realised like, okay, hang on a minute. I'm going to be on my own on a Desert Island. I'm going to need human voices. And I'm going to need the voices that really have helped me and Neil Young. From that moment, after that demo tape, I bought after the gold rush, I took it home, and it's always been one of my favourite records. And this particular song, especially the lyrics, I remember.

Thom Yorke27:51

Just thinking, wow, someone's writing that?

Thom Yorke27:54

I still now blows my mind the words to this song. Um after uh many years and going the circles of life I end up being asked to play a benefit concert of his and I agree to do it and uh the night before you go to his house and you hang out with all these other musicians that are doing it. So me being me, I'm not a particularly sociable kind of guy, not very good in these situations. So I have to sort of prepare myself by uh drinking heavily.

Thom Yorke28:28

And eventually after pretty much the entire evening's gone by and he keeps walking past me and I'm like freezing, you know,'cause it's basically like someone meeting Elvis in their house. Eventually he stops to talk to me and I just go,

Thom Yorke28:43

I really want to play After the God Rush tomorrow. He's like, Really? That's great. You could do it on the piano um I recorded it on. I'm like, Ah.

Thom Yorke28:53

Ah

Thom Yorke28:55

So there I am on the day with Neil Young side of stage watching me playing this incredible song or trying to because it's too high for me to sing in front of him on the piano it was recorded on.

Speaker 429:06

Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armour come and say

Thom Yorke29:12

Saying something about a queen.

Thom Yorke29:17

There were peasants singing and drummers drumming

Speaker 329:21

Bowman and the archer split the tree

Speaker 329:26

There was a fanfare

Speaker 429:29

Air blowing to the sun that was floating on the breeze

Presenter29:40

Brooked Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies Neil Young and After the Gold Rush. I mean, a unique voice, Tom York. And I can see why, you know, early reviewers and and people subsequently have have drawn parallels between, you know, his voice and yours.

Thom Yorke29:59

In my dreams. Yeah, it's funny listening to it. I remember when I got that record, it was the first time I thought, wow, it's so fragile. Even when a singer is singing technically brilliantly, the powerful stuff is the stuff where there's the vulnerability, the sense that things could just fall apart at any minute. I mean, you know, I was only like eighteen, but until I got that record, I didn't realize how important that was going to be to me. And the other guys picked up on it quicker than I did, and I was always trying to hide behind, turn the vocal down, add things on top. But I think by the time we were doing the Benz, the second record, it was like, oh, okay. And we actually had gone to see Jeff Buckley the night before or something. And that was the final nail for me. I'm like, okay, now I get it.'Cause he was just on his own. So I sort of gradually put all the layers away and said, Okay, well sometimes it's just gonna be vulnerable and that's gonna be okay.

Thom Yorke31:02

Uh

Presenter31:02

Radiohead were hit straight away. You connected pretty quickly. Was that something you were expecting? And how did it feel when it happened? Was it fun?

Thom Yorke31:10

Um is it f

Thom Yorke31:12

Yeah, it was kind of cool. We were suddenly arrive in America for the first time and stretched limos, bless them, they've all gone now, thank God. And I remember being in the record company and they'd laid out a hundred records and we had to sign them. And I was looking at this pen thinking, and I was like, I've never done this. I've never signed a record before. It was mad. So they put us in first class on an aeroplane. I'm like, wow. And.

Thom Yorke31:40

Then it was really kinda out of control and we were being asked to go on like live television. We we'd never been on live television. We'd we'd been in a van driving around doing support gigs. So how did it feel? It felt funny and bit of a panic. It imbued this sense that we absolutely didn't deserve this. Thus ten years of overcompensating for that by never ever ever doing anything that wasn't the best that we could possibly do to the point of total obsessiveness. You know we we expected to be able to build up our ability to do what we needed to do, get better at it and then one day the doors would open but unfortunately the doors opened way before we were ready.

Thom Yorke32:26

I mean, I'm not complaining actually, because basically without that, we never would have been given the chance, never have been allowed to spend months in the studio, because that's the way that record companies worked in those days. If you were making the money, they'll let you do what you want.

Presenter32:35

Because

Presenter32:40

And I mean that downside, processing it at a pretty young age, you know, twenty two, twenty three, maybe very sensitive person. How did you cope with it emotionally?

Thom Yorke32:45

Three maybe?

Thom Yorke32:50

Uh I got angry because I've been I've been pretending all programme that I'm like this sensitive, you know, but um I'm I'm I'm also an extremely angry person and um I got more control freakery, I became more unbearable, more like it's gonna be like this or it's not gonna happen. I sort of put my hands on the steering wheel and I white knuckled and I didn't care who got hurt and I didn't care what I said until the end of OK Computer. I just was white knuckled. Don't mess with me'cause this is what's happening. Years later I I sat down with the guys and I apologised. I'm sorry, I didn't realize how bad it got. But that was my way I've I dealt with it.

Thom Yorke33:37

And actually by the time we got to recording OK Computer we'd had the doors had opened up and we had just the best time doing that record because we knew that people were interested in us finally for what we actually were and we the possibilities just seemed completely endless. Suddenly we had all this support and we'd fought so hard to get it. And I think the problem for me, if I'm honest, is I wasn't enjoying it until later on because I had my hands so stuck on that steering wheel, white knuckling, I didn't want to make a mistake. I was terrified of making a mistake.

Presenter34:15

Let's go with the music. Time for your sixth disc today, Tom.

Thom Yorke34:18

Ah, yes. Well, now we're on to R M.

Thom Yorke34:22

R.E.M. were extremely important to us, in fact. Just through this period that I'm talking about, we went on tour of them and the backstory to this was like Michael Stipe, the singer of R.E.M., was my hero and this to me was like the hand of God reaching down from the clouds and saying you!

Thom Yorke34:47

And now I'm friends with him. It's it's a odd thing for me. So we're on tour with him. And then

Thom Yorke34:54

He helps me through this the end of that period when things just went crazy, when people started to talk to me like I was Jesus or something in the street. I would call him and say, I can't handle it. I can't I can't handle it.

Thom Yorke35:08

And he taught me so much, and he he would say, Use some of what I taught you about making yourself invisible um so

Thom Yorke35:20

He said, Do the stuff I taught you, put the shutters down, you know, walk away.

Thom Yorke35:27

And uh I was in a really lucky position at that point and they taught us how to be gracious with people and have fun and uh

Thom Yorke35:39

And

Thom Yorke35:41

Anyway, R. E. M. when I was a kid, they were the the link for me between the art student part of me and the musician part of me. And uh Michael and the people he worked with had this attitude about what they were doing, which to me was like folk art.

Thom Yorke36:04

You know, strangeness, mystery. And this first record, Murmur, was just, again, another door opening in my life, making me think about music in a completely different way, even at that age. Even now, you know, it's simple, but the words are there, but they're not. What are they? I still don't know. There's a sort of joy in it and a madness to it.

Speaker 336:27

Uh

Speaker 436:27

Uh

Speaker 336:27

Empty parent

Speaker 436:30

Congratulations Empty prayer, empty mouse Talk about the passion

Speaker 436:43

Uh

Thom Yorke36:43

Everyone can carry the weight of the world not

Thom Yorke36:50

And who you wanna carry

Speaker 436:52

The way to the world

Speaker 436:59

Talk about their passion

Presenter37:04

Talk About the Passion by R. E. M. Tom York, you clearly feel things very deeply. I think you've described waking up every night as a newish father, worrying about climate change.

Thom Yorke37:16

Oh my god, that sounds like a nightmare.

Thom Yorke37:20

Um I did then. Yep. I was um obsessed with it and I think actually in retrospect for good reason. And my response was to try and do something about it. Before that I'd got involved with the drop the debt thing with Bono, the Jubilee two thousand campaign, and I felt it was just really weird in the end. It was I found it really stressful. However, I couldn't I couldn't look at my little boy and not think, Okay, I'm gonna try and do something. And then sometime later I got involved with Friends of the Earth in the campaign to bring about a climate change act and it was kinda cool actually. I was very proud, but it was very stressful.

Presenter38:04

You went on after that experience to work with Greenpeace for many years. I mean, from your side, what are the responsibilities that come with campaigning, do you think?

Thom Yorke38:07

Clink

Thom Yorke38:12

I think the thing I've always struggled somewhat with is that, you know, if I'm campaigning on climate change, I'm someone who has to fly for my work. So, boom, I'm a hypocrite. Yes, I totally agree I'm a hypocrite, but I'm trying to do something about it. But yes, you're right, I'm a hypocrite. What do you want to do about it? Blah blah blah. But fighting that battle all the time, I think at some point it can become like detrimental to the people who are doing all this hard work. So I'm really painfully aware that it can be a good thing if a support and it can be a distraction as well at the same time. But you know, the truth of the matter is, we're all part of a system, systemic thing that has to change. You know, there are a million things that need to change on a structural level. And us arguing amongst ourselves about, oh, what could I do to make a difference? is like you can do stuff but

Presenter38:24

Yeah.

Thom Yorke39:06

The real stuff, it has to happen in Parliament, it has to happen at the UN, and it has to happen now. I mean, we're out of time.

Thom Yorke39:15

So all our governments have to turn round and say, we cannot live like this anymore. We have to change and you have to accept that. None of them want to do this. They need to do this. And that's why people are on the streets. That's why people are gluing themselves to buildings. Because mainstream politics is too terrified to turn round and tell people things are going to have to change and you're not going to like it.

Presenter39:43

Let's go to music. It's your seventh disc. Why have you chosen this one?

Thom Yorke39:45

Why not?

Thom Yorke39:47

Sidney Becher. I came late to Sidney Becher. The man was a total lunatic. But I also realised that my mother, she was really into triad jazz when she was also an art student. But I found something about Sidney Becher that I didn't find anywhere else in jazz. The way he plays, it's incredibly sexy to me. This song is so sexual and so... What's the word? Like, there's an elation in the way the band are playing. Anyway, Sidney Becher, just this performance, the way he plays, the way it sings, the way it opens up. I went through a phase of Dejang quite a lot. It was a way of not speaking to people, but still being in a room.

Thom Yorke40:33

And um oh, I know. Yeah, right. And uh I'd be playing like banging techno or whatever, blah blah blah, and then I'd drop this tune and the place would just go nuts in a really cool way, you know, because it's so sexy, it's so sexual. Oh, shut up.

Thom Yorke40:49

Uh

Speaker 341:02

Uh

Presenter41:02

Ah

Presenter41:05

Mm-hmm.

Presenter41:09

I'm not sure.

Presenter41:35

Uh

Thom Yorke41:54

What a bad off.

Presenter41:55

I am amazing.

Presenter41:57

Sidney Becher and Blue Horizon. Tom, you're when asked about fatherhood in the past, you once said having kids made a massive difference to me and with the tragic death of your ex wife, Rachel, at just forty eight, the challenges of parenting are even more acute. What kind of dad are you?

Thom Yorke42:17

I guess I'm more like their friend. Uh I can't hope to be

Thom Yorke42:24

The mum.

Thom Yorke42:25

Um

Thom Yorke42:27

Mm-hmm.

Thom Yorke42:29

But we're alright. We do quite well. I mean

Thom Yorke42:36

I I'm probably a fairly relaxed dad. Well they would probably argue differently, but you know, we we have a a a sort of semi-chaotic household. But my son is he's um he's eighteen now and he's just off making music. You know, we just hang out. Um my daughter's a really positive, great person, makes people laugh. I'm just really proud of them both. I mean it just stuns me that most days I'm just like I can't believe they're anything to do with me. They're just such great people.

Presenter43:12

I think Radiohead have thirteen kids in total.

Thom Yorke43:15

Yeah, man. There was like last time I think we went on tour, I think they were all with us. And they really get on. It's kinda cool. I mean, I wasn't supervising. Luckily, I don't think I could handle that. But they basically took control of one bus. But yeah, they get on really well together. It's very sweet.

Presenter43:28

Yeah.

Presenter43:31

We talked earlier about your ambition as a as a young man. What are your ambitions at fifty?

Thom Yorke43:36

Uh my ambitions at fifth street hm.

Thom Yorke43:40

Well, I would say my ambition is

Thom Yorke43:45

When um the kids

Thom Yorke43:49

Mum died. It was a very difficult period. And we went through a lot. And it was very hard. She suffered a great deal.

Speaker 343:51

There's a fine.

Thom Yorke44:02

Uh and my ambition is to make sure that we uh come out of it all right. Um and I hope that's what's happening.

Thom Yorke44:14

I'm lucky now, because I have a new partner.

Thom Yorke44:18

who's come and brought a light into all of it, um which has taken a great deal of strength. Um and really, if all that's okay, I then want to be able to go to my metaphorical potting shed down the end of the garden and carry on tinkering away on my new devices and feel everybody's okay. That's my ambition. And if I'm still able to make some music that expresses all that and is still important to people, if I'm still taking risks and affecting people, then wow, I mean it's more than I can ask for. That's way more than I need.

Presenter45:01

It's time for your last disc, Tom.

Thom Yorke45:03

Ah, so we're back on this desert island, right? So when I started thinking about doing this, of course my first thought was Castaway with Tom Hanks. And to be honest, I'd be looking forward to it. The chance to just, you know, have a bit of time to chill. I'm into that. And as I said before, initially I thought of all this electronic stuff that would be good in the mind, but then I realised, no, no, no, no, no. It's my heart that's going to need help because I'm on my own. So I ended up with human voices. Now, Lilac Wine by Nina Simone has affected me in a way that not many pieces of music in my life has affected me. What I hear in it is this incredible woman with this incredible voice who takes an old 1950s song and makes it at once dark but at once light, fragile, obviously on the edge of crazy. There's something really unhinged about the way she sings it. And if I'm on a desert island, I need Nina Simone there with me singing this song because there'll be moments when things are really, really dark and you need someone to remind you that they've been through that. But it's also a song where

Presenter45:17

Mm-hmm.

Thom Yorke46:20

You can

Thom Yorke46:21

Wake up in the morning and rise with it, a he a fellow human being suffering and that they are with you and that we all share the same kind of feelings and emotions.

Thom Yorke46:33

All that from three minutes.

Thom Yorke46:37

Yeah.

Speaker 446:37

Thy loved one.

Speaker 446:43

It's sweet.

Speaker 446:47

And heady.

Speaker 446:50

Like my love

Speaker 447:00

I locked one.

Speaker 447:02

Uh

Speaker 447:06

I feel

Speaker 447:08

I'm steady

Speaker 447:12

Like my love.

Presenter47:15

Nina Simone and Lila Quine. Okay, then, Tom York, the time has come. Uh oh. You are off to the island. You have the books to read while you're there, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can also have another book of your choice. What would you like?

Thom Yorke47:19

Hello.

Thom Yorke47:23

Goodbye.

Thom Yorke47:29

Ah, I'd like a Suzuki book. It's about Zen meditation, Zen mind, beginner's mind, because I'm going to be spending a lot of time with my own thoughts and I will need to come to terms with them in a certain way. I'm not sure quite what I'm going to do with the Bible, but thanks anyway.

Presenter47:41

Uh

Presenter47:45

Well, it's all right. You've got a while to find out. What about a luxury item for pleasure or sensory stimulation?

Thom Yorke47:52

I'd like a tape recorder. I mean, ideally an entire recording studio, but I guess that's not possible. But I'll just remind you Jeremy Della had a motorway and stuff, yeah?

Presenter47:57

But I just remind

Presenter48:01

I mean, he did have a motorway. That's a good

Thom Yorke48:02

That's a good point. Right? I mean, I started off saying, oh, it's alright, I'll just have a yoga mat. But I'd prefer to try and weave myself a yoga mat and try and get hold of a tape recorder, just simply because being a musician, I'm going to be wo wandering around this island and ideas are going to be coming up in my mind. If I can't put them s somewhere, I will go mad.

Presenter48:22

We can do that. We can give you the recording studio if that's what you want. Really? Yeah. It'll have to be solar powered.

Thom Yorke48:24

Really? Yeah.

Thom Yorke48:27

Yeah, solar powered and have to have a nice view of the sea. It don't really need that much in it. Twenty-four track, you know, piano and a

Presenter48:36

The recording studio is yours.

Thom Yorke48:38

I'm not coming back.

Presenter48:39

And finally, if you could only keep one of these eight discs with you on the island, which would it be?

Thom Yorke48:44

Oh god.

Thom Yorke48:47

Well

Thom Yorke48:49

Much as I like to be emotional and everything, I think I would end up with talking heads born under punches just'cause I'm gonna need to dance.

Presenter48:59

That's absolutely perfect. Tom York, thank you very much for sharing your desert island discs with us.

Thom Yorke49:01

Thank you very much.

Thom Yorke49:04

Is that it? That's it. Cool. Thank you.

Presenter49:07

Pleasure.

Presenter49:18

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Tom. I'm quite sure he'll be happy idling away the hours in his studio. Our Desert Island Discs back catalogue is bursting at the seams with amazing singers and musicians, including Noel Gallagher, Annie Lennox, Louis Armstrong, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen and Christine McVeigh. And you can search for them all via BBC Sounds or via our website. You'll have heard Tom mentioned that he discovered music in the same way as the artist Jeremy Della. I cast Jeremy away earlier this year.

Speaker 349:48

For me I learnt about the outside world through Top of the Pops, which obviously is quite a strange way to learn about the world, or that for me was like the news, effectively.

Presenter49:55

You were also a history buff when you were a kid.

Speaker 349:56

Ta-da. Our name I did love history. I loved museums. My dad used to take me to museums. That was my playing ground. And it still is in a way. That's where I go and play, in a sense. I just wander around the backstages of museums and just picking out things and looking at things. I'm very at ease in that world.

Presenter50:12

It was the Hornemann Museum I think they used to visit.

Speaker 350:14

Yes, which is one of the what then was one of those amazing museums that were just stuffed full of strange things from around the world tribal artefacts and then stuffed animals and then all these odd things which for a treasure trove for a child and so it gave me a great visual sense and there was just amazing there was a carved Buddhist wooden carved Buddhist frieze of like people going to hell and stuff so you just look at all of that there's a torture chair there's all these things that like a little boy would be obsessed with all these sort of rather grim things so it was very it was a very exciting place for me to be

Presenter50:47

And you joined the art club there, I think?

Speaker 350:49

I did. I mean, I was never very good at art, and this became much clearer later, but I they they had a sort of after school holiday art club which I just liked hanging around, just making a mess really.

Presenter50:59

And what sort of thing did you make?

Presenter51:01

Cop

Speaker 351:02

Really remember? I remember at school when I did pottery I made a womble. I remember that. That's about the only thing I remember.

Presenter51:08

That's it for typically seventy stars.

Speaker 351:10

Yeah.

Presenter51:14

Your work often involves collaborating with others, like the Battle of Augreve and Acid Brass as well. What appeals to you about that way of doing things, I wonder?

Speaker 351:21

Well, you can't do everything yourself.

Speaker 351:23

Can you? And I need a lot of help with what I do. And if you're doing something with musicians, obviously, I can't play every part I can't play music, for example. So it's just working with the public and involving people in what you do is actually very satisfying.

Presenter51:38

Your approach can be very playful too. I'm thinking about the blow-up Stonehenge that you came up with for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Tell me a little bit about sacrilege.

Speaker 351:42

Right.

Speaker 351:46

Well, I called it sacrilege'cause I just thought I'd get the criticism in before anyone else did. And I just wanted to make the most stupid artwork ever made.

Speaker 351:54

And in a way, it was meant to counteract what I felt was the pomposity of sport sometimes. And the Olympics I felt was quite pompous. As it happened, it wasn't so pompous in the UK, but the whole Olympic movement seems to be really full of itself. So I just thought, well, let's do something about Britain that shows that we have a sense of humour about our history and we're willing to satirise ourselves almost and have fun with our history and our identity. It sort of freaked me out almost about the amount of enjoyment I was giving the public because I wasn't quite expecting that. But wherever it goes around the world, it's the same reaction. People just want to jump on it and run around and laugh.

Presenter52:30

The marvellous Jeremy Della. Next week my guest will be Dr Sabrina Cohen Hatton, Chief Fire Officer for West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service and one of the most senior firefighters in the country. Her life story is amazing, and she's chosen some great tracks too, so do join us then.

Presenter52:57

I find quantum mechanics confusing today.

Speaker 453:01

Well, we hope you've enjoyed that podcast. I don't know why, actually. I don't even know what the podcast was. This whole thing has been recorded in the 1940s. But anyway, if you didn't enjoy that podcast, another podcast you can also not enjoy is the one that I do with Prester Brian Cox, The Infinite Monkey Cage. There are well over 100 of them now. We cover all scientific subjects from dreams to dinosaurs to the end of the universe. We even did quantum gravity and the end of the universe at the Glastonbury Festival. And ravens. We did one on Ravens, and there was a raven. We actually had a live raven that outstared you. And I think even the radio listeners, or the podcast listeners, you have to say now.

Thom Yorke53:03

I don't know.

Thom Yorke53:04

I thought you know what

Thom Yorke53:27

And Raven

Thom Yorke53:29

Was that

Presenter53:29

Alright

Thom Yorke53:29

Uh

Presenter53:30

They've a

Presenter53:36

What's radio? What's radio?

Speaker 453:38

Look, it's on BBC Sounds as well, and that's enough, isn't it? Just say that. It's on BBC Sounds. Download them on BBC Sounds, all of them. They're fantastic. And I mean, everything's brilliant, isn't it? Is it really? That cat may be as dead as a rat. You can wage.

Thom Yorke53:55

Bye.

Speaker 453:55

Uh

Thom Yorke53:55

Uh

Speaker 453:55

Uh Yeah.

Thom Yorke53:56

The monkey gave you