Thom Yorke Is Not Crazy About People

Woodcut of Thom Yorke of Radiohead. (Artwork by author.)

Thom Yorke does not like celebrity culture. When Jack Black and Miley Cyrus expressed a desire to meet him, he spurned their requests. “I’m surrounded by a world of grinning idiots and I don’t want to be another one.”

Radiohead came to prominence in 1992 with their hit single “Creep.” Yorke wrote the song as a college student after being rejected by a girl. The song is about not feeling good enough and being rejected as an outsider. As Yorke explains, “There’s the beautiful people and then there’s the rest of us.”

Yorke was born in 1968 in Wellingborough, England. At birth, his left eye was paralyzed and completely shut. Doctors performed surgery taking a muscle graft from Yorke’s buttocks to make his eyelid more functional. He endured five eye operations by age six and wore an eye patch through much of his childhood. This left him with a permanent droopy eyelid. “I think we’re all born with something wrong with us,” he said adding that his eye is a badge of honor.

Yorke’s father was a nuclear physicist and chemical equipment salesman. The family moved often and Yorke attended multiple schools. He spent his days in solitude riding his bicycle through gravel pits and smashing electronics to see their guts. At age seven, Yorke received his first guitar. He mimicked the guitar sounds of his childhood hero, Brian May of Queen. He wrote his first song, “Mushroom Cloud,” at age 11.

Yorke met his future Radiohead band mates at an all-boys public school. They formed a band called On A Friday since they could only rehearse on Fridays. Yorke sang, wrote songs, played guitar, bass, piano and drums. His early musical influences included Talking Heads, Fela Kuti, Pixies, Joy Division, PJ Harvey, Bjork and Neil Young. He never learned to read music.

After college, Yorke worked as an orderly in a mental hospital. In 1987, he and his girlfriend were involved in a serious car accident. The experience instilled a lifelong phobia of cars inspiring the songs “Airbag,” “Killer Cars” and “Drunk Machine.”

In 1991, Yorke and his band mates were signed to EMI. They changed their name to Radiohead taken from a Talking Heads song. In 1992, Radiohead’s first album “Pablo Honey” brought overnight success. Yorke confessed he “hit the self-destruct button pretty quickly.” His ego spun out of control bolstered by excessive drinking. “I was unbearable. As soon as you get any success you disappear up your own arse.”

Yorke’s vocal range stretched from tenor to falsetto. “It annoys me how pretty my voice is, how polite it can sound when what I’m singing is deeply acidic.” After hearing Jeff Buckley play live in 1994 Yorke realized “you could sing in a falsetto without sounding drippy.”

After their second album “The Bends” in 1995, R.E.M. chose Radiohead as the opening act for their European tour. Michael Stipe gave Yorke advice on dealing with the demands of fame. Stipe’s words inspired Yorke to write the song “How to Disappear Completely.”

In 1997, Radiohead rented a mansion in Bath once owned by actress Jayne Seymour to record their new album. They immersed themselves in the music of DJ Shadow, Underworld, Ennio Morricone and Pink Floyd. The resulting album was “OK Computer.” It didn’t conform to standard verse-chorus structure. The music was fragmented with hooks buried beneath layers of atmosphere and melodic dissonance. Though some critics claimed the album was commercial suicide, “OK Computer” is now known as one of the greatest albums ever made.

Following the “OK Computer” tour, Yorke suffered a mental breakdown. He said, “Every time I picked up a guitar I just got the horrors. I would start writing a song, stop after 16 bars, hide it away in a drawer, look at it again, tear it up, destroy it.”

Yorke immersed himself in the electronic music of techno bands like Aphex Twins and Autechre. He fell in love with sampling and programmed beats. The band’s post “OK Computer” music relied heavily on looping, processed vocals and obscure lyrics. “It was refreshing because the music was all structure and had no human voices. But I felt just as emotional about it as I’d ever felt about guitar music.”

Radiohead was not afraid of experimenting and reinventing themselves. In 2007, they revolutionized the music industry with the digital release of “In Rainbows.” Fans were allowed to choose the amount they wanted to pay for the album download. The average price paid was 2.90 pounds.

Yorke released his first solo album “The Eraser” in 2006. He also played in the band Atoms For Peace with Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Joey Waronker (R.E.M.). He became a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, a group advocating the perils of climate change.

In December 2016, he lost his partner of twenty years Rachel Owen to cancer. The couple had two children before splitting in 2015. Yorke became a single father. “I guess I’m more like their friend. I can’t hope to be their mum, but we’re all right. We do quite well. They’re just such great people… When the kids’ mum died, it was a difficult period and we went through a lot. It was hard. She suffered a great deal and my ambition is to make sure that we’ve come out of it all right, and I hope that’s what’s happening.”

Yorke remains a vocal critic of the music industry, particularly against record labels and streaming services like Spotify. He refuses to kowtow. In 2019, hackers stole 18 hours of unreleased Radiohead recordings. They demanded a 150,000 pound ransom or they’d release all the material online. Yorke released the music online himself bundled as a digital album for £18. He donated the proceeds to Extinction Rebellion, an organization fighting climate change.

In 2019, Radiohead was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.