大象传媒

Thom Yorke has been the frontman and principal songwriter for Radiohead for 34 years. He met his bandmates at school in Oxfordshire and together they have gone on to release nine studio albums, sell over 30 million records, win three Grammy and four Ivor Novello awards and headline Glastonbury Festival three times.

Yorke has also released three solo albums, formed super-group Atoms for Peace and, in the past year, put out his first film soundtrack (Suspiria) and classical piece (Don’t Fear the Light).

1. Listening to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody inspired him to become a musician

Queen may not be an obvious influence on Radiohead but listening to them as a child kick-started his passion for music. “I started playing when I was seven, eight,” he says. “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’.”

2. As a child he built his own guitar. It wasn’t amazing

Soon after his Bohemian Rhapsody epiphany, young Yorke decided to build himself a guitar. “It sort of worked,” he says. “It was literally rough cut out with a saw, you know – it was terrible. And then shortly after that my dad felt sorry for me and eventually bought me one.”

3. He was born with his left eye permanently shut, and had multiple surgeries on it as a child, but he likes the fact it is different

“When I was born, the left eye was shut: there was no muscle that would open it” he explains. “This was in the seventies when they’d take a bit of muscle from elsewhere – in my case my arse – and they graft it on to make it work.” He had a number of operations but the last one went wrong and he decided against having any more. “At that point I decided I liked the fact that it wasn’t the same, and I’ve liked it ever since. And when people say stuff I kind of thought it was a badge of pride, and still do.”

4. Radiohead are named after a song by Talking Heads, so there's no surprise that he chooses one of their songs

Yorke tells the story of the first time he heard Talking Heads’ 1980 album Remain in Light, at the same friend’s house where he had listened to Bohemian Rhapsody. “It was like a bomb going off in my head; I’d literally never heard anything like it,” he says. “Talking Heads did something with a studio that had never been done before. And even at a young age I could see that.” Despite pleas to be allowed to take the full LP to his desert island, he settles for its opening track, Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On). “I’ll just have to imagine the rest of the record, won’t I?” he says.

5. He credits two of his teachers with setting him on the career path he is still on today

He didn’t feel like he fitted in at the all-boys private school he attended. “The music school and the art school was my sanctuary,” he says. But it was nonetheless where he met the rest of the boys who would go on to form Radiohead, and he credits two of his teachers for giving him the opportunities in that set them on that path. “I guess I was really lucky. Two of these teachers – the head of the art department and the head of the music department – saw something in me and were incredibly supportive,” he recalls. “You don’t realise until afterwards how important that is. I am absolutely convinced that if both those kind men, if they had not done that, I wouldn’t be here today doing this.”

6. On a year out before university he was a dreadful suit salesman

After school he took a year out to figure out if he was “completely insane” or if he could actually be a professional musician. “I just did a bunch of dead-end jobs and made a demo tape,” he explains, telling Lauren that one was selling suits. Pressed on whether he was any good at it he admits not, before noting that “the pay was terrible”.

7. He got offered a record deal after his first demo tape but turned it down to go to university

He and Radiohead bandmate Ed O'Brien got invited to Island Records on the strength of their first demo. “It was cool,” he says but they turned down the offer of a contract, because, “neither of us felt mentally ready for what was going on.” Instead they went to university: “I felt like I really wanted to go and study art, especially, and I didn’t feel like I was mentally ready to go and spend my life on tour.” He credits it as “the best decision I made.” He explains that “the art college thing just blew my mind and without those three years I wouldn’t have been creatively prepared for what happened after”.

8. REM’s Michael Stipe went from being his hero to being a friend

He chooses REM’s Talk About the Passion from their first album, Murmur. “When I was a kid, they were the link for me between the art student part of me and the musician part of me,” he says. Radiohead went on to support REM, much to Yorke’s delight: “Michael Stipe, the singer of REM, was my hero, and now I’m friends with him, you know? It’s an odd thing!” Stipe helped him cope with the pressures of fame: “He helped me through the end of that period when things just went crazy and people started talking to me like I was Jesus in the street. I would call him and say, ‘I just can’t handle it’.”

9. Becoming a parent inspired him to campaign against climate change

“I was obsessed with it and, in retrospect, for good reason,” he explains. “I couldn’t look at my boy and not think, ‘I’m gonna try and do something.’ And then some time later I became involved with Friends of the Earth and the campaign to bring about a climate change act.”

10. An encounter with Björk taught him to look after his voice

Yorke has an instantly recognisable voice, but seeing Icelandic legend Björk’s efforts to maintain hers made him realise he had to look after it. “I was working with Björk and we went somewhere and got really trashed… and then the next morning I woke up to the sound of her warming up at 10.30 in the morning,” he recalls. “It was pretty beautiful, but also, like: ‘Wow: it’s 10.30 in the morning and you’re warming up?!’ And then I started taking it seriously. But I was winging it for many years.”