Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke
Born	(1968-10-07) 7 October 1968 Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England

Thomas Edward "Thom" Yorke (born 7 October 1968) is an English musician best known as the singer and principal songwriter of the alternative rock band Radiohead. He is known for his falsetto vocals. As a multi-instrumentalist, Yorke mainly plays guitar and piano, but also plays synthesiser, bass guitar and drums. In the 1990s, Yorke was known as a rock musician; the 2000 Radiohead album Kid A saw his work expand into electronic music.

Yorke was born in 1968 in Northamptonshire. His family moved often before settling in Oxfordshire, where Yorke attended Abingdon School and founded Radiohead with schoolmates. After he finished his degree at the University of Exeter, Radiohead signed to Parlophone; their early hit "Creep" made Yorke a celebrity, and Radiohead went on to achieve critical acclaim and multi-platinum sales.

Yorke released his debut solo album, The Eraser, in 2006. In 2009, he formed Atoms for Peace to perform songs from The Eraser, and in 2013 released an original album with the band, Amok. In 2014, he released his second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. He has collaborated with artists including Flea, DJ Shadow, Björk, Flying Lotus and PJ Harvey. With artist Stanley Donwood, he creates artwork for Radiohead's albums. Outside music, Yorke is an activist on behalf of human rights, environmentalism, and anti-war causes.

In 2002, Q named Yorke the sixth most powerful person in music. In 2005, readers of Blender and MTV2 voted Yorke the 18th greatest singer of all time. In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked Yorke the 66th greatest singer of all time.

Early life

Yorke was born on 7 October 1968, in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. He was born with a paralysed left eye, and underwent five eye operations by the age of six. During this time Yorke had to wear a patch over his eye. According to Yorke, the last surgery was "botched", giving him a drooping eyelid.

Yorke's family moved frequently. Yorke's father, a nuclear physicist and later a chemical equipment salesman, was hired by a firm in Scotland shortly after his son's birth; the family lived there until Yorke was seven. Yorke moved from school to school, where classmates teased him for his eye. The family settled in Oxfordshire in 1978.

Yorke received his first guitar when he was seven; his earliest musical inspiration was guitarist Brian May of Queen. At 10, Yorke made his own guitar, inspired by May's Red Special. By 11, he had joined his first band and written his first song. In Oxford he attended the boys' public school Abingdon, where he met Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway, and brothers Colin and Jonny Greenwood and formed On a Friday, named for the only day they were allowed to rehearse. Yorke said: "School was bearable for me because the music department was separate from the rest of the school. It had pianos in tiny booths, and I used to spend a lot of time hanging around there after school." After leaving school, Yorke took a gap year, during which he worked in a few jobs and was involved in a car accident that influenced the lyrics of Radiohead songs including the Bends B-side "Killer Cars" and "Airbag" from OK Computer.

In late 1988, Yorke left Oxford to study at the University of Exeter, which put On a Friday on hiatus aside from holiday break rehearsals. Yorke said he had "wanted to go to St John’s to read English, because that’s what everybody did. But I was told I couldn't even apply – I was too thick. Oxford University would have eaten me up and spat me out. It’s too rigorous." At Exeter, Yorke worked as a DJ at Guild nights in the Lemon Grove, performed experimental music with a classical ensemble, and played with the band Headless Chickens, performing songs including future Radiohead material. He also met artist Stanley Donwood, with whom Yorke collaborates to produce artwork for Radiohead albums, and his partner Rachel Owen.

Career

Radiohead

Main article: Radiohead

On A Friday resumed activity in 1991 as the members were finishing their degrees. They signed to Parlophone and changed their name to Radiohead. Around this time, Yorke said he "hit the self-destruct button pretty quickly": he cut his hair and drank heavily, often becoming too drunk to perform. Radiohead gained notice with the worldwide hit single "Creep", which later appeared on the band's 1993 debut album Pablo Honey. Yorke said that the success inflated his ego; he tried to project himself as a rock star, which included bleaching his hair and wearing extensions. He said: "When I got back to Oxford I was unbearable ... as soon as you get any success you disappear up your own arse."

By the time of Radiohead's second album, The Bends (1995), Radiohead had attracted a large fanbase and began to receive critical acclaim. After the album's release, the American rock band R.E.M., a major influence on Radiohead, picked them as their support act for their European tour. Yorke and R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe became friends; Stipe gave him advice on how to deal with the demands of being in a famous rock band.

Yorke in 2011 distributing a free newspaper promoting Radiohead's eighth album, The King of Limbs

During the production of the band's third album, OK Computer (1997), all five members of Radiohead had differing opinions and equal production roles, with Yorke having "the loudest voice", according to O'Brien. OK Computer achieved critical acclaim and strong sales, establishing Radiohead as one of the leading alternative rock acts of the 1990s, but Yorke was ambivalent about this success. Following the tour, Yorke suffered a mental breakdown, and 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." He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of Warp artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre, saying: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." Yorke and Radiohead took these influences to their albums Kid A and 2001's Amnesiac, processing vocals, obscuring lyrics, and departing from rock for a more varied musical landscape encompassing electronic, jazz and avant-garde classical influences. The albums divided fans and critics, but were commercially successful and later attracted widespread critical acclaim; at the turn of the decade, Kid A was named the best album of the 2000s by Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.

In 2003, Radiohead released their sixth album, Hail to the Thief, a blend of rock and electronic music that Yorke described as a reaction to the events of the early 2000s and newfound fears for his children's future. In 2005 they undertook recording sessions for a seventh album, In Rainbows, released as a digital DRM-free download in October 2007. In 2011, Radiohead released their eighth album, The King of Limbs, which Yorke described as "an expression of physical movements and wildness".

Solo

Thom Yorke performing live at Glastonbury Festival 2010

Yorke released his debut solo album The Eraser in 2006 on the independent label XL Recordings. Composed of electronic music Yorke recorded during Radiohead's 2004 hiatus, the album was produced by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and features cover art by Donwood. Yorke said: "I've been in the band since we left school and never dared do anything on my own ... It was like, 'Man, I've got to find out what it feels like,' you know?" He emphasised that Radiohead were not splitting up and that the album was made "with their blessing". The Eraser received positive reviews and reached number 3 in the UK in its first week, number 2 in the United States, Canada and Australia, and number 9 in Ireland. It was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Prize and the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. An album of remixes by various artists, The Eraser Rmxs, was released in 2009.

In July 2009, Yorke performed solo at the Latitude Festival in England. On 21 September 2009, he released a double-A-side single, "Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses" / "The Hollow Earth". In 2010, he performed a surprise set at Glastonbury Festival with Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, performing Eraser and Radiohead songs. In 2012, Yorke contributed music to a Rag & Bone fashion show.

In September 2014, Yorke released his second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, via BitTorrent. It received positive reviews and became the most torrented album of 2014 (excluding piracy), with over a million downloads in its first six days. On 26 December 2014, Yorke released the album via Bandcamp along with a new single, "Youwouldn'tlikemewhenI'mangry". Yorke will perform the album at the Summer Sonic Festival in Tokyo, Japan in August 2015.

Yorke and other artists contributed music to The UK Gold, a 2013 documentary about tax avoidance in the UK. It was released free in February 2015 through the online audio distribution platform SoundCloud.

In 2015, Yorke contributed a soundtrack, Subterranea, to an installation of Radiohead artwork, The Panic Office, in Sydney, Australia. The soundtrack is composed of field recordings made in the English countryside and plays on speakers at different heights playing different frequency ranges. The Australian radio station Triple J described the soundtrack as "closest in tone and style to the more ambient moments of Tomorrow's Modern Boxes", with some digitally spoken sections similar to "Fitter Happier" from Radiohead's OK Computer. There are no plans to release the music.

Atoms for Peace

Main article: Atoms for Peace (band)

Yorke performing with Atoms for Peace in 2013

In 2009, Yorke formed Atoms for Peace to perform songs from his first solo album The Eraser. Alongside Yorke on vocals, guitar and keyboards, the band comprises bassist Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, drummer Joey Waronker of Beck and R.E.M., percussionist Mauro Refosco of Forro in the Dark and Godrich on keyboards and guitar. Yorke said: "God love ‘em but I've been playing with the same band since I was 16, and to do this was quite a trip ... It felt like we’d knocked a hole in a wall, and we should just fucking go through it.” The band played eight North American shows in 2010. In February 2013, Atoms for Peace released an album, Amok, on XL Recordings. Answering a fan question on Reddit, Yorke wrote that determining whether new songs were for Radiohead or Atoms for Peace was "a grey area. Getting greyer. Obviously depends on who is being sampled."

Collaborations

Yorke has worked with producer Nigel Godrich on every Radiohead album since The Bends, as well as his solo work and Amok. Describing their collaborative process, Yorke said: "[The Eraser song] 'Black Swan', back in the day, was a six-minute load of crap. Except for this one juicy bit, and [Godrich] goes past and goes, 'That bit. Fuck the rest.' Usually it's something like that."

Yorke has also worked with artist Stanley Donwood to create the cover art for every Radiohead album since The Bends, as well as his solo work and Amok. Yorke and Donwood met as art students at the University of Exeter. Yorke wrote of their meeting: "He had a better hat and suit on than me. That pissed me off. So I figured I'd either end up really not liking this person at all, or working with him for the rest of my life." Donwood said his first impression of Yorke was that he was "mouthy. Pissed off. Someone I could work with." Yorke is credited for artwork alongside Donwood under the monikers "The White Chocolate Farm", "Dr. Tchock", "Tchocky" or similar abbreviations.

For the soundtrack of the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine, Yorke covered Roxy Music songs with the band Venus in Furs. In the same year, Yorke appeared on "Rabbit in Your Headlights" on the UNKLE album Psyence Fiction, and duetted on "El President" with Isabel Monteiro of Drugstore. In 2000, Yorke duetted with PJ Harvey on "This Mess We're In" and contributed backing vocals to her album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, and appeared on Björk's soundtrack album Selmasongs, singing on the Oscar-nominated song "I've Seen It All". In 2004, Yorke and Jonny Greenwood contributed to the Band Aid 20 single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", produced by Godrich. In 2008, Yorke added backing vocals to Björk's charity single "Náttúra".

In 2009, Yorke recorded a cover of the Mark Mulcahy song "All for the Best" with his brother Andy for the compilation Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy. Yorke provided vocals for the Flying Lotus tracks "...And the World Laughs with You" from Cosmogramma (2010) and "Electric Candyman" from Until the Quiet Comes (2012), and the Modeselektor tracks "The White Flash" from Happy Birthday (2007) and "Shipwreck" and "This" from Monkeytown (2011). In 2011, he collaborated with electronic artists Burial and Four Tet on the tracks "Ego" and "Mirror". 2011, Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and MF DOOM collaborated on "Retarded Fren". In February 2012, Yorke remixed "Hold On" by SBTRKT under the name Sisi BakBak; his identity was not confirmed until September 2014. In July 2015, Yorke joined Portishead on stage at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk, England to perform their song "The Rip".

Musical approach

Yorke with Radiohead in Barcelona in 2008

Yorke plays guitar, piano (including Rhodes piano) and keyboards. He has also played bass and drums in Radiohead performances. Despite his work in electronic music, Yorke said "really I just enjoy writing words sitting at a piano. I tend to lose interest in the drum machine."

Unlike his bandmate Jonny Greenwood, Yorke has never learned how to read sheet music. He said: "If someone lays the notes on a page in front of me, it's meaningless ... because to me you can't express the rhythms properly like that. It's a very ineffective way of doing it, so I've never really bothered picking it up."

Influences

As a teenager, Yorke's favourite artists included Queen, Joy Division, R.E.M., Siousxie and the Banshees and Bob Dylan. He has cited the Pixies, Björk and PJ Harvey as artists who "changed his life". Yorke wrote that Mark Mulcahy of Miracle Legion had affected him "a great deal" as a teenager: "it was the voice of someone who was only truly happy when he was singing ... it changed the way I thought about songs and singing." He told the BBC that Neil Young had "absolutely inspired everything, the way I write lyrics, all the time."

Yorke told The Guardian that Michael Stipe of R.E.M. is his favourite lyricist, saying "I loved the way he would take an emotion and then take a step back from it and in doing so make it so much more powerful." The chorus lyric of "How to Disappear Completely" from Kid A was inspired by Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening." In 2006, Yorke told Pitchfork that Radiohead had "ripped off R.E.M. blind for years".

In 2013, Yorke named the electronic artist Aphex Twin as his biggest influence, saying: "He burns a heavy shadow ... Aphex opened up another world that didn't involve my fucking electric guitar ... I hated all the music that was around Radiohead at the time, it was completely fucking meaningless. I hated the Britpop thing and what was happening in America, but Aphex was totally beautiful, and he's kind of my age too."

Vocal style

Yorke is known for his falsetto singing. Rolling Stone described Yorke's voice as a "broad, emotive sweep" with a "high, keening sound". Paste Magazine wrote that Yorke's falsetto ranged from "sweet and cautious" to "haunting". Based on his recorded works, Yorke has a vocal range spanning from E2 to E6.

In 2013, Yorke said: "Whenever I’m building anything, whether it’s on a laptop or drum machine or whatever… there’s always a vocal going in the back of my head. It’s almost impossible for me to listen to a dance tune from beginning to end without picturing a voice." Starting with Radiohead's fourth album, Kid A, he has often manipulated his vocals with effects, transforming his voice into a "disembodied instrument". Yorke said: "It annoys me how pretty my voice is ... how polite it can sound when perhaps what I'm singing is deeply acidic."

In 2005, readers of Blender and MTV2 voted Yorke the 18th greatest singer of all time. In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the 66th greatest singer of all time.

Lyrics

To begin with, writing songs was my way of dealing with shit. Early on it was all, 'Come inside my head and look at me', but that sort of thing doesn't seem appropriate now. Tortured often seems the only way to do things early on, but that in itself becomes tired. By the time we were doing Kid A I didn't feel I was writing about myself at all. I was chopping up lines and pulling them out of a hat. They were emotional but they weren't anything to do with me.

- Yorke on his lyrics

Yorke's early lyrics were personal, but from Kid A he experimented with cutting up words and phrases and assembling them at random. Pitchfork wrote that Yorke's lyrics "alternate between honeyed violence" and "clichés and hum-drum observations twisted into panic attacks". According to Yorke, many of his lyrics are motivated by anger, expressing his political and environmental concerns, and written as "a constant response to doublethink." The lyrics of the 2003 Radiohead album Hail to the Thief dealt with what he called "the general sense of ignorance and intolerance and panic and stupidity" following the 2000 election of US President George W. Bush. Yorke's 2006 solo single "Harrowdown Hill" was written about David Kelly, a whistleblower who allegedly committed suicide after telling a reporter that the British government had falsely identified weapons of mass destructions in Iraq.

Music industry views

Yorke has been critical of the music industry. Following Radiohead's 1993 Pablo Honey tour of America, Yorke became disenchanted with being "right at the sharp end of the sexy, sassy, MTV eye-candy lifestyle" he felt he was helping sell. The 1998 documentary film Meeting People Is Easy portrays Yorke's disaffection with the music industry and press during Radiohead's OK Computer tour.

Radiohead's fourth album, Kid A (2000), was leaked via the peer-to-peer filesharing software Napster weeks before release. Yorke told Time he felt Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do. I think anybody sticking two fingers up at the whole fucking thing is wonderful as far as I'm concerned." In 2002, Q named Yorke the sixth most powerful figure in music. After Radiohead's six-album record contract with EMI ended with the 2003 release of Hail to the Thief, Yorke told Time: "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'Fuck you' to this decaying business model." In 2006, Yorke called major record labels "stupid little boys' games – especially really high up." In 2007, Radiohead independently released their album In Rainbows as a download under a pay-what-you-want model; Yorke said the "most exciting" part of the release was the removal of the barrier between artist and audience.

In July 2013, Yorke and Godrich removed Atoms for Peace and Yorke's solo music from the music streaming service Spotify. In a series of tweets, Yorke wrote: "Make no mistake, new artists you discover on Spotify will not get paid. Meanwhile shareholders will shortly be rolling in it. Simples ... New artists get paid fuck-all with this model." In October 2013, Yorke called Spotify "the last gasp of the old industry"; he accused of it only benefiting major labels with large back catalogues, and encouraged artists to build their own "direct connections" with audiences instead. In 2014, Yorke released his second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, via BitTorrent using BitTorrent Inc's "bundles" initiative, whereby creators distribute their work in paid-for torrent files. In a press release announcing the album, Yorke and Godrich expressed their hope to "hand some control of internet back to people who are creating the work ... bypassing the self-elected gatekeepers." In June 2015, Yorke allowed his music to be streamed on Apple Music, Apple's streaming service.

Politics and activism

Yorke is an activist on behalf of human rights, environmentalist, fair trade and anti-war causes, with an anti-WTO and anti-globalisation stance.

Yorke said reading Manufacturing Consent (1998) by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky after university was a "formative moment". In 1999 Yorke travelled to the G8 summit to support the Jubilee 2000 movement calling for cancellation of third-world debt. In 2000, during the recording of Kid A, he became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, "which was full of scary statistics about icecaps melting, and weather patterns changing". He became involved in the climate change movement after having children and "waking up every night just terrified".

In a 2003 Guardian article criticising the World Trade Organisation, Yorke wrote: "The west is creating an extremely dangerous economic, environmental and humanitarian timebomb. We are living beyond our means." In the same year Yorke was a key speaker at the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally in Yorkshire, protesting the British government's support of the American "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative. In 2005, Yorke joined an all-night vigil for the Trade Justice Movement.

Yorke is vegetarian and has criticised the meat industry. In a 2005 film for the animal rights foundation Animal Aid, he said: "Society deems it necessary to create this level of suffering in order for [people] to eat food that they don't need ... you should at least be aware of what you're doing rather than assuming that that's your right as a human being to do it."

File:BigAskYorke.jpg

Thom Yorke's interview during the 2008 Big Ask Campaign

Yorke has been a supporter the Friends of the Earth's Big Ask campaign since 2003. In a 2008 Guardian article, he wrote:

At first I told Friends of the Earth that I was absolutely the wrong person to be associated with their campaign. I've based my life on touring, and the rock industry is a high energy-consuming industry. But they persuaded me that that was exactly why it was a good idea for me to be involved; that they didn't want to present a holier-than-thou message. Initially, I attracted some criticism, but you just have to accept it, drink some cold water and get on with your life.

In 2006, Friends of the Earth asked Yorke to meet prime minister Tony Blair to discuss climate change. Yorke wrote on Radiohead's site that "I have no intention of being used by spider spin doctors to make it look like we make progress when it is just words", and told the NME: "Blair has no environmental credentials as far as I'm concerned." He later told the Guardian: "[Blair's advisers] wanted pre-meetings. They wanted to know that I was onside. Also, I was being manoeuvred into a position where if I said the wrong thing post-the meeting, Friends of the Earth would lose their access. Which normally would be called blackmail."

On May 1, 2006, Yorke and Jonny Greenwood headlined The Big Ask Live, a benefit concert in aid of Friends of the Earth's campaign to persuade the government to enact a new law on climate change. In 2008, Radiohead commissioned a study by Best Foot Forward to reduce the carbon expended on tour; based on the study, Radiohead chose to play at venues supported by public transport, made deals with trucking companies to reduce emissions, used new low-energy LED lighting and encouraged festivals to offer reusable plastics. In the same year Yorke guest-edited a special climate change edition of Observer Magazine and wrote: "Unlike pessimists such as James Lovelock, I don't believe we are all doomed ... You should never give up hope." In 2009, he performed via Skype at the premier of the environmentalist documentary The Age of Stupid. In December that year, he gained access to the COP 15 climate change talks in Copenhagen by posing as a journalist.

In 2010, Yorke performed a benefit concert at the Cambridge Corn Exchange for the British Green party, and supported the 10:10 climate change mitigation campaign. In 2011, he joined the maiden voyage of Rainbow Warrior III, a yacht used by Greenpeace to monitor damage to the environment. Yorke was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas at the United Kingdom 2015 general election. In December, Yorke will perform during the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris at a benefit concert in aid of 350.org, an environmental organisation raising awareness about climate change.

Personal life

Yorke lives in Oxford with his partner, printmaker Rachel Owen, whom he met at university. Owen studied fine art printmaking at Exeter, painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence, and completed a PhD at the University of London, researching the illustrations in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. She and Yorke have a son Noah, born in 2001, and a daughter Agnes, born in 2004. Yorke's only sibling, younger brother Andy, was the singer of the band Unbelievable Truth from 1993 until 2000. Yorke practices yoga and meditation.

Relationship with celebrities and the media

Yorke has had an uneasy relationship with other celebrities and the media. Following Radiohead's 1993 Pablo Honey tour of America, Yorke became disenchanted at being "right at the sharp end of the sexy, sassy, MTV eye-candy lifestyle" he felt he was helping to sell to the world. The 1998 documentary film Meeting People is Easy portrays Yorke's disaffection with the music industry and press during the 1997-8 "Against Demons" world tour.

A number of celebrities have been upset by Yorke's alleged rudeness. In 2001, Kelly Jones, the lead singer of the Welsh band Stereophonics, referred to Thom Yorke as a "miserable twat", a comment he later retracted. In 2002, Jack Black claimed to have approached Yorke to congratulate him on his solo show at the Bridge School benefit concert in San Francisco, only for Yorke to ignore him and walk away. Referring to the incident, Black stated in an interview: "I heard later that he's famously cold, and it wasn't just me that he despises, but the whole world." After completing a trek of Kilimanjaro in 2009, Ronan Keating was asked by an interviewer which celebrity he would most like to throw off a mountain. Keating named Yorke, and referred to him as a "muppet", stating that Yorke was once rude to him. In the same year, Miley Cyrus and Kanye West also complained about Yorke's alleged rudeness. In 2010, it was reported that Yorke would be covering Peter Gabriel's song "Wallflower", from Gabriel's fourth solo album Peter Gabriel 4 (Security), with Gabriel claiming, "Thom wanted to do a version of Wallflower, which I'm very curious to hear. I think that was an important track for him when he was 14." However, it was subsequently reported that Yorke had withdrawn from the project and had not informed Gabriel why. Matthew Bellamy and Dominic Howard of the band Muse have expressed having a poor personal relationship with Yorke, despite respecting Radiohead musically; Howard stated in an interview that when they first met, Yorke was unfriendly and condescending.

Solo discography

Main article: Thom Yorke discography

• The Eraser (2006)
• Tomorrow's Modern Boxes (2014)

References

• Randall, Mac. Exit Music: The Radiohead Story. Delta, 2000. ISBN 0-385-33393-5

External links

• Quotations related to Thom Yorke at Wikiquote
• The Eraser: Official website for Yorke's solo album release