Kid A
Twelve.
The interview came up faster than I thought it would, but I guess that’s good because it means I wasn’t thinking about it too much in advance.
We got to the studio and we sat down with a reporter who had papers and pens and a recorder ready to take down and analyse every word we were about to say; it wasn’t the first time we’d done this but it still managed to baffle me a bit. Thom kept his cool all the way, though, and I think that was the part that we were all really worried about.
Nothing too interesting or unique came up in this certain interview, but it was nice to have one with all five of us there instead of just one or two people like most of them had been lately. We could back each other up and I think that made everything the reporter got more real in terms of Radiohead as a whole.
---
Thom came back to my house with me and Colin, and we sat around the table and had tea and reflected on the interview together.
“I don’t know, I just don’t see the point,” Thom started, “we’re five guys who met in school and decided to start a band, everyone who cares knows that already… They all ask the same things, I mean, the way it goes these reporters can just write articles from eachother’s articles.”
I shrugged, “I guess it’s because we don’t have problems, so what are they going to do?”
Thom frowned, “I don’t know, try to dig in deeper with something?”
“Like what? I don’t think I would want them to know about my personal life or anything.”
Colin nodded in agreement, “We don’t have that many problems, but I think we’re the kind of group who wouldn’t do well if that stuff were exploited.”
Thom shrugged. “I guess not like that. But I mean do they even ask what kind of people we are or why we play music or anything?”
I bit my lip, “I don’t know what I would say though. Because I play music to find myself, what kind of person does that make me?”
Thom frowned. “I’m just going to do it.”
Colin looked puzzled, “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll just do the damn interview myself. Write it up, title it Thom Yorke on Thom Yorke and send it to some random magazine nobody’s ever heard of and let them have it. Let them see what I’m really all about and see where that goes, not about exploiting some bullshit drama we have in the band that week or anything but just shine some light on what I do.”
I nodded. “Just don’t get too carried away, Thom… I know you.”
---
Sometimes Thom would be writing and thinking and he’d stop and it seemed like everything he came up with was some lukewarm pretentious mix of self-loathing and it wouldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t want to leave his house because he became paralyzed and he was paranoid, and he just didn’t know about everything because he tried to understand it; or at least, that’s how I interpreted everything he was doing to me.
I got kind of lonely when Thom got into this paranoid state and I wouldn’t properly see him, but that wasn’t the issue so much. I just worried about him, because the band had just come from such a dark place with him before and I didn’t want that to happen again. Thom makes himself into the tortured artist and he criticises himself for doing it to himself, but I watch him and I don’t think any of it is intentional. I think he can’t decide if he hates himself because he has all of these thoughts and these voices, and he doesn’t know where to put them most of the time. It just creates this existential sort of angst that rubs off on the rest of us after a while, and it just grows into what we play on our records, but it’s that sort of angst that the listener still can’t understand. You can feel it but you can’t understand it; how could you understand a work of art that the artist himself doesn’t understand?
We got to the studio and we sat down with a reporter who had papers and pens and a recorder ready to take down and analyse every word we were about to say; it wasn’t the first time we’d done this but it still managed to baffle me a bit. Thom kept his cool all the way, though, and I think that was the part that we were all really worried about.
Nothing too interesting or unique came up in this certain interview, but it was nice to have one with all five of us there instead of just one or two people like most of them had been lately. We could back each other up and I think that made everything the reporter got more real in terms of Radiohead as a whole.
---
Thom came back to my house with me and Colin, and we sat around the table and had tea and reflected on the interview together.
“I don’t know, I just don’t see the point,” Thom started, “we’re five guys who met in school and decided to start a band, everyone who cares knows that already… They all ask the same things, I mean, the way it goes these reporters can just write articles from eachother’s articles.”
I shrugged, “I guess it’s because we don’t have problems, so what are they going to do?”
Thom frowned, “I don’t know, try to dig in deeper with something?”
“Like what? I don’t think I would want them to know about my personal life or anything.”
Colin nodded in agreement, “We don’t have that many problems, but I think we’re the kind of group who wouldn’t do well if that stuff were exploited.”
Thom shrugged. “I guess not like that. But I mean do they even ask what kind of people we are or why we play music or anything?”
I bit my lip, “I don’t know what I would say though. Because I play music to find myself, what kind of person does that make me?”
Thom frowned. “I’m just going to do it.”
Colin looked puzzled, “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll just do the damn interview myself. Write it up, title it Thom Yorke on Thom Yorke and send it to some random magazine nobody’s ever heard of and let them have it. Let them see what I’m really all about and see where that goes, not about exploiting some bullshit drama we have in the band that week or anything but just shine some light on what I do.”
I nodded. “Just don’t get too carried away, Thom… I know you.”
---
Sometimes Thom would be writing and thinking and he’d stop and it seemed like everything he came up with was some lukewarm pretentious mix of self-loathing and it wouldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t want to leave his house because he became paralyzed and he was paranoid, and he just didn’t know about everything because he tried to understand it; or at least, that’s how I interpreted everything he was doing to me.
I got kind of lonely when Thom got into this paranoid state and I wouldn’t properly see him, but that wasn’t the issue so much. I just worried about him, because the band had just come from such a dark place with him before and I didn’t want that to happen again. Thom makes himself into the tortured artist and he criticises himself for doing it to himself, but I watch him and I don’t think any of it is intentional. I think he can’t decide if he hates himself because he has all of these thoughts and these voices, and he doesn’t know where to put them most of the time. It just creates this existential sort of angst that rubs off on the rest of us after a while, and it just grows into what we play on our records, but it’s that sort of angst that the listener still can’t understand. You can feel it but you can’t understand it; how could you understand a work of art that the artist himself doesn’t understand?