February 2012
3 posts
1 tag
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Q: Pablo Picasso once said: "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." How do you react to this quote as describing the role of artists to inspire change and show us what the world should be like?
Yorke: Fox News is a lie. [laughs] Someone needs to tell the truth, but it shouldn't be my job. So I guess I'd be on the lying side. I think no artist can claim to have any access to the truth, or an authentic version of an event. But obviously they have slightly better means at their disposal because they have their art to energize whatever it is they're trying to write about. They have music.
1 tag
duty of expression
Q: So would you say that there's a place for both directly political and non-political artists? What importance do you think each have?
Yorke: Yeah, I don't think we are [political] at all, I think I'm hyper aware of the soapbox thing. It is difficult to make political art work. If all it does is exist in the realms of political discussion, it's using that language, and generally, it's an ugly language. It is very dead, definitely not a thing of beauty. The only reason, I think, that we go anywhere near it is because, like any reason that we buy music, these things get absorbed. These are the things surrounding your life. If you sit down and try to do it purposefully, and try to change this with this, and do this with that, it never works. I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape. But there are different ways to escape. I think escape is sort of like coming to a show with ten thousand other people and responding to that moment. Sharing that moment—that's escape. Wherever the music came from originally is secondary to what's happening at that moment, how the music sends you somewhere else. That's the important thing.
January 2012
3 posts
Whoever just submitted,
it didn’t work. There’s no quote there. Please submit again?
2 tags
“Around him, sampled mouth music groans and shivers, a murderous miasma of desire...”
– Mojo, August 2006
3 tags
“How do you play any of Kid A live? How do you even write an album like Kid A?...”
– Consequence of Sound: The 30 Best Live Versions of Songs, July 8, 2011
December 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Interviewer: Jonny, I noticed you're wearing wrist support... too much guitar lately?
Jonny: Yes, I have an injury that usually 40 year old typists get, but I have it and I'm 22, so there you go.
Interviewer: Because of Radiohead?
Jonny: Yes, too much typing.
“The other day I slept. It was great.”
– Thom Yorke, after being asked “what’s the most fun you had this week?”, 1994. (via michaelpalin)
November 2011
3 posts
Ed O’Brien compares the other members of...
“For most Radiohead fans, Valentine’s Day 2011 started out as a fairly average...”
– TVTropes (via aeferg)
1 tag
October 2011
8 posts
3 tags
2 tags
“We’re finalizing dates now, we’ll be on the road from the end of...”
– Ed O’Brien, on upcoming tour, 2011
1 tag
“Thom Yorke is weird, sort of. But you’ve met weirder. He’s mostly just an...”
– Chuck Klosterman (via it-girl-rag-doll)
3 tags
“It was nice not to do any of [the press things/live shows], but after a while,...”
– Thom Yorke, 2011
1 tag
“The most essential thing in life is to establish heartfelt communication with...”
– Thom Yorke (via gigglepeas)
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Interviewer: Let's talk about how you all got together. Oxford is where you're all from, right?
Thom Yorke: We went to school together.
Jonny Greenwood: I've known my brother for quite a long time, so that's how I got in the band.
1 tag
“Well, we spent more time on it than we should have done and you go a bit mental...”
– Jonny Greenwood on In Rainbows (via donkwood)
2 tags
Radiohead: 'We sympathise with Wall Street... →
Radiohead have said they sympathise with protestors who stormed Wall Street last week. The band, who were forced to deny reports they were planning to play a gig in support of the protests last Friday (September 30), told NME that the rumour “got out of control”.
However, bassist Colin Greenwood said that they certainly “understand” the protestors’ anger at the financial system.
He...
September 2011
13 posts
1 tag
“On the day I said to them, ‘You know when you’ve been in a traffic jam for four...”
– Thom on recording The National Anthem with the brass musicians
(Juice Oct 2000)
3 tags
“Thom, once a bastion of heavy-onset moodiness, is now basically a jolly, living...”
– Stereogum, 2011 (Submission)
“That’s the video where I officially became an embarrassing dad. And I’m proud of...”
– Thom Yorke on Lotus Flower (via h-t-d-c)
5 tags
2011
Stephen Colbert: Are you guys planning on doing a Christmas album this year?
Thom: No, we're not. We've never done a Christmas album.
Stephen Colbert: Ever thought about it?
Thom: ...No.
Stephen Colbert: 'Cos I did a Christmas album a couple years back. Yeah, it won a Grammy.
Thom: Did it?
Stephen Colbert: Yeah, you guys got any Grammys?
Thom: I think we have, haven't we?
Ed: Yep.
Stephen Colbert: How many you got?
Colin: Best packaging.
Stephen Colbert: Best packaging? That's one of the top ones right there.
4 tags
2011
Stephen Colbert: Let me ask you something. How old are you guys?
Thom: (to Phil) I'm... forty-two, right?
Phil: You are.
Stephen Colbert: You're forty-two. Grow up, guys. And I mean that lovingly.
2 tags
“We were all scared of Phil. He was in the class ahead of us, and he was in this...”
– Colin Greenwood (via fifteen-blows)
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“The guy with the maracas was my favorite”
– My mom on Thom Yorke (via ltaldoraine)
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2007
SPEC: With such a large young-adult fan base—who will be the future leaders of the world—do you think music will influence these future leaders? And how specifically would you like to see Radiohead’s music influence them?
COLIN GREENWOOD: I don’t think music influences people in a direct-action kind of way, but it does help to shape tastes and perhaps that has a part to play in growing up. If we make people think, then we’ve achieved something.
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“You don’t realise once you’ve stopped [making music], how hard it is to regain...”
– Ed O’Brien, 2005
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“I look forward to meeting the Radioheads and leveraging their anti-corporate...”
– Stephen Colbert, 2011
Anonymous asked: Pleeeease do more quotes, your blog is one of my favourites but it needs more updating!! PLEEASEEE x
“I tend to run away if it’s anything beyond them saying they like the music. We...”
– Thom Yorke on female fans [The Guardian July 13th 1996] (via stopremembering)
August 2011
20 posts
1 tag
“They’re an odd bunch, aren’t they? They’ve been making the same record since Kid...”
– Noel Gallagher on Radiohead (via calmgiant)
“Radiohead, currently on a nineteen-date tour of the U.S. and Canada, has played...”
– Secrets of the Radiohead Set List, New York Magazine (via thom-yorke)
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“Question : How big are your dicks?
RadioColin : We’ll reach for the...”
– MTV Webchat - around The bends time (via thomyorkerules)
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strotha-tynhe:
my moms friend met thom
she said he was really the nicest guy ever
I consider this a quote about Radiohead.
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San Francisco Chronicle: The new album and Kid A are stuffed with repeated phrases that seem to float freely in space: "women and children first," "Ice Age coming," "where'd you park the car?" What do you do to quiet your mind?
Thom Yorke: I put all of its junk in songs and inflict them on other people, safe in the knowledge that whatever virus it was that gave me them has left me for good.
2 tags
2008
Q: Have you ever downloaded a song from the net yourself, for free?
Yorke: No, I always pay. Well, I got our own album from our webpage free of charge. I wanted to play my mum the new songs and downloaded them on to her computer. A journalist found out. And he announced immediately that I wouldn't pay for music from the internet. But why should I pay for my own possessions, and in practice, just shovel my money from one pocket to the other? That's ridiculous.
2 tags
“We started families, brought up our children and everybody was just living their...”
– Thom Yorke, 2008
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“We don’t discuss figures. But we are not complaining. Anyway, we have the...”
– Thom Yorke, 2008
2 tags
2008
Q: Music critics have described you as either the saviour or gravedigger of the rock'n'roll industry after you released an album on the internet without the help of a record company. Which description do you think is the right one?
Thom Yorke: I've heard it said that we are saving rock music so often over the past few weeks that I'm going to have it printed on toilet paper soon. We would have never thought that the whole thing would create such a fuss. In Britain, it's all over the prime time news on the BBC, 60-year-old stock exchange tycoons are congratulating us on our fabulous business idea, and cynics imply we plotted an ingenious advertising coup. But that's all rubbish.
3 tags
2007
Mojo: Has the songwriting process changed significantly since Kid A/Amnesiac?
Jonny Greenwood: No. It’s still mostly Thom’s songs and us helping out on a few bits and pieces. All the albums seem to have that same balance.
2 tags
“[In Rainbows] didn’t really feel like a non-EMI record. EMI were always very...”
– Jonny Greenwood, 2007
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Mojo: Were you aware [In Rainbows] was a remarkable record?
Jonny Greenwood: Well... we spent more time on it than we should have done and you go a bit mental after a while. You listen to something like Reckoner and think, Maybe this is just a bad breakbeat. Now I can hear what’s good about it. People around us were telling us it was really good, but what do they know? What do we know?
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“Liam Gallagher, asked if Oasis - also currently without a record deal - would...”
– Observer Music Monthly, 2007
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“Now here is Louise Kent, 45, from Vancouver: ‘Why is it called In...”
– Observer Music Monthly, 2007