Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke

Thomas Edward Yorke (born 7 October 1968 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England) is a Grammy-winning English musician, best known as the lead singer of the band Radiohead. He has also recorded as a solo artist; he released his debut album, The Eraser, in July 2006, and has collaborated with many other artists. Yorke mainly plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar (notably during the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions). Yorke is also an electronic musician, and The Eraser was heavily influenced by electronic music. In 2005, Yorke became a spokesman for Friends of the Earth and their campaign to reduce carbon emissions, The Big Ask.

Early years

As a child, Yorke underwent seven major surgical operations to correct a paralyzed left eye he had since birth. He has stated that the last surgery was "botched," giving him his drooping eyelid.

The Yorke family finally settled in Oxfordshire; Yorke's father was a chemical equipment salesman, and had to travel around the country frequently. Yorke received his first guitar when he was seven, inspired by a televised performance of Queen guitarist Brian May. His first song, "Mushroom Cloud" described a nuclear explosion, and by age ten he had joined his first band. He attended the all boys public school, Abingdon, where he met future bandmates Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway, Colin Greenwood and Colin's younger brother, Jonny.

The band was named On A Friday, as Friday was the only day on which the members were allowed to rehearse. Yorke, in this early line up, played guitar and provided vocals, and was already developing his songwriting and lyrical skills. Yorke, speaking about music's influence on him as a schoolboy, 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." The band's mentor at the school was the music teacher, Terence Gilmore-James, who, according to band members, was the only one who encouraged them. Said Colin Greenwood, "When we started, it was very important that we got support from him, because we weren't getting any from the headmaster. You know, the man once sent us a bill, charging us for the use of school property, because we practiced in one of the music rooms on a Sunday."

While attending the University of Exeter, where he studied Fine Art and English, Yorke worked as a DJ at Guild nights in the Lemon Grove and played briefly with the bands Headless Chickens and Flickernoise, the latter of which was a techno group. He also held a part time position as an orderly at a psychiatric hospital. In his second year, he was introduced to the university's newly acquired Macintoshes, with which he was fascinated. It was also around this time that he met Stanley Donwood, an artist who from 1994 on would become an important collaborator on single and album artwork for Radiohead. Yorke has often used an alias ('The White Chocolate Farm', 'Tchock') while working on projects with Donwood. Together, the duo later won the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package.

In 1987, Yorke and his girlfriend were involved in a car crash. He was unharmed, but his girlfriend suffered from whiplash. This brought on Yorke's phobia of cars, which he later wrote about in Radiohead songs such as "Airbag", "Killer Cars", "Stupid Car" and "Drunkk Machine". On A Friday reformed in 1991 as the members were finishing their degree courses. Meanwhile, Yorke briefly had a job selling men's suits. Now relocated to Oxford, they signed to Parlophone and changed their name to Radiohead, the name taken from a song on the Talking Heads album True Stories.

Radiohead

Main article: Radiohead

Radiohead first gained notice with the worldwide hit single "Creep", which was allegedly written in the men's toilets of Exeter University's student club. The song appeared on the band's 1993 debut album Pablo Honey, which received mixed reviews. Yorke, coming to resent the way "Creep" had overshadowed their career, described the band's feeling toward it in the lyrics of "My Iron Lung", which appeared on their second album, The Bends, in 1995. By this time the band, through frequent touring and greater attention to detail in the recording studio, had picked up a large cult fan base and had begun to receive wider critical acclaim. Radiohead charted their first top 5 single in the UK with "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" in late 1995.

The band's third effort, 1997's OK Computer, was heralded as a landmark album by nearly every publication that reviewed it, establishing Radiohead as one of the leading rock acts of the 1990s. However, new insecurities came along with the acclaim and stardom Yorke had found, contributing to the frontman's lapse into clinical depression during the mammoth Radiohead tour that followed the album. Some of these concerns were voiced in the documentary film Meeting People Is Easy, which focused on the period. Yorke has explained in various interviews that he dislikes the "mythology" within the rock genre, and hates the media's obsession with celebrities. In the late 1990s, Yorke struggled with the idea of a follow-up to OK Computer.

Yorke and the band adopted a more radical approach on 2000's Kid A and 2001's Amnesiac, processing vocals, obscuring lyrics, and departing from rock for a more varied musical landscape including electronic, jazz and avant-garde classical influences. Expanding Radiohead's sales while earning acclaim for experimentation, the albums also divided fans and critics. In 2003, Radiohead released their sixth album, Hail to the Thief, a blend of rock and electronica that Yorke described as a reaction to the events of the early 2000s and newfound fears for his children's future, though he denied a specific political intent. The band has continued to tour, and in 2005 they undertook recording sessions for a seventh album, In Rainbows, released as a digital DRM-free download on 10 October 2007.

Solo work

Main article: The Eraser

Yorke released The Eraser, an album of solo material, on 10 July 2006 in the UK and July 11, 2006 in the U.S. Produced by Nigel Godrich and featuring cover art by Stanley Donwood, it was released on the independent label XL Recordings. Yorke described the album as "more beats and electronics" and denied that it meant he was leaving Radiohead, saying, "I want no crap about me being a traitor or whatever splitting up blah blah... this was all done with their blessing." The Eraser reached number 3 in the UK in its first week, number 2 in the United States, Canada and Australia, as well as number 9 on the Irish charts. The album was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, and for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

Personal life

Yorke currently lives in central Oxford with his partner, Rachel Owen, a printmaker who holds a doctorate in art history, and their two children, Noah, born in 2001, and Agnes, born 2004. He has one brother, Andy, ex-vocalist of the band the Unbelievable Truth.

Musical approach

Thom Yorke in 2006

As a singer, Yorke is known for his distinctive falsetto ("Fake Plastic Trees", "Reckoner", "Like Spinning Plates") and his ability to reach, and sustain, high notes ("You", "Creep", "Street Spirit (Fade Out)", "Exit Music (For a Film)", "Nude"). During the recording sessions for The Bends in 1994, the band watched Jeff Buckley in concert; Yorke later said the concert had a direct effect on his vocal delivery on "Fake Plastic Trees". However, Yorke has said, "it annoys me how pretty my voice is... how polite it can sound when perhaps what I'm singing is deeply acidic." He has often adopted other styles of singing, such as an aggressive shouting style in the middle section of "Paranoid Android" and a semi-spoken, rap-like delivery for 2003's "Myxomatosis" and "A Wolf at the Door".

Aside from vocal duties and writing lyrics, Yorke's musical contributions to Radiohead include guitar, both acoustic and electric (usually rhythm parts, with band member Jonny Greenwood handling lead), and piano (including Rhodes piano, especially on Kid A). He also plays bass guitar on occasion (the bass line for "The National Anthem" was recorded by him) as well as drums; in 2006 he performed percussion on stage in tandem with drummer Phil Selway on the track 'Bangers & Mash'.

Yorke, like most members of Radiohead, has never learned how to read 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." In interviews Yorke has sometimes played down his skills on both guitar and piano; he rarely plays guitar solos, and joked about the simplicity of his part in "Bishop's Robes". Yorke explained how he had bought a "proper" baby grand piano after OK Computer and began writing songs on it, despite a lack of proficiency, constantly relying on pedal points and pivot tones. Yorke said, "I'm such a shit piano player. I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked."

Since Kid A, Radiohead, and in particular Yorke, have incorporated many elements of electronic music into their work. As a result, Yorke has taken an increased role in programming beats and samples and has been credited with playing "laptop" on recent albums. On a radio show in 2003 to publicise the release of Hail to the Thief, Yorke remarked that he would rather make a record just with a computer than with only an acoustic guitar. His solo effort The Eraser featured piano and guitar, but was built primarily around electronics.

In interviews Yorke has cited a variety of personal musical heroes and influences, ranging from jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus to Neil Young, singer Scott Walker, electronic act Aphex Twin, Autechre and Krautrock band Can. Joy Division, Magazine, Elvis Costello, The Smiths and Sonic Youth were early influences on Radiohead and Yorke. In 2004, at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Yorke mentioned to the crowd, "When I was in college, the Pixies and R.E.M. changed my life", and he has often mentioned both bands as examples.

Activism

File:MTFyorke4.jpg

Thom Yorke, drenched in chocolate for an Oxfam Make Trade Fair campaign, 2004

Yorke has been outspoken on various contemporary political and social issues. Radiohead had read No Logo by Naomi Klein during the Kid A sessions ("No Logo" was also briefly considered as the album title) and all the members were reportedly heavily influenced by it, though Yorke said it "didn't teach him anything he didn't already know". Yorke's activism in support of fair trade practices, with an anti-WTO and anti-globalisation stance, garnered significant attention in the early 2000s. Yorke had previously referenced maquiladoras in the title of a Radiohead B-side in 1995, and decried the IMF in 1997's "Electioneering". Yorke is also a professed fan of Noam Chomsky's political writings, and is a vegetarian.

Yorke is friends with the environmentalist writer, academic and journalist George Monbiot; he lent a quote to feature on Monbiot's book Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain. He is also notable as a political activist on behalf of other causes, including human rights and anti-war movements such as Jubilee 2000, Amnesty International and CND, and Friends of the Earth's Big Ask campaign. Radiohead played at the Free Tibet concert in both 1998 and 1999, and at an Amnesty International concert in 1998. In 2005 Yorke performed at an all-night vigil for the Trade Justice Movement. In 2006, Radiohead and Yorke performed a special benefit concert for Friends of the Earth, which was attended by representatives of British political parties including Tory leader David Cameron, whom Yorke does not support. Yorke made headlines the same year for refusing Prime Minister Tony Blair's request to meet with him to discuss climate change, declaring Blair had "no environmental credentials". Yorke has subsequently been critical of his own energy use. He has said the music industry's use of air transport is dangerous and unsustainable, and that he would consider not touring if new carbon emissions standards do not force the situation to improve. Radiohead commissioned a study by the group Best Foot Forward which the band claims helped them choose venues and transport methods that will greatly reduce the carbon expended on their 2008 tour.

Discography

See also: Radiohead discography

Studio albums

• The Eraser, 10 July 2006

Collaborations

Drugstore

Yorke shared vocals with Isabel Monteiro from the English band Drugstore on the single, "El President", off their album White Magic For Lovers. Yorke also appeared in the music video. Monteiro was born in Brazil, and the song was inspired by the events of the Chilean 1973 military coup by Augusto Pinochet against President Salvador Allende.

Sparklehorse

Yorke sings part of this cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" with Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous. Yorke sang his part on the telephone from his hotel room. Sparklehorse were Radiohead's opening act on the European leg of the OK Computer tour in 1997.

UNKLE

Yorke and DJ Shadow got together during the OK Computer tour in San Francisco and recorded "Rabbit in Your Headlights" for the James Lavelle project going under the name UNKLE. The song is the penultimate track on UNKLE's first album Psyence Fiction (1998), which also features contributions by many other artists.

The Venus in Furs

Yorke and Radiohead bandmate Jonny Greenwood got together with Bernard Butler, David Gray, Andy Mackay, and Paul Kimble to form the band, The Venus in Furs (named after the Velvet Underground song). They recorded five songs for the Todd Haynes film Velvet Goldmine (1998), which was produced by Yorke's friend Michael Stipe. Three of the tracks sung by Yorke are Roxy Music covers, originally sung by Bryan Ferry, whilst "Baby's on Fire" is a Brian Eno cover and "Tumbling Down" is a Cockney Rebel cover. The tracks are:

• "2HB"
• "Ladytron"
• "Baby's on Fire" (Vocal: Jonathan Rhys Meyers)
• "Bitter-Sweet"
• "Tumbling Down" (Vocal: Jonathan Rhys Meyers)

Björk

Yorke and Björk sang a duet called "I've Seen It All" on Selmasongs (2000), the soundtrack album to Lars Von Trier's award winning film Dancer in the Dark. In the movie, a different recording is heard, with the song sung by actor Peter Stormare. The song was nominated for an Academy Award, and the two were to have performed it together at the 2001 Oscars, but it was cut to a Björk solo performance due to time requirements.

PJ Harvey

Yorke had a strong presence on PJ Harvey's 2000 release, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. He did a duet with Harvey on the song "This Mess We're In" and sang back-up on two other songs: "One Line" and "Beautiful Feeling". Harvey's album won the Mercury Music Prize in 2001 (over Radiohead's Amnesiac, among other nominees).

Band Aid 20

In December 2004, Yorke and Greenwood contributed to the Band Aid 20 "Do They Know It's Christmas?" charity single. While he does not sing, Yorke can be seen playing piano in the music video.

Modeselektor

Thom Yorke contributed vocals to the song "The White Flash" by Modeselektor in 2007.

CRS (Child Rebel Soldier)

Thom Yorke sings the chorus of the only single from Child Rebel Soldier, "US Placers." CRS consists of Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and Pharrell Williams.

Live collaborations

In 1998, Yorke performed with R.E.M. at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C., singing "Be Mine" with the group and singing Patti Smith's part of "E-Bow the Letter", a duet with lead singer Michael Stipe (Stipe also joined Radiohead for a song, singing Yorke's part on "Lucky"). In spring 2002, Yorke and Beck made a surprise appearance at an Los Angeles benefit concert for fairer record label contracts, duetting on an acoustic cover of the Velvet Underground song "I'm Set Free". In 2006, Yorke performed several songs from The Eraser live on TV and radio programmes with producer Nigel Godrich and members of Radiohead.

External links

• The Eraser: Official website for Yorke's solo album release
• Thom Yorke, Going Solo: Interview with Yorke, from NPR's "Fresh Air" radio program -- July 2006