At the turn of the twenty-first century, when Radiohead became the new gleaming hope for innovation in rock and roll, the band began renovating the dismal state of the music industry. At concerts they banned corporate sponsors; they attempted to minimize the heavy ecological footprint of traditional touring; and, recently, they released their seventh album, In Rainbows,
without a record label, in a digital format on their website, allowing buyers to pay as much or as little as they liked.
Along with all these experiments came furies of hype that Thom Yorke, primary hype-target and living-legendary singer of the band, described as “being the Beatles, for a week.” Yorke has been reticent in his interactions with the press, and in past interviews, especially those from the OK Computer era, Yorke acted downright spiteful: hissing at questions he didn’t like, ignoring others, and criticizing the interviewer with Dylan-esque zingers: “Next question…” “It’s not your business.…” “Answering questions like that’s a fucking waste of time.” Meeting People Is Easy, the only of several Radiohead documentaries the band endorses, is mostly an investigation into the conflicted relationship between the press and the music.
I met Yorke in the lobby of his hotel, the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. Before the interview, he had spent the day shopping with Nigel Godrich, Radiohead’s longtime producer, and during the interview he took a few minutes to talk about Australia with Neil Young’s manager, Elliot Roberts. He wore cargo pants mottled with white paint. He apologized four or five times for his jet lag, but responded to every question with thoughtfulness and patience, demonstrating what seemed to be a newfound acceptance of his place amid the stars of rock.
—Ross Simonini
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THE BELIEVER: In some ways, the way Internet singles work is close to the way things used to be with the music industry in the ’50s, before full-lengths were the thing, and radio singles were what defined artists.
THOM YORKE: Right, and if you forget about the money issue for just a minute, if it’s possible to do that—because these are people’s livelihoods we’re talking about—and you look at it in terms of the most amazing broadcasting network ever built, then it’s completely different. In some ways, that’s the best way of looking at it. I mean, I don’t spend my fucking life downloading free MP3s, because I hate the websites. No one seems to know what they’re talking about. I’d much rather go to sites like Boomkat, where people know what they’re talking about.
BLVR: Boomkat is great.
TY: It’s brilliant. To me, that’s a business model. It’s like when I used to go to music shops in Oxford. You’re looking at this and you’re looking at that and there’s a whole line of other things going down the side saying, “You’ll probably like this,” and “You might like this.”
BLVR: I love those stores where everything’s hand-selected and the clerks write little descriptions about the music.
TY: Yeah, and you can listen to it all. I mean, Boomkat is very specific with the type of stuff they flog there, but I can’t see why that wouldn’t work for all music.
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