DJ : OK Computer will be in the shops on Monday - we will play all
tracks tomorrow
and Sunday between 2 and 6 pm in the show Keinijg, but today we
have a guest
on our show to talk about the album - it is no other than singer
Thom Yorke,
but first let's have a listen to the opening track of the album
: Airbag
-they play Airbag-
DJ : Airbag, the opening track from the album OKC, an album for which
we
have been waiting quite some time. Last year at the Torhout
- Werchter
festival however we were able to hear a couple of the new songs
in their set.
It is an album about which all sorts of weird rumours have been
flying round.
RH would be sounding like the new Pink Floyd with plenty of bizarre
songs,
but after listening to the finished product we have to conclude
that the new
RH is an even better version of the old RH !
OKC is a masterpiece, but it remains a weird title for an album.
A title
which needs a bit of an explanation which we get from Thom Yorke
-pre-recorded tape starts-
Thom : It refers to embracing the future, it refers to being terrified
of
the future, of our future, of everybody else's. It's to do
with=
standing in
a room where all these appliances are going off and all these machines
and
computers and so on, they are all going off and the sound it makes....
DJ: RH uses more electronics on this album than they did before,
but it
remains a love-hate relationship.
Thom : It was sort of an unhealthy relationship because we weren't
very
tolerant of it and we weren't prepared to wait around for the computer
to
catch up. It was like a bit of a...um well, very much a love-hate
relationship...um, you have all these amazingly cool things you
can do with
a computer and yet get bored with them so fast. We just walked
back into
the next room and bashed it out instead, so you know, there was
a lot of
that going on.
DJ : The result is extremely beautiful-OKC might be the opportunity
for RH
to move up to the level of superbands the likes of REM. The
expectations
are of course very high now and Thom finds it pretty hard to cope.
Thom : Yeah....um, what can I say ? ....um, it's fucking terrifying
obviously it's um....(sighs) can't cope with it really....can't
think
of a way coping with it. I just sort of get on with
it. I keep saying to
myself, I'm not here and this is not happening.
DJ : Thom would rather not be a "popstar"
Thom : There's two ways to be a popstar. One way is, you go
to the film
openings, the fashion shows, you are seen to be a popstar, blah
blah
blah...but I've got a problem with that, =91cos I don't, I'm not
interested in these people. The reason why I am not
interested in these people is cos
they spend the whole fucking time going to these fucking openings
to be
seen, to be popstars or whatever it is and ....um...I don't get
on with
the people that are at these things um and I need my time and my
space euhhhh to
errrrr to to centre, you know to get back down to earth or something
vaguely
resembling it. How does it feel to be a popstar? It's a useful
thing to
have, cos it's a way of part of what I do, but it is not, errr I
think
it's pretty...a fucking lame thing to put on your passport,
let's put it that
way.
DJ : Thom even does no longer find it worthwhile to write songs about
it,
like he used to do
Thom : No, I didn't wan to write about it anymore as a thing, I just
thought at the time it was sort of all I could write about
cos I couldn't
deal with it and now I feel sort of a million miles away from
it, I think it is
sort of pretty much impossible to justify writing about these things
which
are of fucking no consequence to anybody really you know out of
the tortured
whims of some empty-headed actress or whatever, a popstar is really
not
gonna save the fucking world is it ?
-They play Karma Police-
DJ : Thom doesn't deny he leads an unhealthy life. In Munich
it got so
bad that he collapsed on stage. He was feeling really
ill, but the doctor who
was bribed by the promoter declared him fit enough to play.
Thom : The doctor came round at four o'clock because every time you
don't
do a show, you have to get a doctor's certificate saying you are
too sick to
do a show, just like school, so you have a fucking sicknote.
If you don't
get the sicknote, you get sued for thousands and thousands
and thousands of
pounds. I needed this thing, but of course the doctor was
paid for by the
promoter. So the doctor turns up and he has two bags full
of drugs - all
with German names that I didn't understand. And he says take
this, take
that blah blah blah and I said no, no fucking way. I don't
know what
these things are and I am not taking them you know.
He says you're fine, you're
fine to do the show and I was like : I can't fucking speak, let
alone sing.
He said : oh well, I'll just inject you with steroids then and you'll
be
fine. Because this is what they do, they inject steroids in
you neck and I
am not going to do that. So I was like : ok, so it's too late
to cancel the
show, the doctor won't give me a sicknote, I'm gonna have to go
on and do
this show, I don't have a choice. I'd gone on and do the show
and three
songs in, I collapsed. After weeks and weeks of this building
up in my
head, you know it happened four times before that during the course
of a 4
months tour that I was ill, same thing over and over again. Doctors
paid for
by promoters (doors slams). Anyway, I just snapped.
DJ : What is your worst habit ?
Thom : My worst habit is drinking until I'm sick all over the bathroom
which
I keep doing. You know people do that. Normally people
do that every 5
years and go : oh God, I can't believe I did that. I'm still
at the stage
that you are when you are a teenager. I get so drunk that
I can't speak
anymore.
-they play Fitter Happier-
DJ : FH is a list of directives for a better and healthier life,
a list that
Thom drew up for himself.
Thom : I think you get to a certain point in your life and you try
hard to
do all those things and ahum, and then you can't quite work out
why. It was
a long list of thing that...aaaa, ummm, errrrr, I went through about
a 4
week period when I couldn't write anything at all lyrically or anything
and
it was a really serious writer's block and then it got so bad that
I just
spent every day....I'd get up at 8 in the morning and I'd go and
just walk
all day til about 6 or 7 at night and go out and get drunk and then
come
home....errr and after the 3rd day of doing that, I had this long
list.
DJ : Let's talk about happier things : the music Thom and Jonny Greenwood
wrote for the Velvet Goldmine for instance, the movie made by REM
singer
Michael Stipe
Thom : Yeah, that was cool ! that was cover of errrmm me and Jonny
and
Bernard Butler and this brilliant drummer called Cloon (?!), we
were doing
ermmmm em Roxy Music covers of 2hb and Bittersweet and erm
can't even
remember the other one, um and it was great erm we did it like two
days
after we had mastered the record you know I went in and did an impression
of
Brian Ferry and then met him two days later as well, that was wild.
And
Brian Eno, and it was all sort of orchestrated by um well put together
by
Michael Stipe cos he is executive producer of the film so it was
a chance
to see him again, which was really good.
DJ : Finally the bandname - we read that Thom initially wanted to
call the
band Music or Jude (after Jude the Obscure) but in the end they
all settled
for RH.
Thom : Music, I thought was my favourite actually, but I think there's
a
band called Music now. Um I mean that was sort of the most
obnoxious thing
you could possibly do. But um, Jude was a bit pretentious
I think, that was
probably my fault. What else ? Umm we were going to call it
Gravitate at
one point, that is equally obvious and awful, um no Radiohead was
cool and
it is still cool because it just sums up all these these you know
things
about receiving stuff and blah blah blah all these people in America
have
these teeth you can pick up radio on, have you heard about that
? They have
this sort of metal in their teeth and stuff and some of them can
pick up
radio with it and I think that is very cool. And now of course
they can
implant things into your head that they can work and sort of
well observe
your brainpatterns and stuff. Radiohead is sort of , it's
brilliant.
-play Subterranean Homesick Alien-