Thom Yorke interview - Lola-da-musica, Dutch TV (VPRO)

Thom Yorke interview - Lola-da-musica, Dutch TV (VPRO), October 19th 2000.
Thanks to Cliff & Andrea.

You see Thom in close-up, with a light green background from one angle and a cobalt blue background from another angle.

Q: What's it like having a writer's block? How does it work in practice, or doesn't work in practice?
TY: What's it like? (long silence) It's like losing someone you love!

Intro

Q: What happened after you came back from the OK-Computer tour?
TY: It was a mess, a pretty bad mess, for quite a while, personally. Because basically I found myself in a place I didn't wanna be, ended up in a place I didn't wanna be and didn't recognize myself, and wasn't really interested in what we were supposed to have done. I didn't have much to hold on to really, in any way! Two years writing block, writing things and throwing them away, I guess that's where Kid A started and the bits and pieces that went with it. The idea was there was no plan at all, we had just lots of ideas, half formed ideas and hoped that some of them would see themselves through.

"Everything in its right place", part 1 Live from London.

Q: OK Computer was a very big album, you did a great tour with it.
TY: We did a lot of touring, yeah.
Q: Did that broke you up, personally?
TY: Oh yeah, I was finished when we did Glastonbury ('97), and then a year and a half later we were still going. And I kept saying every other day: "I don't wanna do this!". I got to do this, have to do this because that way we'll never have to do this again. And I guess they were right. Go and flock yourself to death, make the most of it. But I think it was unwise. Because we were playing badly, we weren't interested. By the end we weren't listening to each other. If you want the truth!
Q: Do you understand that a lot of people are attached to the OK Computer album?
TY: Yeah, I understand. I obviously can't listen to it, I have to listen to it to remember the songs. But I can't do that. It really freaks me out. I can't do it.
Q: Is it because of the music, the lyrics?
TY: No, no, just ... it kinda sends you back to a place, it makes you feel ill. Once you finished the record it's like you have all this power and emotion of doing it, as you're doing it, and when it's finished, it's over, that's it. It's very difficult then to be able to connect with it. It's other people's, it's other people's property. And that's a good thing, that's how it's supposed to be.

"Everything in its right place", part 2 Live from London.

Q: You were considered the best rockband of the 90's.
TY: God help us if we fuckin' were, 'cause as far as we're concerned even being called a rockband was a bit of a nightmare, really.
Q: Why?
TY: 'Cause it sucks, fucking rockmusic sucks, I hate it! I'm so fuckin' bored of it, I hate it! It's a fuckin' waste of time.It's not really the music, it's not sitting on a stage playing guitar, drums and singing, that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is all the mythology that goes with it. I've got a real fucking problem with that! I've got a real problem with the idea you have to tour yourself stupid, do certain things, talk to certain people. I totally snapped, I had the end of it.
I think it's the same as with literature and art. A lot of time you confuse the personality with the piece of work. Ultimately it doesn't do anybody any favours. It negates the work as well. What can happen essentially if you're an artist like Rothko and you chose to kill yourself, that colours the work forever more, which is totally not the point and it destroys the work. There's a Rothko room in the Tate Gallery in London, when kids go in there they go, "Wow, this is great!" and all they see is the colour and the joy of the paintings. And all the adults see is this poor sod that killed himself.

"Everything in its right place", part 3 Live from London.

Q: There were also a lot of positive sides on OK Computer.
TY: Initially the positive stuff was great, yeah, I agree. But for me it went wrong up there (points to his head), I dunno. It's like being trapped in one space, on one point. And you can't go backwards and you can't go forwards (camera is focused on his hands), you can't go in any direction. You're absolutely trapped in one particularly space in time and you cannot move on. And I use music to move on, to progress through life. So when I lost that, I lost the ability to progress, so you lose the ability to interact and it becomes a vicious circle.
Q: So you're sitting down at your home doing nothing or ...?
TY: No, everytime you do some music or read a book or go for a drive in your car you're constantly thinking you're trapped. You're stuck, you're like on a full stop. There'll never be anything else. I think the only way you'll deal with it eventually, is you just forget about it. You choose to not have a problem with it, you choose to go and see your friends, go out and get drunk with them, enjoy life, forget about it, waiting for it to come back.
Q: Did you find the specific reason why you got into the writer's block?
TY: Yeah, I didn't really know...I don't think I knew until finishing Kid A what it was all about or the reason I had such a terrible block. But it was really because I had felt that I totally lost control of any element of my life, of anything I was involved in. And ultimately being so incredibly angry it was inexpressable. When we finished the record I just realised that this was what it was all about.

"In limbo" Live from London.

TY: Personally I totally lost interest in playing guitar.
Q: How come?
TY: It just didn't do it for me anymore.
Q: But you have 3 guitarists in the band!
TY: Yeah, bummer, eh?
I started playing the piano. I'm a terrible piano player, so that was good. So everything was a novelty. I wrote a lot of stuff on the piano...badly. The less you know about an instrument, the more you get excited about it, I think.
Q: Apart from not playing the guitar anymore, you said you didn't like guitarmusic anymore. What music were you into at that time?
TY: I was much more into the electronica stuff like Autechre and Aphex Twin, lots of stuff on the Warp label. I always regretted that we, in deciding being a rockband and touring ourselves stupid and turning into little monsters, we lost the chance of ever being able to get into that sort of music and that was a big regret for me 'cause I didn't see it as any different from rockmusic, from where I sat. If it's good, it's good. It's got the same 'Fuck Me'-attitude if it's good.

"Idioteque" Live from London.

TY: What I find interesting in taking on programming and editing and sampling is it stops you trying to emote. There's something I find incredibly exciting about just leaving something to run, just listening to it, not actually play at the time, not singing along.
The other thing is that we all are kind of really heavily obsessed by 'Remain in Light', the Talking Heads album and the way they did that and the sort of emotions that go with that record. It kind of not got the same emotional range like any other Talking Heads record. It's like totally out from over there somewhere.
The other thing was the way David Byrne was writing the lyrics for that record. He had notes, no songs. Start a rhythm, here's a riff and it keeps going. What I admire about 'Remain in Light' is that everything is essentially fragments 'cause he's taking things from notebooks. So what I often tried to do with the writer's block thing was just basically have all the things that didn't work and stopped throwing them away, which I was doing before that, and keeping them and cutting them up and throwing them all in a top hat and pulling them out. And that was really cool because what it did was that I managed to preserve whatever emotions were in the original writing of the words but in a way that it's like I'm not trying to emote. It's just part of what's going on, so we're not printing the words on this record because the words are just part of what's going on.
Q: What songs are made that way on this record?
TY: 'Kid A' is, 'National Anthem' is, 'Everything in its right place'. If we have chosen to finish this record and go on then that's what everybody needs to know (still very agitated) you know what I mean? Other than that you're just digging dirt. (somewhat less agitated).

"The National Anthem" live from London.

TY: I have no desire to alienate people deliberately. It's good fun, I can see the point, I personally would rather be able to communicate with people. I guess being a singer there is no way around that. Doing touring again made me realise there was this massive gap I deliberately switched off thinking it was not relevant or important to me and suddenly: "AHAAA", you know, you can sleep alright at night again because you can understand that that is what you're supposed to do. So I guess that means I still want to be part of what's essentially the Highstreet of Popmusic.
Ever since artcollege I had the problem with doing a piece of work and putting this into a white room so that posh people could drink wine and think off buying it or not. It doesn't do anybody any fuckin' good ultimately. That's why I've always thought that popmusic is a far more vibrant artform because if you hear something on the radio and it triggers something in you you'll never be the same again. And it's harder to do that in a gallery.

"Optimistic" Live from London.

Q: The decision to start touring again. I can imagine you never wanted to play before a live audience again?
TY: It was the others. If ultimately I had been left to it, I wouldn't have done it. And the others said: "Go on, it will be great, you'll like it!!". I had real horrors about the tent and everything, I thought we were crazy.
Q: Was the tent thing your idea?
TY: No not at all. I thought it was a good idea because it really sounded badly minded. But I never thought it would actually happen. And then people started buying tickets!
Q: And you enjoyed it so far?
TY: Yeah, I really enjoy it.

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