Thom Yorke, Radiohead and Atoms for Peace frontman, admits that, even after over 25 years in the business, performing is “either wicked fun or really awful.” He talks with Alec about his pre-show ritual—"I stand on my head for a bit"—and how he and his bandmates have been able to stick together since they were teenagers.
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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Radiohead released their stunning debut single Creep when You're In. It was quiet, yet explosive, even haunting, and its refrain had a powerful hook. Special, so fucking special. Radio Heads frontman and principal songwriter Tom York is my guest, and if it was his wish to be special, the world granted it. York's band has become a commercial and critical success, selling over thirty million albums. Radio Heads music actively resists definition. Each new album explores a different sound, delighting their followers and scooping up more fans along the way. The New York Times called Radiohead rocks most experimental top ten band, and this spirit of experimentation isn't limited to their music. In two thousand seven, York and his bandmates released In Rainbows on their website. First fans were invited to pay what they wanted for the album. Radiohead may not have been the first to thumb its nose the music industrial complex, but they might be the first to do so and sell out a major arena. That said, Tom York hasn't necessarily been comfortable under the spotlight. He complains about celebrity worship, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Actually, I've got your health food snack, did you? Yeah? Because someone told me you were like all vegetarian and that Tom your has a new record out a mark. The band called themselves Atoms for Peace. You don't do a lot of gross Were you do? What? I was an Almairs needed basis on a need to know basis? Yeah, kind of, I kind of need to explain what I'm doing a bit with the Aldams for Peace thing, just a little bit because it's something different, and some vague effort to explain myself occasionally I think is morally acceptable tell us about the Albams for Peace. Well, it's just it was. I did a record on my own called the Eraser a few years ago. Was that your first solo record? Yes, first time. I sort of worked on my own with Nigel who norm produces Radiohead and it came out it was okay, people liked it a bit. A couple of years after, I suddenly thought I really want to actually because it was all done, it was all programmed, it was all computers and stuff, and I thought, actually, I really I'm curious to know what it would be like to actually get a band together to play this, And it was an excuse to go on a jolly to l A and hang out, and I emailed friends of mine who I knew like the record. One was Flee from the Chili Peppers. One was my friend Joey, who's drummed with everybody's genius drummer from anyway. We got it together and it turned into this thing became really exciting, and we ended up calling the band Absoms for Peace and making a record out of the excitement of that. And it was all brand new to me because I've been in the same band since I was seventeen sixteen. And when you do that, when you go into another room with people, it's not so much I'm assuming and you can help me that you want to not play with those guys anymore. You just want to play with different people for a change. It was a yeah, it was a totally different process. I mean, it's it's always fun if you know what you're aiming at, if you know what the tunes are, you're not trying to write them, you're just emulating what's already been written. That makes it fun straight away because it's a different sort of creative process. Um, you're not struggling around in the dark for a way into a piece of music. You're figuring out how to strip it down to its all essentials, especially if it's something has been written on a computer and then you have to humanly won't learn how to play it. It brings in this quite interesting thing with the feel of what you're playing anyway, it's loads of different things, but it's a lot more fun, a lot more relaxed if you're not trying to write, you know, which is what also all the time what we're trying to do with Radiohead. What's the first time or first experience you had with using computers to create music? That was I think after we did Okay Computer. I finally in the late late nineties you could like go on tour with the laptop and it was powerful enough that you could record, edit, use synthesizers, bit into it and it wouldn't crash and it was fairly stable. So I first started getting into it then. And what I thought was really interesting is when we were working on Okay Computer, I started using learning the software that we were using the studio to and we were still mostly working on tape old school. But I suddenly thought, we'll hang on a minute. If I can learn how all this equipment works, I'll have a completely different way of thinking about how to write. So I forced myself to learn all all this uh, all this equipment and learn to use the laptop because a lot of music I was into was being made electronically anyway, and I kind of thought it would be interesting to do it within the band, because you know a band. Normally musicians don't fall into doing the production side of it or building the tracks. They're like, stay this side of the studio, offense with the mix and let someone tell them. So I definitely was much more into blurring that up. Did Ni produce both your solo albums? Yeah he does. He does a lot and get all of the radio, Yeah he does. When you attribute that to having that kind of faith in someone, UM, for me, it's UM you find someone you trust. I mean not all the time, and we do argue a lot, but to have someone who's like um, a sounding board all the time, it makes everything so much more fun because if you're if you're knocking out ideas, you can't edit them and knock them out at the same time, Like, if you're on stage and you're trying to get through your part or whatever, you have to have someone out front saying, okay, that's not working. I mean I do on my own a lot. I do work. You know, you generate ideas, but all I then have is a mounting ideas that gradually I don't have to sit through, and it just takes so long. It's so much more fun sharing it with someone. What did you think about your fourays into computerized music? He was into it. I did wonder when I first started doing it, but he was into it because he watched me doing it in such a different way to him. I mean, I was like a kid being given a hammer. I was just hamming away on stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing, but he was kind of fascinated about that, you know, and he'd come and literally tidy up the mess done on the computer. What were other people who were other people that were working in that in that area that you listened to Who was then? Well, then it was I was obsessed with aph X, Twin then and Oteka. There was a lot of really interesting things happening in Britain then on this label called Warp and it was it was as warp w RP, like the floor is warped after the fun Yeah, And then I say, with your accent, that could have been anyone of four wards when on this label called War War Warm, War, War, Wall War War, Whoop Yeah, saying like we're saying here in the United States War it's country and Western record bit you bottom now and there boy? So you you as you were, you were obsessed with the music that was on Whoop Records because it didn't have any guitars and I was having a troubled relationship with my guitar at the time. Is it true, Well, not really. It's just like I ended up being in a band, signing this to this big record label, and it's a band and when big letters, so certain things go with that. But yet when I was at college, I was listening to a lot of other things, and after a while it was like, oh, this is it's really annoying that I felt like we couldn't break out of that. So I just started forcing us to break out of that because it didn't make sense to me. You've been with those guys for how long? Now? We started when we're sixteen Radiohead, which is um, now I'm forty four, so that's quite a while. And some bands that have had a tremendous longevity, obviously the Rolling Stones of the premier example, they've changed partners over the years, like they were the New York Yankees. You know, there's somebody else playing in third base every four or five years. But you guys, it's the same cast of people all the sudd What do you attribute that to persistence? My great diplomatic skills. Not but there must be times when they've I mean, I'll never forget McCartney said to me, even the Beatles got tired of being the Beatles. Were the times you guys sat there and looked at each other and said, I think we're done. I do that frequently, right frequently. I mean at least the others two not as much. They just wait for me to do it. Um, but it changes so it's like, yeah, it's stick around. I'm feeling it's coming up. I mean, you know, something to do with the fact we haven't done any useful for three weeks. It goes through these phases. You know, we've grown up together. It's weird. I mean, um, so we just did a tour last year right, and it was probably, in theory, the scariest one we've ever done, because it was lots of big gigs, which I normally am spending my time trying to shy away from. Why because you can't achieve technically in a large space where you normally want to exactly that you can't get across to people the right way, I felt. So we did spend a lot of time and effort coming up with like a stage design which used screens in a certain way which made it intimate, even though you know, some nights was like thirty or forty people trying to create some sort of intimacy, and when it worked, it was insane. It was because the upside of playing to that many people is you have this really crazy collective energy that you can tap into like a crowd, you know. Thing. There's one show we did in Phoenix that sticks in my mind where there was something about maybe that it was in Phoenix and people don't get the opportunity, those sort of people don't get the opportunity to get together that often or something. There was some sort of excitement within the crowd that was so great to play with. When when we hit it musically, it felt like the whole room, the whole of the building was moving. Honestly, we both came off, you know, and it's bob. I understand that not from my own experience, but from seeing artists perform. You know. I often asked myself, why the hell would would you put yourself through this? Because it's very stressful. It's a lot of pressure, and for me mentally, I've just build myself up to it in my head gradually, and it sounds really precious, but it messes with my head. I want to get to that, but I want to come around it and say, your music has such a spiritual quality to it. There's a spiritual element to it. Another stated one. It just emanates a vibe to me, that's to me that that but to me that comes off the audience. That's what I find. It's something that's developed. It's not like we're not going into this intending to do any of that. It just sort of happens when when the waves go right, you know, when the waves fall into place. So then you'll get to the end of the song and you can feel, Okay, we've done whatever it is that was it. What's your preparation before you do a live show before you because in the studio it's obviously a whole different animal, correct, Yeah, there's no preparation for the studio, you do. You know, it's billowing a china shop most of the time, which is how it should be. I think, and performing live, that's what's given to me. A couple of hours before you go out there and you've got to blow this thing out for all these people and just stone cold silence, basically almost meditative. Well, yeah, I do. I do that and focused. I stand on my head for a bit and basically I'm completely on my own until five minutes before we go on, and then we're all in the room together, pacing up and down like wild animals, and then then we're on. But when we first started doing big shows, it was with my friend Michael Stipe, and he does the total opposite. He literally he'll be talking to you and then someone taps in the should and then they're on. And I was like, how the hell do you do that? Man? And I tried to do it like that, I couldn't it, and so I ended up going did He said, did you get any indication why Stipe could do that? There's a lot of nice spiritual tones inside of R. E. M's music too. Yeah, No, I don't know. I think what he used to do was you'd stand there for the first two tunes, barely move. He was a sort of lightning conductor, and he was just waiting for it to hit, and then when it hit, he was off. But he would wait, and if it wasn't going to hit, he was still there three or four tunes later and waiting. He kind of warmed up in front of everybody, engaging it all. Whereas I can't do that because I have to sort of be clear of everything before you know, whatever, I need to um be completely empty. I started playing guitar when I was seven. I sat down and said I was going to be Brian May when I was a lot of bad thing to be. And then I tried to do I read like when I was ten or something. I read that he built his first guitar himself, which is when he still plays. So I tried to do that, but my efforts would crafting the guitar, and I had to cheat with the neck on the guitar I found and all that someone a neighbor gave me a neck of an electric guitar. Is that great? Okay, that's good, But you know I was ten or eleven, so I was trying to like bolt it together to this other piece of wood that I'd cut out, and it was just a disaster. But it kind of worked, but it was ugly. Was your family musical Not really? No. The only one that sticks out is barently my great grandmother. She'd get really hammered and then stay up playing her pump organ thing downstairs all night and keep the family up. You were around your witness dad. I met her once and she was kind of she wore black. I was quite scary when I was really tiny. But now that your parents were artists musicians, no, no, no, no. When the guitar came into your life when your seven Brian may or, no, was it music itself and where you moved by music itself? Or was it like many people when they're very young? Was rock stardom was never? Then? It was? It was you weren't running around your bedroom imitating Jagger and you thought like you and my My whole thing was we didn't have any sound system in the house. We had nothing, no high fi, nothing except for and my dad's car and had a type player in it, so I when and would sit for hours. I would sit for hours, and you know, it was the sound of Brian May's guitar, actually was. It was one of those funny things where you know, when you you turned something up and you're in a very controlled loud environment, just that sounds just you know, nothing else. It was that when you're that small and you've never I've never really heard music particularly at all up until that point. You know, it's funny, it's got a weird thing. But I mean, lots of kids at that age that you know, their parents didn't really have hi fires or anything as such. The only guy I did know who had to high fight down the road only played Abbert, which I thought was worse than not everyone, but that was me some of those kids. And then and then the guitar, and you're trying to fashion your own guitar by the time you're eleven, and then when you take another step toward deepening your commitment, how old are you when you form the band six Team. I did have a band when I was eleven, but um, what's an eleven year old band sound like? Yeah? No, not very good at all? Um, But it was it was very exciting, like going around to a friend's house is setting up and jamming, and all our mates would come and hang out and girls, which I thought, this is interesting as puberty hit, but that sort of fell to bits because I kept fighting with the drum. And then when I was sixteen, I was thinking, well, okay, I need to get this together really and just went around the school sort of choosing people. So you went around picking people. I got it. I got it because he was dressed like Morrissey and he had some cool socks, and I saw he had a guitar. I had no idea where they could play or not. I don't really care. I got Colin because I knew Colin could play very well and I needed a bass player could play very well. But he had never played bass before and his brother Johnny was this mythical musical prodigy. So roped him in. And then Phil was the only druma we knew anyway. So and and he had a house down the road that we could rehearse him and you lived where you grew up where well, this was an Abingdon school in near Oxford. And then when you form Radiohead when you're six team basically yeah, we started sort of writing, doing demos and messing about, and it was, you know, it was quite interesting straight away that it was quite I think as Field had quite a lot of experience. He was a bit older, and he'd had his own band, so he knew how to put things together a bit. And in fact we used to go and do demos in his sister's bedroom like right from the beginning, which which was great. I mean, there's nothing better than like just starting off by just trying to write demos from scratch, even though you can't really play, even though you don't know each other. That's where you start, you know. It's kind of a nice way to figure out where you're about. What do you think you do best? You lead a band, you well you you play guitar, you write music, you produce music, you do it and you sing. What do you think your greatest strength is? If you had to pick one. So I don't know what I'm doing right, I like the fact that still I don't know what I'm doing. I think we're not. Honestly, I can't go I'll go through whole phrases of um months where i'n't got a clue. I regularly lose complete confidence in what I'm doing. Why do you think that is because I have the same condition. Why partly because I think I don't quite understand how it happens after the fact, when when what happens when the appreciation comes to you know, when you're when you're piecing something together right, things will fall into place you make it. I mean, in some ways, the nicest bit about the creative thing, the nicest bit about recording and writing, is this sort of weird limbo where you in between scratching away scratching away, nothing really happening, nothing really happening, and then something wants to be built and starts to get built. You just have to let it happen. And then it gets to the end and you and you look at it a few months later and go huh um, sort of weird amn, easier that goes with it. Something will happen, one little sound goes off all and you go, oh, that's really nice. For when I was at school, I didn't get on with the school system at all. Um I see it, and my son the same. That sort of the mechanics of how a school operates and how you're supposed to blend in or whatever so I hid in the music stroke art department and had a great time there and discovered that actually that's what I wanted to do. Straight away, the heads of both schools just saw what I was up. Is this the teacher that you often credit with your Yeah, where was the teacher's name? Terry James? But but it was him and my art teacher as well. Actually it was like someone sort of takes you under their wing and say, well, you know what you're actually quite good at. Then touring is a very critical thing in this business. Yeah, because it's enough. It's enough at that age, it's enough to just get a little push and then okay, do someone push you in a different direction? Yeah, well that would be bad. How about do you go to the other I think you need to hear. Yeah, that's my father used to think. I used to get too advertising, which is like really brilliant. Yeah, I'd really be good at that. Other people ship. Well, one thing you're good at is avoiding. My original question, which was what do you think your best at? And let's try to choose. If you can't, if you if you don't mind, confine yourself to the list, I provide, what do you think your best at this is multiple choice guitar band, kind of you know, paternal figure, songwriting, producing, singing. Mm hmm, I guess singing. Okay, I'm glad you chose that one. I was driving. I was trying I think when I popped the words singing the way I did, I was trying to do or singing? What was singing to you? How did your singing evolve where you arrived at where you are now? We're most people say you have one of the most evocative singing voices and all of music today either that or melancholy to the point of what people who love who love radio, they crave their music, and they crave particularly you're singing. Well, basically I went to music went to a few singing lessons, but that was basically just so I could literally breathe right, you know, um, my favorite singers like the York When I watched Buyork sing um, I've been lucky enough to sort of sing with her and watch you do it. And I was gonna say, you're one of the few people going to use that phrase when I watched The York saying yeah, most of them say well, when I listened to the Yorks and it's uh in here, it's right here, they say, you know, with with with yoga and stuff that whatever it is, can't remember that that spot at the top of the four head that you really Most singers like Neil Young's the same. He sings into this spot in his head and and what he's singing, he's already heard, you know what I mean, He's hearing it come out. The same with with Bork. When she's singing, she's singing what she's hearing. So there's no force, it's a force in itself. It took me a while to get that, you know, even when we were on tour with R. E. M. Back when we're doing the Bends in nineties six or whatever it was. I was still trying to figure it out then watching Michael and wanting to sound like Michael. But I couldn't, you know, because my voice is in a different tone completely and so on. But what I did learn, what you know, watching him, was again that thing of like watching someone who their voices in sort of command of them rather than the other way around. Yeah, and but it's very natural, but it takes a long time for that to become natural. I think you, like any singer, it takes a long time to find that thing, and it keeps changing to me how I sing now, or to me it feels different to a few years ago. It just does. It just does age to do it. Well, yeah, there's probably some physical element to it, but but also just where you're at, you know, because singing is nothing but like probably like acting, sing is nothing but being in a moment, that's it, and where you're at. Yeah, when you do like, um, when I used to be like, you know, when when you're trying to singing or whatever, general I remember sort of okay, computer, I still had this thing like, well I need to be a little bit half cut when I'm you know, I need to do something or other beforehand so that I'm in the right space. Man, where all bollocks because basically you've just got to learn to be there with it. When you do it, you're not trying to prove anything. You're not trying to get anywhere, you're not trying to achieve anything. You're not trying to get this emotion across. You're not in this space trying to get this space across. You're not trying to get this mindset across or anything. You're just letting it happen when you do this now, when you live inside your life now, whether you're performing live or you're producing and recording music, do you feel different now that you're older. I mean, the chasm between when you're sixteen when you're forty three is extraordinary. It's just mind bending. Yeah. Do you feel like you're sick of it and you want to be done with it? Yeah? You do sometimes, but not. It's never really the music. It's always everything else, you know, primarily what we'll just stresses of life. Whatever. You know, something's good. So your life is not like I mean a lot of people think they think that successful artists, Uh, we just walk across this bed of rose pedals all day. The greatest torment of our life is do we go to Paris on spring break or Anguillah, my god, I can't. I can't answer that. It is able. It is a problem, but it's not. It's supposed to say that. But what I'm saying is is that they think that, like, do you ever sit there? You're very active socially, Yes, I guess you care. You've made some comments about world affairs and you care about the world. Yeah, you care about what's going on? If I said to you that I snapped my fingers and you go back to having a very normal life when you're not you at all with everything that goes with it, and the rest of the world is elevated unless of the world gets better. Things you care about, think of an issue you can. I say to you, Tom York, Tommy York, Tom your you go back and the world gets better, would you make that change define better? It's a tricky question, but you do. It's not an either or, but you do care. But other things. Is there an issue that you're embracing now? Is there something you're involved with now? I well, in my slack asked fashion, I was helping UM Greenpeace do this thing which was trying to stop drilling in the Arctic. But it sounds like it's kind of working because the company seem to be pulling out because they can't just pull up. Yeah, that's right. I don't think that's entirely down to us, but I think it definitely helped that we're making their life extremely difficult everywhere they turned. But challenge now is turned the Arctic into reserve, so it can't happen because what that was going to do is create this gold rush, you know, all rush up there, which was just going to be insane. And this at the same time where the ice is melting. Basically the only started considering it was a possibility because the ice was melting. They thought, okay, great, maybe got a better chance of jelling, which is like yeah. So I was kind of stuck in that for a while because Yeah, to me, the irony of it was too much. Um, I don't know where I'll go next. I don't I find it very stressful. I did get involved. A few years ago. We did this thing in Britain, the first Climate Change Act, which meant the government was is committed to reducing c O two emissions and now lots of countries that got it. It was the first one and the government didn't want to do it. Bled didn't want to do it, but we found this interesting loophole and got thousands of people to say letters in and said at the bottom of the letter to the the MP police, can you pass this on to Blair? Right, And apparently they were obliged to pass on these letters. So Blair was literally getting thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of letters, which doesn't normally happen, and he did pass the law after much arguing and me refusing to meet him because it was during the Iraq War and all sorts. Yeah, well any normal human being would be anyway, I was very glad I did it. And the people I was working for at the time I was it was was Friends of the Earth, and it was really inspiring and I became really good friends with the guy who's running Friends of the Earth at time, Tony Juniper, who now works with Prince Charles um And and it was a great period. But I just it burnt me out getting that close to politics. The most fascinating figure that we work with was the lobbyist that we had, our one lobbyist, So like we went into this port Color's house in Britain. You probably have the equivalent here. I don't know what it's called. But port Color's house was built for the lobbyists. It was built for special interests to go and sit with a cup of coffee, round table about this size and wait for MPs to go past, Color them, sit them down and lobby them in big capital building. Anyway, I found it completely fascinating, you know, because it's There's hundreds of these people walking around, and I'm like, none of them are lobbying for us. So when you maybe possibly could argue that our one mate friends of the earth, it was like, technically, you know, maybe speaking for the people a little bit, but basically they were all special interests and they had the ear of government. And I just thought, hang on, hang on a minute, how did this happen? Anyway? Where were we a minute ago? Where I want to go? Okay, go and let go there? Your children? Oh no, no, that's too much for a job. Hang on, where were Let's finish with this first? Uh no? Then your children? I'm lost. Now do your children know who you are and what you do? Yep, they're used to it. They're used to people coming up and saying hello. But most of the time it's very friendly, and that's normal. That's their normal. That's what they've grown up in. Old twelve and seven So one seven the age that you decided you wanted to be Brian May and by then he's he he would already have made his guitar with that neck. That was eleven, I think you said, So where are they at? Musically? Um? My son is a great drummer, but I don't know if you want to do that forever or not. He's like not bothered really, which is cool. You know, he just and he comes and hangs out with me when I'm working in my studio. We just hang out. You know, we're friends. But I don't think you know, they're burning ambition to be musicians or anything. Really, even though he's really good, he's for pleasure. I mean at that age, that's good, right his father? It affected your work, um, yes, but not really that you have the obvious things where you go round on the road more if you didn't have children. Yep, absolutely, But that's not necessarily a bad thing at all. You know, being on the road is is it's a it's not a great it's it's you don't want to do it all your life. You get a little bit on, it gets a little unhealthy quite quickly mentally, if not physically has been difficult for you. Mentally, it can be differently. It means it's it's wicked fun, but too much. It's either wicked fun or really awful, like when you're sick. Then it gets really it's a roll barmber man to get out there. Yeah, try to sing your way through the notes that you can't find because you're so sick, cool or whatever. That's really super stressful. But you know, is a massive buzz. There's no denying it. It's great. But Tom York is the first to admit that it takes work to keep it fun in the studio and on tour. It's very difficult to play with people you don't if there's problems between you, for example, if the issues come up. I mean, I'm very much I'm a Libran and I need to sort of out. I can't have stuff hanging around, you know, because it gets in the way. More in a minute with Tom York, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Given the level of success that Radiohead has reached, I did have certain expectations of Tom's lifestyle. I mean, I'm assuming you're in a world where that your phone must have rang it maybe it's stopped because because you kept saying no. But maybe everybody's like, you know, Barno wants to pick you up tomorrow and fly you too. St Bart's Yeah, that never appealed. I don't hang out with people because they are who they are. Necessarily unless I'm a big admirer of them, Like I mean, I stalked at Norton for ages until eventually gave in because because I'm a big admire of him, I think it's brilliant. So I hang out with him a bit occasionally. Um And I've always really admired Fulle anyway, So even before it became an issue of sort of playing no tangentially related to that. As you've gotten older and you look around the musical landscape, what you see does it appeal to you? Meaning of the music that's popular music? I mean, what's selling now the most successfully? Have you moved into a different place with that? Or do you admire a lot of what's being done? Is your in the mainstream? In the mainstream? There's nothing in the mainstream. The mainstream is just a void, you know. To me, I mean, what's weird about putting a record out? Now? Really? And this is not like sour grapes at all. It's just the fact the volume, literally the sheer volume and stuff that gets put out. It's like this huge fucking waterfall and you're just throwing your pebble in and it carries on down the waterfall and that's that right, Okay. Next, basically, you know, like in this country, the radio is tied up and people don't really listen to radio in the same way. It's it's music is going through a weird time because on the one hand, as ever, there's always really exciting music being made. It's never not being made. It's a question of whether you're going to get to hear it or not. And I mean I kind of I kind of knew the game was up a few years ago when one of our sort of team of people came in saying, Nokia wanted to offer you millions of pounds because they want content for their phones. And this is like in two and I don't know, early two thousand and you like content? What you know content? What do you mean music? Yes? Okay? Content maybe that yes? Yeah? Just could be music stuff, Yeah, stuff could be snoring. Have you got some stuff? You know? And you're like okay, And I think really that my problem with it is it's like it's now like something to fill up the hard ware with. You know, the music itself has become secondary to that, which is a weird thing to me. Is like and I think that will change because there's only so many different permutations of the same hardware you can make before people go, well, actually I have an iPod now, so thanks. So I think things will change, and I think the radio will change, and sooner the better, because no matter what way you look at it, the most pleasurable experiences you ever have is like when something's played to you don't know, We're like going around to friend's house and they'll stick a tune on your like, what the hell's there? You know, which is what it's about? You know, that's what Or like going into a store when I was a kid, like and then Smiths Records come out, and like and I'm going up to the guy I think. I was, like he's really cool, like the indie store in town and just talking to him about music for twenty minutes, you know. And you know, now everywhere you go, music is everywhere. It's everywhere, But it's not like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's content. Yeah, it's content. Is king that bullshit will change, And when it does, then I think we'll have a resurgence. The underbelly will come back overbelly, and then well with its middle aged will be overbelly. Well you have a ways to go there. I'm gonna be taking some slimming bills. Yeah, but now in the way that you talked about this pebble in the baderfall and content and music marketing. Now, so if that changes, certainly, which it has, does your willingness to release your music into that world change? Like, for example, an obvious example, maybe too obvious, is you don't want to play Creep anymore. Now you sit there and say, like if the Sultan of Brunei I called you up and said, I want you to come to Brunei and we'll give you a million pounds, just play Creep. I would play Creeping in the home. I would say to something of BRUNEI, why do you have that house near me that you never used? I get this meet you down the block. I mean, come on, it's an empty house, man, it must be worth whatever. That's what I'd say. And I'd say, no, obviously, will you retire a song that way? Why do you do that? Well? I didn't Moss, not necessarily retire it. I mean I don't recognize it as me, which is kind of quite interesting. When I hear Elain just that voice, I don't even recognize that it's kind of odd. Whatever you want, it's so fucking special. But then I remember hearing I remember hearing Lee read like on some radio station in Dublin years and years ago, and they were asking inevitably about underground and they said, yeah, well sometimes it comes on. I'm like, well, this is cool. What's this? And then I realized it's about the underground? Wow, yeah, I kind of know what he means. Sort of you get to the point where like, what's that? So you're forty three years old, forty four years old? But it's just our professional courtesy that we shave a year off of all of our already all of them, Um, you're in the now and you're in the here or what have you. And I I'm some saying that glibly and you're know what I'm saying, But you're not somebody who like Mick Jagger, for example, Like I wonder if Mick Jagger is going to hit a day, like does it happen in a day? Like as Mick Jagger in bed one day and he picks up the phony, He's like, you know, I just can't do it anymore. I can't get out of this bed. I can't do another fucking show again and it's over. Do you think of other things? I think all the time of the next thing I'm gonna do. Yeah, the next thing. You don't have to tell us what it is, but you know, uh no, I mean it would end if someone happened to my voice. I don't know. Certain things could make it physically stop, and it will stop at some point, something will happen. But for me, I'm yeah, I'm always hearing different things. There's always half finished things, which you ask poor old Nigel, he knows about that. There's always a mountain of half stuff. I want to get into, stuff I've started, stuff I want to you know. But I also think it's good to sort of take breaks because I've gone straight from this radio tour last year, which was a really heavy mother but really good fun, straight into doing sort of atoms fee stuff and not really had a break. And to break is do. A break is do because what I've found with a break is can be an incredibly exciting thing with that thing of like you just all the stuff you want to do, but you just force yourself not just force yourself to wait and get back into just time and space and um yeah, not being in music all the time, I think, because it's like anything, you start to go in small circles, so you've got to stop when that happens. I've had to practice that now. I mean, I got married again and my wife is pregnant and I'm going to have a kid, and I really sat and thought about that way that I want to have a more ordinary and more normal handling of my emotions. I think the best way to put it iss where people in my business say, which is would you rather live it in real life or word you rather playing on screen? And I'm thinking I want to walk away from because I'd rather live it in real life now than play it on screen. I think with what I do, it's slightly different because what I would I do it actually unless you you literally are spending, unless you are just literally working too hard. It's a regenerative thing. I find that I'm well, I mean, my family, my friends know that I'm a nicer person. If I'm working and I'm into what I'm doing. Then if I stop, there is a period where I'm fairly unbearable. If I do stop, yeah, for too long, probably, Yeah, there's a threshold. But like if you want to shift right with your work. If you want to shift, if you're writing, if you're being creative over all, you kind of have to stop to make that shift, because if you just I'm constantly creating, I've got this mountain of brilliant ideas. You're making the basic mistake that you're assuming all our ideas are brilliant, where in fact, actually the more you do they're probably the more it kind of your thing in reverse, because actually I need to go and do normal ship. I need to. I can't write unless I have a period where restored. Well, no, it's not restored, just just reset. I'm like just normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal normal. Speaking of normal, do you have siblings? Yeah? What do you have a brother? What does he do? Russian politics and stuff? He teaches? No, he'sa town. What do you mean all sorts of ship investigations on people? Studied Russian Oxford and then went into there is? Are your parents all there? What do your I always love people in your business above all? What do your parents and your brother make of you? Going from being Tom York Tom to becoming Tom York. Well, my brother was in a band of his own for a while as well, so he has slightly like you can see what it is from another point of view. What do my parents think? I don't know. They like when I was a kid, they didn't approve. Now that I'm happy, why do you go into advertising? Yes, well, you know it was like fair enough. I was I piste off with him at the time, but you know, it's kind of what that's what you do, isn't it. I mean Abody's parents. Right when I left a pre law program and I was destined to go to law school and I went into the acting program, my mother was She literally screamed at me over the part. My mom was very upset when I when I chose to go to art college, because she'd been to art college, and she said, it's complete waste of time, don't mother. I when it became successful with my business, mother was like, I'm so proud of him. Oh my god, this is wonderful. Yeah, it's kind of bond because like seeing them backstage at a really big show that will come to a big show and then there's all sorts of ship came off with my mates. They're doing whatever, you know, and there's my mom and the going that was fun Courtney beer or whatever. When you do step away from it. Whether there art are you? Are you interested in art? Photography? Well, my mate theater film, my mate Stanley don Wood, who I went to art college with, who does all our art work with. I mean I do it with him kind of thing. We we always have these lovely plans about we want to go and live in Berlin for a month and just paint and get in trouble and things like that. We call ourselves the Sunday Painters and we go on bad painting trips. We did one where um they're bad painting trips because I'm involved. There was one one of my favorite ones was we went on the moors down in Cornwall. Do you know what I mean by the moors and Dartmore basically, which is very very very bleak but really beautiful. We're in the stone Circle, drove part of the way, walked the rest of the way with these big canvases and paints. But we only discovered we only have purple and blue and yellow, so we thought, okay, we'll use that, and we painted landscape all afternoon, but they were purple and blue and yellow. Some poor woman I remember coming like late afternoon, coming and ask us asking us for directions. We're both sitting there, you know, cavases up like this, all huddled up with the hood hoods on, you know, just doing there. And this ball woman comes up, asks for asks directions somewhere rather and then looks at the paintings. That just wanders off like good luck. I hope you're not counting. I was like, didn't think the purple's working. It was like me being in Italy and this beautiful couple they were like later they were older, and the men walked up to me in the camera and he said schools, schools as a photo, and he's pointing to me and his wife. He's triangularly and I go, oh. When I put my arm around his wife to take a photo, he goes, no, no, you photo of my way and yeah, you take the mountain in the background. And I was like, oh, god, bless. Yeah, they don't know who I am. I should move here, I should here. Um, you mentioned someone gave you that push his mentorship in your career. Do people come to you and do you give them a push a little bit? I mean you must have a lot of people in the music world, young people who look up to you. Um, one of the best buzzes really is that thing where someone comes up who's new and they're really into you know, I'm really into what they're doing. It's really fascinating and it's really totally new to me. But yet the occasions when off of you yeah, and you're like, how could you how could you feel off me? I don't see any of my stuff, yeah, but they see it, and I'm like, wow, that's so cool, especially when it's like like it's in hip hop and like really, you know, people within hip hop who are into Radiohead. I'm like, I find that so fascinating because i mean, obviously I'm massively into hip hop, and we've we use hip hop as a reference point in the way we build tracks and stuff. But but really, wow, that's bonkers. Obviously that's one of the really good bits. But it's not really mental ship. It's just people who you admire good at their ship. You know, when it happens, it happens. How does success make you feel? How does it make me feel? Really something which which I think is well has it made me feel? It's always been a little bit far away from me, and the only time it sort of makes sense is when we play in front of people you know, and the rest of the time, it's like, well, it's it's just it's who I've been for so long. I can't tell you because it's just that's what it is. And I think I've probably been doing it more than I haven't in my life in terms of years, in terms of time. So most of the time I don't really notice. Some people come up and I go, well, that's nice, you know, thanks very much. And it's not like I'm not grateful. I'm just I just don't notice. And then sometimes something will whack you over the head and you go blidy things like doing the first time we did Saturday in our life, for example, and you go, really, people give a ship, because sometimes you can't. You don't know, you don't know you've got on the inside. You can't see it. And and and also we've spent so long running away from it, and I don't feel like a run away from it now because there's nowhere to run run, no where to run. And also it is like, yeah, I'm really grateful for I'm very incredibly lucky. It's a very good point. There's nowhere to run and still do it. Yeah, I mean, I just think I'm well Jammy. As we take it's just really jammy, especially in the US, you know, like people really give a ship and it's like, well, that's amazing. I guess I have one more question was what does well Jammy mean. I don't know, really, you don't know. Jammie is like, um, yeah, it's so Jammy, like you just I'm dating myself. It's a total float man, it's not really. You're just lucky. I mean I'm British, right, so I assume I'm just lucky. There's no skill involved. I'm Jammy. This is from Tom York's most recent album, Amock. He'll be touring in support of the album later this year. Find out more on our website Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.