Thom Yorke has shared that he was already sick of the Radiohead album ‘OK Computer’ by the time that it was first released, and was itching to “move on” from it by the time they heading on tour.
The rock icon and Radiohead frontman spoke about his relationship with their hit 1997 album during a new, wide-ranging conversation with Harry Styles for Rolling Stone.
In the discussion, Yorke went on to admit that while the record remains one of their biggest releases, the “worst thing” about it for him was that he got fed up of playing the songs before the album even hit shelves.
“When we finished that record, we’d been already playing those songs too much,” he explained, adding that when his manager told him that they would have to then “go on tour for two years” to promote the album, he “literally begged them, [saying] ‘I can’t, I can’t do it. I need to move on.’”
The band, also comprising Ed O’Brien, Philip Selway, and brothers Jonny and Colin Greenwood, embarked on over 100 shows as part of their ‘Against Demons’ world tour, which launched in May 1997 and ran until April 1998. Before later picking up again.
“Two years later, we were still going,” Yorke told Styles. “That was just really fucked up because the moving on thing is not a luxury. That’s entirely essential. You know? Everybody has their different ways of dealing with this. Personally, I rely on not doing it for too long… I wish I could do it for a long time. I can’t.”
The band have been vocal about struggling around the release of ‘OK Computer’ before, and back in 2017 the singer spoke openly about the exhaustion from the ‘Against Demons’ tour – saying that he tried to “escape” while on the road.
Recalling a gig that they played in November 1997 in Birmingham, Yorke said that the pressure finally got to him, and he “walked out of soundcheck, disappeared, lost the security and then was trying to get out of the building.”
“There was nowhere to go, so I hid on the train,” he added. “And that was the nearest I came to trying to escape.”
Bassist Colin Greenwood also shared in 2003 that the ‘OK Computer’ tour felt like the “worst point” in their career, partly because they could see how it was taking a toll on Yorke.
“There is nothing worse than having to play in front of 20,000 people when someone—when Thom—absolutely does not want to be there, and you can see that hundred-yard stare in his eyes,” he said. “You hate having to put your friend through that experience. You find yourself wondering how you got there.”
‘OK Computer’ went five-times platinum in the UK, and went on to sell more than 4.5million copies. It contains their two highest-charting singles: ‘Paranoid Android’ and ‘No Surprises’. In NME‘s original album review, we gave it 10/10 and called it “a landmark record of the 1990s”.
The interview with Styles comes following Radiohead announcing their long-awaited live return in September last year, marking their first shows together in over seven years. They went on to play 20 arena dates across Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin that November and December.
Also in the new interview with Harry Styles, Yorke revealed that their 2025 reunion tour led to a “massive” crash in his self-confidence that took months to recover from.
Earlier this year, Harry Styles presented Yorke with a prestigious Ivor Novello Fellowship and paid tribute to Radiohead as his “favourite band” and made the memorable admission: “I lost my virginity to ‘Talk Show Host’.”
At the event, Yorke debuted new song ‘Space Walk’, and delivered a passionate speech calling for better treatment of artists in the music industry.
He warned that “the industry will die” if these continued to “devalue the next generation of artists and their fans”, and shared his concerns that the business was “becoming risk-averse and unable to help” fresh talent thrive. “They’re fragile, usually kind of fucked up like me, and they need support,” he urged.
