Brad Pitt’s favourite Radiohead song: “The Becket of our generation”
Since his breakthrough performance in Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise, Brad Pitt has maintained a steady presence in Hollywood as one of America’s finest acting talents. As a restless creative, his pursuits have bled into production, for which he earned one of his two Oscars, and even sculpture, which he took up alongside his musical friend Nick Cave under the mentorship of Thomas Houseago.
While Pitt hasn’t followed Cave into a singing and songwriting career, his passion for music is profound. In 2012, he purchased the famous French recording studio Studio Marvel in a joint venture with fellow film producer Damien Quintard. The studio has hosted some of Pitt’s favourite artists, including The Cure and Pink Floyd, hence his decision to revitalise the iconic building.
Like most music lovers, Pitt has many favourite artists. A handwritten note dating back to 1987 reveals that a young Pitt ranked the American pianist George Winston above all other artists. However, several immensely inspiring musicians have entered the actor’s consciousness since then.
Alongside all-time greats like Neil Young and Bob Marley, Pitt reveres Thom Yorke, the frontman of Radiohead, as one of the greatest musicians of the last century. His love for Radiohead reached such a pitch in the late 1990s, following the arrival of OK Computer, that he even tried to get Yorke to soundtrack Fight Club.
In an interview with BBC Radio 6, Yorke revealed why he regrettably declined Pitt’s offer. “We’d finished OK Computer, and I was completely gaga,” he said. “They asked me to do Fight Club. They sent me the script, and Ed [Norton] and Brad Pitt wrote to me and said, ‘We really think you should do this’. I went, ‘Nah, I can’t’. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to do it then, but every time I see the film, I go ‘Oh’ [in lament].”
Reflecting on Fight Club in a 2019 interview with The Guardian, Edward Norton, who co-starred in the movie with Pitt, revealed the extent of their fandom. “We were listening to The Bends and OK Computer constantly in the makeup trailer,” he revealed. “Brad and I were obsessed – we had those albums on all the time.”
Fight Club hit the cinemas in 1999 sans Radiohead but profited from a discerning score by The Dust Brothers and the iconic closing scene soundtracked by Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’ In a conversation with Rolling Stone later that year, Pitt returned to the topic of Radiohead, waxing lyrical about his favourite band. “What is so important about Radiohead is that they are the Kafka and the Beckett of our generation,” he mused, making a comparison Yorke and his bandmates would no doubt enjoy, given their affections for classic literature.
Despite Yorke’s unstable mental state in the late 1990s, Radiohead were undoubtedly at their creative zenith. If Pitt found The Bends and OK Computer compelling, I would like to have been a fly on the wall the first time he dropped the needle on Kid A in 2000 and Amnesiac thereafter.
Like most Radiohead fans, Pitt is partial to most of the band’s impressively eclectic catalogue. However, when it comes to his favourite song, he can’t help but submit to nostalgia, reaching back to 1995. The actor once created a playlist of his all-time favourite songs, wherein, alongside tracks by Pink Floyd, R.E.M. and The White Stripes, he listed the title track from The Bends.
