The first song that Thom Yorke was truly proud of: “You find the significance in it when you read it afterwards”
One harsh comment really can change everything, especially if it’s delivered by the wrong person at the wrong time, like a teenage girl, to a fragile teenage Thom Yorke.
Before Radiohead were Radiohead, they were On A Friday, a band of sixth form students. Only allowed to rehearse on a Friday, the name came from there, but so too did the sense of uncommitted rebellion as Yorke and co would mostly mess around at that point.
“We’d make a lot of noise then go and drive Morris Miners round his garden,” Yorke recalled of that time, but the one thing that did come out of it was his first songs. It was during those early years that he first tried his hand at writing and began to craft his style. However, it was also during this period that he was delivered some savage critique by the harshest critics around: teenage girls.
“Your lyrics are crap. They’re too honest, too personal, too direct, and there’s nothing left to the imagination,” Yorke recalled being told by some girl in his class. It’s funny to think about that girl now, and wonder if she still believes that to be true of the revered artist. I wonder if she realises the power she held to change history, as there was the very real possibility that after such a devastating blow, Yorke may have simply given up.
In hindsight, though, he’s grateful for her. “She was right. When I first started, I wasn’t really interested in writing lyrics,” he said, “Which is strange in a way because if I didn’t like the words on a record, if it wasn’t saying anything, I would never bother with it again. But at 16, your own songs are half-formed and you don’t really expect anyone to hear them, so you don’t care what the words are.”
The comment seemed to play on his mind and stay there as he grew closer to the Greenwood brothers, took a gap year after college and really focussed on becoming a better artist, and an artist more in line with the one he’d reemerge as when On A Friday were offered a record deal and changed their name to Radiohead in 1992.
It took a while for Yorke to feel like he’d actually done it – like he’d actually, finally written a song worthy of celebration or that he wholeheartedly thought was good. But he finally managed it, although he was still hesitant to admit.
When Q asked him about the first song he was actually proud of, he hesitated for a whole 30 seconds before eventually saying, “‘Fake Plastic Trees’,” explaining, “When we did demos, words would be made up on the spot. You throw it away, or it sticks because it sounds amazing. You find the significance in it when you read it afterwards.”
It seemed to be the ultimate antidote to that girl’s critique, as no one could ever criticise a song like that for being “too personal, too direct” as they tapped into the cryptic and symbolic nature that now defines Yorke’s voice. So really, maybe he owes it all to that cruel teenage peer, maybe she’s the key to everything.
