The massive show that Radiohead’s Thom Yorke almost walked out of: “I can’t do it!”
In the late 1990s, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke experienced a new level of fatigue.
Going into OK Computer, Yorke knew he wanted to do something different that wasn’t the “miserable, morbid and negative” sounds of their previous record, The Bends. The record, according to Philip Selway, focused on a lot of personal introspection, and doing the same thing would have bored their already captive audience.
The resulting OK Computer wasn’t exactly the upbeat, happy-go-lucky antithesis of The Bends, but it did place its focus on distinctive themes of technology and capitalism, along with the sociopolitical malaise of feeling trapped and isolated as a result. In many ways, it was distinctively heavier, but the result was a major breakthrough that placed Radiohead at the forefront of the British rock scene.
Songs like ‘Paranoid Android’, ‘Karma Police’, and ‘No Surprises’ became career-defining hits, withstanding the test of time as some of the best-written rock songs of all time. It also became more broadly associated with the kinds of experimental innovation that articulate the thoughts and emotions of an entire generation in ways that hadn’t been done before.
Yorke felt the impact immediately, and not necessarily in a good way. There was much to celebrate, of course, but recording sessions had left him fatigued, and the following tour – which included one of the best in rock history, Glastonbury in 1997 – was tainted by this brewing sense of disillusionment that made his experience separate from the atmosphere of their explosion.
“I had a time after OK Computer when we were doing these big gigs and people were constantly saying, ‘Isn’t this great?’ and talking to you in a certain way blah blah blah blah and I would be standing on stage doing these big shows and all I wanted to do was just walk off, say goodbye to everybody and never see them again,” Yorke told Brian Draper in 2004.
It wasn’t just the attention that made Yorke feel out of sorts; it was the sense of foreboding that always comes with feeling like you’re pushing yourself too far, like you’re all out of juice, and you’re waiting for that moment when everything cracks, and you walk away. For Yorke, that moment almost came with their Glastonbury performance, when Yorke’s mounting burnout nearly made him throw in the towel completely.
“By the time we’d finished the record, we had a meeting about what we were going to do for the shows, and I was like ‘I can’t do Glastonbury, I can’t do it… No, I can’t do it!’ I’d burnt myself out making the record, and the idea of having to put myself back. It was a weird time for me. I’d just got really obsessed, and I just needed a break,” he reflected to BBC 6 Music’s Matt Everitt.
Recalling one moment during the actual show when he almost called it quits because of poor weather and failing equipment, he added, “At one point in the show, I just went over to Ed [O’Brien], I tapped him on the shoulder and I said ‘I’m off mate I’ll see you later!’ and he turned around and said ‘if you do, you’ll probably live the rest of your life regretting it.’ I’m like ‘good point!’”
The chances are that Yorke almost certainly would have regretted it, especially considering that their Glastonbury performance is one of the most celebrated in both Radiohead and Glastonbury history. And while it didn’t feel anything like the magic you saw through the screen or from the crowd, it ultimately became a masterclass in extreme resilience, all in the name of great art.
