The one question Thom Yorke would want to ask John Lennon
For his 2023 book The Singers Talk, Jason Thomas Gordon sat down with a veritable who’s who of music icons to discuss their vocal techniques and routines, inspirations and legacies, including Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Mavis Staples, Rod Stewart, Robert Smith and Radiohead singer Thom Yorke.
Although Jason Thomas Gordon was conducting the interview, he gave Yorke the opportunity to come up with a question of his own, “If you could ask any singer about their voice, who would it be and what would you ask?”
Yorke answered: “It would be John Lennon. Lennon’s whole attitude to singing, I’m a little bit obsessed with because, on the surface, he has this whole, raw, doesn’t give a fuck… Just the way he sings is weirdly brutal. I’d want to talk to him about how he was always so incredibly accurate but always sounding on the edge of like, he’s gonna miss it, he’s gonna miss it. And specifically, all these ideas he had in his head about how his voice should be treated. I was like, How do you see it? Because what they did with his voice, they had pretty simple tools, but they did really interesting things. So, having a conversation with him about that”.
This wasn’t the only question where Yorke had The Beatles on his mind, either. When Gordon asked him to name one singer that he would like to have dueted with, York again thought of Lennon, although he conceded that “it would sound awful though, awful. It wouldn’t mix well at all”.
Lennon wasn’t the only influence mentioned by Yorke in the interview, though. He recalled being a fan of Queen in school but seeing himself more as a Brian May figure than Freddie Mercury, as well as being made to sing Schubert in school. While not a selection he would have made himself, Yorke admitted that it was his first performance of one of these classical pieces that had a big effect on his future as a singer, he said: “Weirdly, I quite enjoyed the challenge of having to do something so structured and classical and the specific technique of how to use my body”.
Yorke added: “I did a recital of a Schubert thing in front of about 20 people, and that’s the first time where I said, ‘OK, I guess I’m a singer’, because people really liked it, or rather, I was surprised by the sound that was coming out”.
And there were more influences to come, still. When asked if he was emulating any other singers when he first started writing his own material, Yorke owned up that he was – “for quite a few years” – emulating Michael Stipe and Morrissey.
When it comes to favourite singers, Michael Stipe again got a nod from Yorke, alongside Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Scott Walker, Billie Holliday, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. As much as Yorke admires those great jazz vocalists, wanted to emulate Michael Stipe and Morrissey, got his first break singing classical songs, and was fascinated by the raw brutality of John Lennon’s singing style, he accepts that “the hardest lesson to learn is to be yourself,” admitting that it took him years to finally come to terms with that.
