The song Thom Yorke called “perfect pop”
Thom Yorke is not normally the sort of artist you imagine sitting at home and enjoying the whimsical sound of contemporary pop music. From the moment Radiohead were once shamefully pigeonholed as Britpop by lazy journalists of the 1990s, Yorke and his bandmates used the unfortunate label as a catalyst to create music outside the realms of the sugary pop that was leaking out of radio stations at the time.
The release of their debut album, Pablo Honey, had not gone down well. The band collaborated with Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade – a duo who had previously worked with US indie bands Pixies and Dinosaur Jr -to produce their debut album. Still, it didn’t deliver the dream results. Branded as a watered-down version of Nirvana, the album put the band on the back foot, and their lead single ‘Creep’ was blacklisted by BBC Radio 1 because it was deemed “too depressing”.
Despite a selection of tame reviews, Radiohead did begin to garner worldwide recognition following the release of Pablo Honey. Despite ‘Creep’ initially flopping in the UK, the track did begin to pick up interest elsewhere, and San Francisco alternative radio station KITS added the track to its playlist ahead of Radiohead’s first North American tour in what proved to be a significant moment.
It was during this tour in 1993 that Thom Yorke held underwent a short piece of promotion and sat down for an interview with the cult publication Ray Gun Magazine. The interview has since found its way into the library and archives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and thus surfaced on the internet. Yorke, with his peroxide blond hair, was asked if his music was ‘pop’ to which he answered: “Yesss,” he says slowly.
“My definition of pop is tapping into something,” Yorke added. “My ideal pop song is one that says something people want to hear lyrically and that grabs them by the neck musically – and one that has some sort of depth that moves it beyond a happy tune that you whistle at work.”
Discussing specific material that he considers in the realm of pop, the Radiohead singer added: “Songs like ‘Under Pressure’, something that makes you want to fall down on your knees. That to me is the perfect pop song.”
In Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Story of Freddie Mercury and Queen, the band’s drummer Roger Taylor explained how one of the 20th century’s unstoppable collaborations came about: “David came in one night and we were playing other people’s songs for fun, just jamming,” it’s a nice image of musicians having fun but soon enough things got more professional, “in the end, David said, ‘This is stupid, why don’t we just write one?’”
What transpired was the writing and recording of quite possibly one of the greatest songs of all time—a piece of pop music history. Driven by Deacon’s incredible bassline, something which deserves all the praise it receives, both Bowie and Freddie Mercury battled in the vocal booth fuelled, as Blake suggests, by the two intoxicants of wine and cocaine.
Blake describes the scene, beginning with the recollections of Queen’s guitarist: “‘We felt our way through a backing track all together as an ensemble,’ recalled Brian May. ‘When the backing track was done, David said, ‘Okay, let’s each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go—just off the top of our heads—and we’ll compile a vocal out of that’.”
He continues: “And that’s what we did. Some of these improvisations, including Mercury’s memorable introductory scatting vocal, would endure on the finished track. Bowie also insisted that he and Mercury shouldn’t hear what the other had sung, swapping verses blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.”
In the years that followed that interview, Yorke has been open about how the pioneers of contemporary pop have influenced his own creative vision. Speaking in 2008, he explained how Bowie’s 1971 album Hunky Dory had entered his mind when considering the importance of delivering a message. He said: “In Rainbows is a conscious return to this form of 45-minute statement. Of course, it was possible to make it shorter. But our aim was to describe in 45 minutes, as coherently and conclusively as possible, what moves us. In Rainbows is, at least in our opinion, our classic album our Transformer, our Revolver, our Hunky Dory.“
Yorke respected Bowie’s approach to such a degree that the late singer almost influenced Radiohead’s touring plans: “Well, when we started talking about touring, I had just been reading about David Bowie’s Station to Station tour,” Yorke said. “I’m not sure if this is entirely true, but as far as I can tell, he did actually go station to station. He didn’t get on a plane. He even did the Trans-Siberian Railway. And he did it across the US as well. So the first thing that I said, with a sort of pouty lower lip, was ‘I don’t want to fly, I want to go by train’. But then, it was completely impossible. There was no way to do it. The infrastructure is no longer there. I mean, it wasn’t really there then either, but Bowie wasn’t taking a great deal of gear. So I don’t know”.
With that, the feeling of admiration between both acts was very much mutual. Bowie, speaking about the most impressive live performances he had witnessed, once cited Radiohead as one of his favourite acts “This year, I saw Radiohead at the Beacon Theatre [in New York],” he said. “I had a shrewd suspicion that they were the best band around, and that convinced me”.
