“I don’t want to do this anymore”: The album made Thom Yorke want to break up Radiohead
This is one of those stories that comes as no surprise to anyone. It is no wonder that there have actually been several moments during Radiohead’s history when the band, especially Thom Yorke, wanted to call it quits.
Yorke is a man who seems utterly and unshakably uncomfortable with the heights of his own success. Or, perhaps more accurately, the heights of his own fame and notoriety as the role of a celebrity seem to feel like a trap for one of rock’s moodiest frontmen. It started right back at the beginning when the success of their debut single instantly set the tone.
Despite being the song that made their name and gave him the career he has today, Yorke has previously called fans of ‘Creep’ “anally retarded”. At first, the hatred of the song seemed somewhat valid. After the release cycle of their debut, where they were playing that breakout track over and over and over, their frustration is understandable. “We seemed to be living out the same four and a half minutes of our lives over and over again. It was incredibly stultifying,” Johnny Greenwood said of those days, and that’s easy to appreciate. But as the resentment for the song endures today, matched with several other lashings out at their own fans, the whole thing becomes a microcosm for Yorke and co’s relationship to their own success.
So, it’s not a shock that he thought about calling it all off, as it’s been clear from the beginning that the singer always appears to be one bad show or one annoying fan away from disappearing forever.
However, whereas other artists might slowly warm up to that feeling, growing more and more tired over time. Yorke was hit with it instantly and held on, struggling to actually enjoy the early spoils of success as he was too busy being utterly overwhelmed by it. ‘Creep’ was the cause, but it was his relationship to making The Bends that became a clear first symptom and made him want to call it all off.
“The Bends, for me, will be tainted by a particular picture I have of a very bad time,” Yorke recalled to Time Out about their second album, one that will forever be dampened in his eyes. While existing in that “stultifying” period, as Greenwood put it, Yorke struggled to get his head back around in time when the world was still seemingly demanding the Pablo Honey lead track from two years prior. In short, he was exhausted, and he didn’t know if he could, or wanted to, continue.
“Sitting in the studio, thinking, ‘No, I don’t think we can pull this together. We’re just going to have to split up’,” he recalled as the record got on top of him, “Thinking, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’ in big letters, then in smaller letters, ‘And I’m gonna go and buy a car and drive away and I’m not coming back’. I’m sure everyone in the band was going through that.”
It sounds like a classic case of second album syndrome, where the band seemed to struggle with the pressure that comes with trying to follow up a successful debut. But for Yorke and Radiohead, that would have undeniably been compacted by their reluctance towards fame, not knowing how another great record might affect that or what song they might be stuck singing on a loop next.
