The only aspect of Pink Floyd that Thom Yorke was always jealous of
Thom Yorke is not a bitter man. Controversial? Yes. A bit of a pain in the arse? Absolutely. But if one thing’s clear, he’s very much happy staying in his own lane, and not getting blindsided by that of others.
Having said that, he is only human – and a famous one at that, the type of which are more than well-known for rearing their green eyes of jealousy from time to time. You can say all you want about the Radiohead frontman personally in terms of his music or his impact, but asking him to compare himself to other artists is just opening a whole ugly and writing can of worms that you would really much rather leave contained.
This was essentially the notion that Yorke conveyed when he was asked in a 2013 interview whether he was a fan of Pink Floyd, in an ominous piece of foreshadowing which would certainly later come back to bite him. When he said he was “not necessarily [a fan] of all of their music but more of the fact that they were allowed to do just whatever the hell they wanted to do,” there was almost a begrudging acknowledgement that despite his distaste, Pink Floyd were undeniably the experimental masters of the scene.
Recalling back to the start of Radiohead’s career, when they were signed to Parlophone Records and subsequently joined some of the most illustrious company in all of rock music, not least Pink Floyd, Yorke added: “The guy who was running the company at the time had worked with them and he said to us, ‘I don’t expect you to do great things straight away, but I’ve got a good feeling about you chaps, so you just take your time’.”
In this sense, although it was solid advice, not being hailed as the same overnight sensations as Pink Floyd or The Beatles may always have been a bit of a thorn in the side of the frontman, seeing himself perhaps labelled as the protégé instead of the real deal. To give him complete credit, that would be enough to make even the most level-headed people slightly jealous of what could and should be yours.
But Yorke’s off-the-cuff remarks from all those years ago came to have a stinging resonance when Roger Waters started waging a war of words against the frontman – ironically, based on the very subject of war. Following the controversy of Radiohead’s performance in Tel Aviv in 2017, and not helped by Yorke’s somewhat neutered response to the ongoing conflict in Palestine, Waters’ ire is something he has never let slip, most recently calling the frontman a “timid little bloke”.
As much as he’s never addressed it directly, you can imagine that Yorke’s jealousy of Pink Floyd would have pretty much ended there and then. If precedent is anything to go by, however, this has all the makings of a rivalry bound to rumble on for a very long time. What once started as a tacit appreciation has ended in a rock rutting of the horns – and the fight is going to get messy.
