“No connection”: Thom Yorke on the album that it was impossible to work with him on
How do you feasibly keep upping your game as an artist with every album and keep pushing things in a positive forward direction? Surely it’s all about taking small steps rather than giant leaps in order to make it possible for you to keep up with your own artistic development, but in the case of Radiohead and Thom Yorke’s urge to keep improving, there were only ever bold leaps into the unknown with each successive record that they put out in the first part of their career.
Whether you’re a hardcore fan of Radiohead or not, you’ll know that their debut album, Pablo Honey, is often maligned as being their weakest album. Even if they hadn’t gone on to produce several masterpieces, it would have been regarded as an underwhelming package that was only rescued from total mediocrity by its standout singles and a smattering of passable album tracks. From here, the group could’ve faded into obscurity by failing to elevate their craft to another level, but they chose to knuckle down and refine their sound for their next album.
The Bends was an entirely different beast to their debut, and saw the group manage to bring out their strengths over the course of a record, employing bold and dynamic guitars and employing a greater focus on structure, melody and lyricism. It was clear that the band had come on leaps and bounds in the two years since their debut, and with its own follow-up, OK Computer, they remarkably managed to repeat this feat by taking things to an even more extraordinary level.
But once the band had solidified their status as one of the most prodigious rock bands in the world by the end of the 1990s, it wasn’t immediately clear how they’d approach their next record and better themselves once again. They’d set themselves a seemingly impossible task in surpassing the brilliance of OK Computer, and they’d need to play their trump card in order to continue this hot streak and maintain this level of superior quality.
Instead of trying to refine an alternative rock masterpiece, the answer was to start again with a completely fresh approach, and they surrounded themselves with synthesisers and other unusual electronic instruments such as the ondes Martenot, which guitarist Jonny Greenwood taught himself to play. However, holing themselves up in the studio with all of these wild and lofty ideas of how to divert their sound towards the electronic influences that Yorke had been gorging on such as Autechre, DJ Shadow and Aphex Twin wasn’t an easy transformation, and some of the band were flummoxed as to how it would even work.
In a retrospective interview with Rolling Stone, Yorke revealed the inner struggles that the band faced during this time, and claimed that his insatiable desire to experiment further almost tore the band apart. The others didn’t know what to contribute,” he claimed. “When you’re working with a synthesiser, it’s like there’s no connection. You’re not in a room with other people. I made everyone’s life almost impossible.”
While the three years after OK Computer birthed an outstanding opus in Kid A, transforming the notion of what a rock band could be in the process, it was hardly a straightforward ordeal. While the sessions also led to the creation of its sister record, Amnesiac, the band could finally rest easy in the fact that they had achieved their goals of being a mainstream act that knew exactly how to stretch the parameters of rock music, and from this moment onwards they became much more comfortable in their position as the most ambitious group of their era.
