Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke in concert in 2000.
Background information
Birth name	Thomas Edward Yorke
Also known as	Dr. Tchock Tchocky
Born	October 7, 1968 (1968-10-07) (age 38)
Origin	Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England
Genre(s)	Alternative rock Art rock Electronic music
Occupation(s)	Musician, Artist, Activist
Instrument(s)	Vocals, Guitar, Piano
Label(s)	XL
Associated acts	Radiohead
Website	http://www.theeraser.net/

Thomas Edward Yorke, born October 7, 1968 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England, is an English musician, best known as the lead singer of the English rock band Radiohead. He has also recorded as a solo artist; he released his debut album, The Eraser, in July 2006, and has collaborated with many other artists.

Yorke mainly plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar (notably during the Kid A and Amnesiac Radiohead sessions). Yorke is also an electronic musician, and The Eraser was heavily influenced by electronic music.

In 2005, Yorke, along with his manager Nate Jackson, became spokesmen for Friends of the Earth and their campaign to reduce carbon emissions. He has one brother, Andy, ex-vocalist of the band the Unbelievable Truth. Yorke currently lives in central Oxford with his partner, Rachel Owen, a printmaker who holds a doctorate in art history, and their two children, Noah, born in 2001 (to whom the Radiohead album Amnesiac was dedicated) and Agnes, born 2004 (to whom Yorke dedicated The Eraser).

Biography

Early years

As a young child Yorke underwent five surgical operations to correct a paralysed left eye he had had since birth. He has claimed that the last surgery was "botched", leaving his eye mostly blind and giving him his trademark drooping eyelid.

The Yorke family finally settled in Oxfordshire, as Yorke's father was a travelling chemical equipment salesman, and had to travel around the country frequently. Yorke received his first guitar when he was seven, inspired by a televised performance of Queen guitarist Brian May. His first song, "Mushroom Cloud" described a nuclear explosion, and by age ten he had joined his first band at the public Abingdon School for boys. It was at this school that he was to meet his future bandmates Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway, Colin Greenwood and Colin's younger brother, Jonny.

The band was named On A Friday, as Friday was the only day on which the members were allowed to rehearse. Yorke, in this early line up, played guitar and provided vocals, and was already developing his songwriting and lyrical skills. Yorke, speaking about music's influence on him as a schoolboy, said, "School was bearable for me because the music department was separate from the rest of the school. It had pianos in tiny booths, and I used to spend a lot of time hanging around there after school." The band's mentor at the school was the music teacher, Terence Gilmore-James, who, according to band members, was the only one who encouraged them. Said Colin Greenwood, "When we started, it was very important that we got support from him, because we weren't getting any from the headmaster. You know, the man once sent us a bill, charging us for the use of school property, because we practiced in one of the music rooms on a Sunday."

While attending the University of Exeter, where he studied Fine Art and English, he worked as a DJ at Guild nights in the Lemon Grove and played briefly with the bands Headless Chickens and Flickernoise, the latter of which was a techno group. He also held a part time position as an orderly at a psychiatric hospital. In his second year, he was introduced to computers, the universities' newly acquired Macintoshes, and he was fascinated with them. It was also around this time that he met Stanley Donwood, an artist who from 1994 on would become an important collaborator on single and album artwork for Radiohead. Yorke has often used an alias ('The White Chocolate Farm', 'Tchock') while working on projects with Donwood. Together, the duo would later win the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package.

In 1987, when Yorke was nineteen, he and his girlfriend were involved in a car crash. He was unharmed, but his girlfriend suffered from whiplash. This brought on Yorke's phobia of cars that can be heard in later Radiohead songs, "Airbag", "Killer Cars", and "Stupid Car". On A Friday reformed in 1991 as the members were finishing their degree courses. Meanwhile, Thom briefly had a job selling men's suits. Now relocated to Oxford, they signed to Parlophone and changed their name to Radiohead, the name taken from a song on the Talking Heads album True Stories.

Yorke has hypomania disorder.

Radiohead

Main article: Radiohead

Radiohead first gained notice with the worldwide hit single "Creep", which told of a social outsider's unrequited love and was allegedly written in the men's toilets of Exeter University's student club, although Yorke has denied it is autobiographical. The song appeared on the band's 1993 debut album Pablo Honey, which was seen as a typical example of early '90s alternative rock and received mixed reviews. Yorke, coming to resent the way "Creep" had overshadowed their career, described the band's feeling toward it in the lyrics of "My Iron Lung", which appeared on their second album, The Bends, in 1995. By this time the band, through frequent touring and greater attention to detail in the recording studio, had picked up a large cult fan base and had begun to receive wider critical acclaim for their anthemic, atmospheric rock sound. Yorke was also beginning to address deeper social concerns in some of his lyrics. Radiohead charted their first top 5 single in the UK with "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" in late 1995.

The band's third effort, 1997's OK Computer, was heralded as a landmark album by nearly every publication that reviewed it, establishing Radiohead as one of the leading rock acts of the 1990s. However, new insecurities came along with the acclaim and stardom Yorke had found, contributing to the frontman's lapse into clinical depression during the mammoth Radiohead tour that followed the album. Some of these concerns were voiced in the documentary film Meeting People Is Easy, which focused on the period. Yorke has explained in various interviews that he dislikes the "mythology" he feels is endemic within the rock genre, and hates the media's obsession with celebrity. In the late 1990s the band began to fear that the personalities behind Radiohead were more prominent than the actual music, and that the band were participating in the system they attempted to criticize, causing Yorke to struggle with the idea of a follow-up to OK Computer.

Yorke and the band adopted a more radical approach on 2000's Kid A and 2001's Amnesiac, processing vocals, obscuring lyrics, and departing from rock for a more varied musical landscape including electronic, jazz and avant-garde classical influences. Expanding Radiohead's sales while earning acclaim for experimentation, the albums also divided fans and critics. To Yorke's dismay, many preferred that the band retain their earlier style, which had begun to exert great influence on the British pop music scene, with acts such as Coldplay, Travis and Muse replacing an earlier generation of Britpop bands. In 2003, Radiohead released their sixth album, Hail to the Thief, a blend of rock and electronica that Yorke described as a reaction to the events of the early 2000s and newfound fears for his children's future, though he denied a specific political intent. The band has continued to tour, and in 2005 they undertook recording sessions for a seventh album, expected for release as early as 2007.

Thom Yorke in 2003

Yorke has claimed to have never listened to Radiohead records after they are released, and it appears this will be the case for the forthcoming album. "I will dread listening to it all after we have left in the real world. I always dread that. I'd much rather start something new and forget," Yorke wrote in Radiohead's blog in 2006.

Solo work

Main article: The Eraser

Yorke released The Eraser, an album of solo material, on July 10, 2006 in the UK and July 11, 2006 in the U.S. Produced by Nigel Godrich, featuring cover art by Stanley Donwood, it was released on the independent label XL Recordings. Yorke described the album as "more beats & electronics" and denied that it meant he was leaving Radiohead, saying, "I want no crap about me being a traitor or whatever splitting up blah blah... this was all done with their blessing." The Eraser reached number 3 in the UK in its first week, number 2 in the US, Canada and Australia, as well as number 9 on the Irish charts. The album was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, losing to the Arctic Monkeys, and was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

Musical approach

As a singer, Yorke is known for his distinctive falsetto ("Fake Plastic Trees", "Paranoid Android", "Like Spinning Plates") and his ability to reach, and sustain, high notes ("Creep", "Exit Music (For a Film)", "Let Down"). During the recording sessions for The Bends in 1994, the band watched Jeff Buckley in concert; Yorke later said the concert had a direct effect on his vocal delivery on "Fake Plastic Trees." However, Yorke has said, "it annoys me how pretty my voice is... how polite it can sound when perhaps what I'm singing is deeply acidic." He has often adopted other styles of singing, such as shouting in the middle section of "Paranoid Android" and a semi-spoken delivery for 2003's "Myxomatosis" and "A Wolf at the Door". Another distinctive aspect of Yorke's singing is his frequent slurring of words, sometimes rendering his lyrics unintelligible. Printed lyrics for Kid A and Amnesiac were not provided with the albums, allowing listeners to form their own interpretations.

Aside from vocal duties and writing lyrics, Yorke's musical contributions to Radiohead include guitar, both acoustic and electric (usually rhythm parts, with band member Jonny Greenwood handling lead), and piano (including Rhodes piano, especially on Kid A). He also plays bass guitar on occasion (the bass line for "The National Anthem" was recorded by him) as well as drums; in 2006 he performed percussion on stage in tandem with drummer Phil Selway.

Yorke, like most members of Radiohead, has never learned how to read music. He said, "If someone lays the notes on a page in front of me, it's meaningless... because to me you can't express the rhythms properly like that. It's a very ineffective way of doing it, so I've never really bothered picking it up." In interviews Yorke has sometimes played down his skills on both guitar and piano; he rarely plays guitar solos, and joked about the simplicity of his part in "Bishop's Robes". Yorke explained how he had bought a "proper" baby grand piano after OK Computer and began writing songs on it, despite a lack of proficiency, constantly relying on pedal tones and pivot tones. Yorke said, "I'm such a shit piano player. I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything’s a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn’t understand how the fuck they worked".

Since Kid A, Radiohead, and in particular Yorke, have incorporated many elements of electronic music into their work. As a result, Yorke has taken an increased role in programming beats and samples and has been credited with playing "laptop" on recent albums. On a radio show in 2003 to publicise the release of Hail to the Thief, Yorke remarked that he would rather make a record just with a computer than with only an acoustic guitar. His solo effort The Eraser featured piano and guitar, but was built primarily around electronics.

In interviews Yorke has cited a variety of personal musical heroes and influences, ranging from jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus to Neil Young, singer Scott Walker, electronic act Autechre and Krautrock band Can. Joy Division, Magazine, Elvis Costello, The Smiths and Sonic Youth were early influences on Radiohead and Yorke. In 2004 Yorke said, "When I was in college, the Pixies and R.E.M. changed my life", and he has often mentioned both bands as examples.

Equipment

Guitars

• Fender Telecaster Deluxe
• Fender Telecaster Custom
• Fender Jazzmaster (2)
• Rickenbacker 330
• Gibson ES 125-T
• Gibson ES 125
• Fender Telecaster with a Strat Headstock
• Gibson SG (one has been picked up again for 2006.)
• Lakewood accoustic

Due to Radioheads Gear truck being stolen in Denver 1995, Pre-95 gear was replaced.

Effects

• ProCo Turbo Rat
• Marshall ShredMaster (currently not used)
• BOSS DD-3 Digital Delay (could either be a DD-5 or DD-2)
• MXR Dist +
• BOSS LS-2 Line Selector
• MXR Dyna Comp (took place of ShredMaster)
• BOSS PS-2 (could be a PS-3) (used in Where i end and you Begin)

Amps

• VOX AC30 (2)
• Fender Twin Reverb (not used anymore)
• Marshall BluesBreaker Combo (not used anymore)

Piano's/Synths/Keys

• Yamaha Upright Piano
• Rhodes Suitcase Piano
• Novation Bass Synth

Activism

Thom Yorke, drenched in chocolate for an Oxfam Make Trade Fair campaign, 2004

Yorke's enigmatic persona has made him a cult figure, but he has also been outspoken on various contemporary political and social issues. Radiohead had read No Logo by Naomi Klein during the Kid A sessions ("No Logo" was also briefly considered as the album title) and all the members were reportedly heavily influenced by it, though Yorke said it "didn't teach him anything he didn't already know". Yorke's activism in support of fair trade practices, with an anti-WTO and anti-globalisation stance, garnered significant attention in the early 2000s. Yorke had previously referenced maquiladoras in the title of a Radiohead B-side in 1995, and decried the IMF in 1997's "Electioneering". Yorke is also a professed fan of Noam Chomsky's political writings, and is a longtime vegan.

Yorke is friends with the environmentalist writer, academic and journalist George Monbiot; he lent a quote to feature on Monbiot's book Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain. He is also notable as a political activist on behalf of other causes, including human rights and anti-war movements such as Jubilee 2000, Amnesty International and CND, and the Friends of the Earth campaign "The Big Ask". Radiohead played at the Free Tibet concert in both 1998 and 1999, and at an Amnesty International concert in 1998. In 2005 Yorke performed at an all-night vigil for the Trade Justice Movement. In 2006, Radiohead and Yorke performed a special benefit concert for Friends of the Earth, which was attended by representatives of British political parties including Tory leader David Cameron, whom Yorke does not support. Yorke made headlines the same year for refusing Prime Minister Tony Blair's request to meet with him to discuss climate change, declaring Blair had "no environmental credentials". Yorke has subsequently been critical of his own energy use. He has said the music industry's use of air transport is dangerous and unsustainable, and that he would consider not touring if new carbon emissions standards do not force the situation to improve.

Discography

See also: Radiohead discography.

Studio albums