Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke has sat down with US TV host Stephen Colbert to discuss his solo album ‘ANIMA‘ and his impassioned views on Brexit.
Yorke, who previously performed with Radiohead on an hour-long special of The Colbert Report, began discussing the band’s history of political songwriting after being quizzed by the host about how “it feels to be right”.
“I guess I wasn’t thinking about the future, I guess I was looking at what was happening at the time,” Yorke said.
“It’s more overt now. When we wrote the album ‘Hail to the Thief’, that seemed pretty bad—that period of time when Bush Jr. got in. And now we’re here.”
After discussing Boris Johnson’s controversial decision to prorogue Parliament, Colbert then asked Yorke of his chances of obtaining a knighthood in the future.
“I think I’ve blown that chance,” Yorke said. “When our current glorious leader got in, I put in an offensive enough message to, uh—yeah, I’ve got no chance now.”
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He added of Donald Trump and Brexit: “You have at least the chance to push him off the cliff—just him. We’re tied to these guys. They’re tying us up and they’re going to take us off the cliff with them, and as they do it, they’re saying they’re the will of the people. It’s kind of disturbing. We live in strange times.”
At a later point, the conversation also took a surreal turn when Yorke discussed ‘Anima’ – his latest solo album which arrived earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Yorke appeared on Desert Island Discs last month and discussed how R.E.M frontman Michael Stipe helped him to deal with Radiohead’s fame in the early stages of their career.
Yorke said Stipe “helped me when things went crazy, when people started to talk to me like I was Jesus…on the street.”
On Radiohead’s early fame, Yorke added: “I got angry. I’m an extremely angry person. I got more control-freakery. I put my hands on the steering wheel and I was white-knuckled, and I didn’t care who I hurt or what I said…Years later I sat down with the guys and apologised. By the time we got to recording OK Computer the doors had opened up and we had the best time doing that record.”
Thom Yorke recently shared a new EP compiling four remixes of his ANIMA’ song ‘Not The News’. The collection features a six-minute extended mix of the track as well as reworks from Mark Pritchard, Clark and Equiknoxx with Time Cow & Gavsborg.