Don’t ask Thom Yorke about a possible Radiohead reunion. Or if you do, expect the musician refuse to give you a real answer. The frontman spoke to Australia’s Double J, who suggested that Yorke’s “fertile” work on the Smile with guitarist Jonny Greenwood has led fans to assume there might be new Radiohead music coming.
“I am not aware of it and don’t really give a flying fuck,” Yorke replied. “No offence to anyone and thanks for caring. But I think we’ve earned the right to do what makes sense to us without having to explain ourselves or be answerable to anyone else’s historical idea of what we should be doing.”
He added of the lack of pressure he feels to live up to Radiohead’s success, “I don’t think we feel the need to live up to anything. That feels like a non-problem. We are in this privileged position where we are still able to make music because of Radiohead, so no complaints.”
Radiohead’s last album, A Moon Shaped Pool, arrived in 2016. The following year the band released a 20th-anniversary reissue of their formative LP OK Computer, titled OKNOTOK 1997 2017, and in 2021 the band dropped Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac, and previously-unreleased material. Since then, however, Yorke has been focused on the Smile, which he formed with Greenwood and drummer Tom Skinner.
Despite Yorke’s instance that he’s unaware of Radiohead reunion plans, bassist Colin Greenwood recently told NME that the band held rehearsals over the summer.
“We got together in the summer just for a couple of days and just ran through all the songs and picked up where we left off in 2018,” he said. “It was really fun and nice to see everyone. We were going to do three or four days but knocked it on the head after two because it was fine and we could still do it. My brother [Jonny Greenwood] said that we’d just need a couple of weeks rehearsal and we could go on the road, no problem.”
He added, “It was great, but beyond that get together, I’m sure we’ll get together and make plans – but for what, I don’t know.”
Double J asked Yorke about the rehearsals, saying “How did it feel getting back together after everyone had followed their own muses in recent years? And did that change the way Radiohead’s members collectively approach things?”
“Yes,” Yorke affirmed. “I don’t think I have anything to add to that.”
Last month, Radiohead announced that they are collaborating on a new stage production of Hamlet, set to premiere next spring in Manchester, England. The play, Hamlet Hail to the Thief, is being adapted and directed by Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett and will feature re-worked music from Radiohead’s 2003 LP, Hail to the Thief.
“This is an interesting and intimidating challenge,” Yorke said in a statement about the production. “Adapting the original music of Hail to The Thief for live performance with the actors on stage to tell this story that is forever being told, using its familiarity and sounds, pulling them into and out of context, seeing what chimes with the underlying grief and paranoia of Hamlet, using the music as a ‘presence’ in the room, watching how it collides with the action and the text. Ghosting one against the other.”