Thom Yorke – Sometimes beastly

In the second after which the world was to change, I was sitting in a café at the Schlesisches Tor in Berlin. It was about quarter to three, flight AAL11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and I ordered a cappuccino. The refreshment served to prepare for a long-awaited date: For the first time in the evening I would finally be able to see Radiohead live, the band that I had discovered many years earlier late at night on MTV and who recently produced three grandiosely insane masterpieces in a row had published.

When we reached the open-air stage at Wuhlheide around half past five, it was raining and the sold-out arena with 18,000 spectators was swept empty. It only got fuller a few minutes before Thom Yorke entered the stage. The mood, however, remained subdued. I rocked to the beat and sang along a bit, earning me scornful looks from all sides.

I was thought to be irreverent, probably the only person on the site who hadn’t heard of the attacks. Finally, before Paranoid Android, Yorke talked about the planes. An announcement that seemed as surreal as the whole piece. Which is why I only found out what had happened after the concert. We didn’t have smartphones back then!

Thom Yorke only wants to speak to a few people

Later I would have liked to ask Thom Yorke why Radiohead didn’t just cancel the concert. But he hardly gave any interviews. In the years that followed, Radiohead ranted about Bush, revolutionized pop reception and distribution, and lost themselves in numerous side projects. Developments that were followed and commented on in ROLLING STONE, but mostly by means of articles taken from the US edition due to the lack of interview opportunities.

But the singer, who was increasingly perceived as beastly, rarely spoke to his colleagues either. And so it was a few years before I actually sat across from Thom Yorke. Now working for another magazine, I met him in London with Nigel Godrich. He finally answered my Wuhlheide question that day: the stage construction had progressed too far for the concert to be canceled outright. In addition, the performance seemed like a welcome distraction: half the crew and the band had tried in vain to reach friends and relatives in New York. He never forgot that evening.

The archive text comes from the series “ROLLING STONE turns 20. Our Heroes”, which was published for the 20th anniversary of ROLLING STONE.

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