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‘My life’s areal 0 7 f***in’mess! 10 9 3 9 4 0 0 7 7 • Exclusive Featuring Kinski retu rns for a ‘One Night Stand’Travolta v Cage in 'Face/Off Samantha Morton gets Under the Skfn'Stalione a^ ids Plus 50 newfilms reviewed! Music Radiohead IhonYofto Role Sings and plays guitar. What’s he like 'Paranoid, that’s me’. Actually very friendly if treated with a little respect. Hates cliches. Has an ongoing love/hate relationship with the modern world. Adores gadgets and the Internet, but hates having to rely on machines. Interests Buddhism (casual); the lie of politics, techno music. Typical quote 'For me, that Saturday [Diana’s funeral] went much deeper than anyone thought. The whole TV show - George Michael strutting around like a peacock in church - meant nothing to me. But I started crying my eyes out when I saw the people who stopped their cars and lined the motorway. It was the first time that people in Britain actually thought, ''Hang on... it’s us; it’s us against the media”... Actually that sounds horrible. It’s more than that, it’s not just the media. It’s the Royal Family, it’s the newspaper editors. Everyone was out of touch with the public.’ V U 12 TimeOut November5-121997 Music Radiohead It’s hard to believe, but only four years ago no one rea//yknew who Radiohead were. Now, with ‘OKComputer’ lodged firmly in the Top 20 and virtually no serious rivals, fame is something this extraordinary Oxford quintet are having to get used to. So what happened? And are they happy? T I nterview Peter Paphides Photography Tom Sheehan hom Yorke doesn’t remember the first you’re waiting for Thom Yorke to smile in order time he saw someone walking down the to gauge when he’s happy, then you’d best can¬ street wearing a Radiohead T-shirt. But cel future appointments. As Kristin Hersh (one then, there’s no particular reason why he of Thom’s heroines) once said, ‘Happiness is as should. After all, it was almost five years ago. intense as any other emotion. And if that seems ‘What happened?’ he asks. So I tell him about that implausible, think about when you’re fucking.’ sunny afternoon outside Georgina’s coffee house So no smiles; no fanfares. And yet there’s a self- in their native Oxford, when, on the other side of assurance about Thom that didn’t exist before the arcade, a skinny young indie kid advanced ‘The Bends’ came out. Back at the coffee house in towards us. I didn’t see him immediately. The 1993, Thom’s body language was like a mirror first I knew about it was when Thom and gui¬ held up to the self-loathing of early songs like tarist Jonny darted behind me and peered at their ‘Thinking About You’ and ‘Prove Yourself’. His subject with a peculiar mix of fascination and parting shot that afternoon was delivered with glee. How very appropriate, I thought, that their resignation rather than defiance: ‘At the end of the new single should have been called ‘Anyone Can day, we’re a lily-livered excuse for a rock band. Play Guitar’, a wide-eyed paean to the delights of We may as well accept the truth and carry on.’ forming a band and watching things begin to This utterance he does remember, mainly because happen around you. The chorus, one of Radio¬ he lifted it word for word from a Radiohead head’s most joyful, went: ‘I want to be in a band review that appeared one week previously in when I get to heaven/ Anyone can play guitar and NME: ‘I actually sort of agreed with that com¬ they won’t be a nothing any more.’ ment,’ he recalls, drawing his knees towards his One could, of course, get nostalgic about such chest, ‘In fact, it was quite funny. But the picture simple times. Witness the frequency with which they ran alongside it - that coloured everything Paul McCartney reminisces about those old we did for the next two years. The caption Buddy Holly covers he used to play with John in beneath it simply said “Thom gurns for a living”. the Quarrymen. Rock stars have a habit of roman¬ Well, I guess I must be quite sensitive, because ticising their pasts, but it’s no accident that if you that hurt me more than anything anyone wrote try playing a similar for a very long time game with Radiohead s ‘American success is the afterwards.’ frontman, you’ll get In the critical after¬ short shrift. ‘To be hon¬ weirdest. It’s like being glow of ‘OK est, for the first two given really great drugs Computer’, it’s some¬ years of our career, I times easy to forget just felt like I had to find and not being told they just how unfashion¬ some way of proving able Radiohead were. have any side-effects.’ that I meant it. The With Suede and moment I thought our Nirvana making all the music justified our existence, everything right moves in the eyes of the British press, the changed. It was like someone had switched the angular fuzzpop of Radiohead’s debut album, lights on.’ ‘Pablo Honey’, met with general bewilderment. Alone, at the back of the tour bus, in the heart Consolation, though, came with the news that of silent Strasbourg, Thom is an attentive bun¬ over in Los Angeles, America’s most influential dle of nervous energy. The fans have gone radio station, KROQ, had just discovered ‘Creep’. home, but the adrenalin high of two hours spent And when KROQ discovers a song, it’s guaran¬ tearing into most of ‘The Bends’ and the revela¬ teed to be a hit within two months. However, no tory ‘OK Computer’ has yet to subside. You can American success comes without its price. The always tell when Radiohead are buzzing: band who spent a year playing the same song guitarist Ed clears three feet when he jumps into across the TV studios and concert halls of the chorus of ‘Bones’; bassist Colin dances a rare America were a sorry sight by the end of 1993, pixie dance during the euphoric ‘Airbag’, and but as early as their first LA trip, Thom’s spirit ‘Lucky’ (the song recorded in one day for War was already weakening. I was with him on the Child)... well, ‘Lucky’ just leaves you weeping day that one DJ - we’ll call him Kevin - emotion¬ like a baby: ‘You enjoyed it tonight? Christ, you ally blackmailed him into singing a jingle for his should have seen Brussels,’ sighs Thom, show. The idea was that Thom would sing a seg¬ unwrapping a sandwich. ment of ‘Creep’ with the lyric altered to say that This is as near as Thom gets to small talk. The the show was ‘so fucking special’. After two hor¬ rest of the time he’s immersed in some other rified refusals, Kevin tried a different tack: ‘You place - a trait which has led some commentators did actually sing on that record, right?’ to deem him rude or standoffish. One senior Thom: ‘Of course I fucking did.’ employee at his record company recently told Kevin: ‘Well, how about it then?’ Perhaps me how he found himself having dinner with someone with the bullish self-belief of Oasis Radiohead and some mutual friends in their would have made a better job of it, but for Thom entourage. Having never previously met Thom, Yorke, these were painful times: ‘American suc¬ said employee gingerly asked him if he minded cess is the weirdest thing,’ he later confided. ‘It’s him tagging along. ‘Yes, I do actually,’ dead- like being given these really great drugs and not panned the singer, before easing into warm con¬ being told they have any side-effects. It all went versation. In other words, that’s just his way. If sour because we couldn’t get rid of “Creep”. We ► TimeOut 13 Music Radiohead Without whom none of this... sonal and professional confidence r~sis. So‘OK Computer’ is a bit of a When I ask Thom what piece of c ee classic. But where the hell did it he’d give to himself around this time, he come from? stretches his skinny frame across the chair and grins, ‘You know when you REM FABLES OFTHE grow your hair long? Well, don’t!’ You can RECONSTRUCTION see his point. At this time, Thom’s appear¬ Thom on REM:‘lt’s such ance - a bizarre bleach-blond heavy- a confidence boost metal barnet - told you everything you when one of your needed to know about Radiohead’s self- influences tells you they Jonny Greenwood confidence. They were paralysed with like your music.’ Role The guitar-abusing mad professor of Radiohead. nerves. ‘That would have been putting it Fancied by many; married to one. mildly,’ he concurs. Obviously we weren’t KRISTIN HERSH HIPS AND MAKERS What’s he like Very funny; slightly baffled air never sure about what we were doing. Plus Solo acoustic set from the woman who fronted leaves him. around that time, Suede were ultra, ultra Rhode Island rockers Throwing Muses. Thom: Interests He’s currently listening to the audio book of confident - and we were the spotty sixth- ‘Whenever I’m stuck, I listen to this. Happiness Stephen Fry’s ‘Moab is My Washpot’: ‘There’s formers. But one of the few things that doesn’t have to be an inane thing. It’s just usually something very comforting about going to sleep really kept me going were these letters pictures you draw with words. ’ listening to Stephen Fry’s voice as you fall asleep in that people wrote to me. I think a sense of your bunk far away from home. ’ panic overtook things. The songs I was JOHNNY CASH Typical quote ‘You know when you say goodbye to writing were drunken consolation songs. LIVE AT FOLSOM everyone in the room, and then you leave only to realise It just seemed like there were a million PRISON there’s something you forgot to bring - so you have to ways we could go and the easiest one was ‘Exit Music’ on ‘OK go back? That’s how I feel all the time.’ into oblivion, never to return.’ Computer’ came about Also: [to Ed] ‘What? You’ve never seen “Foghorn When Thom speaks of ‘The ds’ from trying to get a Leghorn”? Well, principally, it concerns a large hen... ’ having ‘a sense that we’re waking ile similar sound to that we’re doing it, that we’re just coming out album. I’d heard Johnny of something really terrible’, it’s there on Cash before, but I didn’t really get it the first time songs like ‘Bulletproof’, ‘Street Spirit’ around. Last year though, I really became and ‘[Nice Dream]’. The latter, he recalls, immersed in him though.’ ► had to milk it. And the rest of the album was ‘came out of some words I was singing when I never given a chance/ By the time Radiohead was half-asleep, and when I get drunk or ELVIS COSTELLO returned to Britain, all attempts to follow up The whatever, I usually find that I don’t get hang¬ BLOOD AND Hit had failed and the British record company - overs. I just go into a sort of coma and come out, CHOCOLATE confident that a re-issued ‘Creep’ would provide but my head goes round and round for hours. Possibly the most easily Radiohead with their first Top Ten hit - insisted The lyric refers to a story by Kurt Vonnegut spotted Radiohead on a British release for the song. Hence the belea¬ where this crystal has been found which turns influence, Elvis’s guered quintet making their Top Of The Pops’ all water completely solid, and someone decides angriest album finds debut with the song that they were now referring to drop it into the sea.’ many parallels in Thom’s to as ‘Crap’. At their Highbury Garage gig a fort¬ Such apocalyptic imagery seems entirely more bilious lyrics Thom finally met Elvis Costello night previously, Thom was rounded upon by appropriate for a band who sensed their future two years ago when Costello approached him at a Kate Moss and her friends, all of them eager to being thrown into jeopardy. Sessions for ‘The festival. It turns out that Elvis had heard Thom on profess their admiration. It’s a scenario that was Bends’ were fraught. According to Thom, ‘there the radio singing his praises and felt compelled to echoed last year when Thom and Jonny played a was no communication or faith in ourselves. It thank him personally: ‘When I was about 16,’ few numbers to an audience of ‘aliens from just felt like there was no point. Sitting in the recalls Thom, ‘ “Blood And Chocolate” was the another planet sent here to lower the standard’ at studio thinking: No, I don’t think we can get album that made me change the way I thought the Dazed And Confused tenth anniversary bash. this together. We’re just going to have to split about recording and writing music, lyrics too. Of the latter, Thom remembers: ‘It was quite good up. It was less splitting up from each other, ► Everything about that record - even the way he actually, because we’d just written “Exit got the artist to do the sleeve - is just awesome. Music”, so I got to sing “We hope that you Even the way he sang it so that he couldn’t hear choke” at all these people. his voice on the headphones so that he’d really Colin Greenwood have to belt it out.’ His “Tokyo Storm Warning” 'Where do we go from has a similar feel to “Electioneering”. Almost here/The words are coming Role Stands behind the three guitarists nodding sagely as he plays his bass. rockabilly, you know?’ out all weird...’ What’s he like Extremely friendly, utterly sociable, How to unravel all this weirdness? After rather maternal. Like out of ‘Pathetic Sharks’ Playful MIRACLE LEGION all, a mere year ago, those offhand MIRACLE, t LEGION' too. Once when Thom was absent from a soundcheck, SURPRISE SURPRISE remarks about Thom’s looks had left him Colin stepped forward and sang, ‘I want ham rolls... with SURPRISE irredeemably bruised. Now Beautiful chips’ to the tune of ‘Lucky’. Jangly Boston four-piece People were turning up to his gigs and Interests Reading; all kinds of music; looking for the who emerged in the claiming to empathise with Radiohead’s perfect pair of trousers. shadows of REM. music: ‘I do feel intimidated by beauty, Typical conversation ‘So, you want us to do “Killer Released five albums of just as money and power can also be Cars”? Is that your favourite? Aaah! It’s great when lachrymose pop intimidating. I’ve always been curious to you’ve got a favourite! ’ brilliance, but never got the credit they deserved. see what happens around people with You can hear a lot of Thom in the tearful, plangent that much power. I’d never seen that until tones of ML singer Mark Mulcahy, especially on I started doing this. All these big people the later ‘Me And Mr Ray’ album. ‘They were a want to meet you, and you don’t know if huge influence,’ he admits, ‘There’s a song off you have anything to say to them.’ “Surprise Surprise Surprise” called “All For The When you believe yourself to be ugly Best”, which is just one of the purest things I’ve or worthless, it’s hard to project any¬ ever heard - that was my introduction really. For thing beyond that. Often you don’t even me, the only voice that’s come close to Mark want to - after all, why attract attention Mulcahy’s is Tim Buckley’s. I was so excited to yourself when you’ve got so little to when Mark came to our Boston date. He’s offer? As they went into the studio to recorded a solo album, but he can’t get a deal for record their second album, Radiohead it. Which is a fucking tragedy, because he’s a looked like a band in the throes of a per- genius.’ 14 TimeOut November5-121997 Music Radiohead of time spent reading ‘The State We’re In’ soul ebb away every time you check out of a - Observer editor Will Hutton’s requiem hotel. But in periods of crisis and difficulty, you for traditional left-right political polarisa¬ just fall back on the usual crutches. You' ip tions - and Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘A Short drinking a lot.’ History Of The Twentieth Century’.‘I Is that healthy? was completely fucking ignorant until I ‘It’s inevitable. I read a quote somewhere from read those books,’ he enthuses, ‘because I Bono who said that when U2 finish touring, he never did any history at school. And has to check himself in to the Dublin Clarendon they’re both amazing, because the thing and stay there for a week, because he doesn’t you realise is that politicians have no con¬ want to inflict himself on his family. And I think trol over anything. When I was a kid, I that’s true for all of us. You spend your first week Phil Selway always used to think: If the Third World is at home feeling intensely restless, so you just get Role The band’s pulse. During Radiohead’s nightmare in debt to the First World and the First pissed every day.’ Glasto 97 slot, during which all the monitors and lights World is also in debt, then where is this Is there a single biggest sacrifice that you’ve blew out, Thom says, ‘Phil played the show of his life. money that everyone’s borrowing? And of made in order to get to this point? That’s what saved us’. course, it’s with the oil barons. Do you ‘Yeah,’ comes the slightly impatient retort, What’s he like Attentive. He used to be a Samaritan. know that if all the Third World countries ‘my life’s a real fucking mess. When I go home, Interests Parascending, apparently. who are in arrears refused to hand in their I’ve got everything everywhere. I’ve got six Typical conversation ‘I can’t believe no one’s offered monthly payment to the West, then the years’ worth of life to sort out and I never get to you a cup of tea. Milk? Sugar?’ entire global banking system would col¬ sort it out because I’m working. Having said lapse?’ This concluding flourish is deliv¬ that, it’s stressful, but it’s not impossible.’ Then ered with a relish that suggests such an a lovely, sleepy smile spreads across those boy¬ eventuality would be welcome. ish features. ‘Some days you look at it and you Perhaps that shouldn’t be such a sur¬ think, “This is a mess, but it’s okay.” ’ ► more “I don’t wanna do this any more” in very prise, though. There is much of the modern Is it? These days, when Thom Yorke talks big letters, and then, in smaller letters, “And I’m world that Radiohead-music has yet to come to about half-formed plans and potential directions gonna go and buy a car and drive away. And terms with. Even given that cars have long for future records, he’s not the glowerin m- I’m not coming back.” ’ been a source of anguish to the band (think plaint rocker of ‘Creep’ infamy. There’s a mom After one final argument over the song ‘Sulk’ ‘Killer Cars’ and ‘Stupid Car’), ‘Airbag’ Yorke who’s just re-emerging after five years - the rest of the band thought it should be remains their eeriest driving song, injecting spent working out how to play this game: the recorded as a single; Thom disagreed - giddy redemption into lines like ‘In a jack¬ playful art student who scanned the whole of the Radiohead agreed that they had worried them¬ knifed juggernaut/I am born again’. ‘Nothing Cistine chapel on to a computer, changed the selves into a standstill. ‘The Bends’ was finally scares me more than driving,’ he explains, ‘I colours and managed to wangle a degree from recorded in two weeks after a short tour, during hate it. With a fucking passion. I hate it Exeter Uni’s computer-illiterate tutor; the 23- which ‘the word “FUN” emerged in our lives’. because it’s the most dangerous thing you do year-old who I saw spend an entire car journey New songs had now been thrashed out and road- in your life. And because driving up the M4, trying to convince his bandmates to call the first tested, and ‘we realised how simple it is, once half the people have got their mobile phones on album‘Unit’ (as in, ‘We shifted so many units’). As you stop dissecting it’. when they’re driving. It’s like you’re forced to I get ready to leave, he’s enthusing about the More importantly, Thom’s hair was short play fucking Russian Roulette every time you band’s plans to hijack a secret marketing study again. With the Demi Moore Rule Of Aesthetic have to travel somewhere. Your average conducted by the record company to see what Endeavour (the shorter your hair is, the better expensive fast German car gives you the idea kind of people buy Radiohead records: ‘The mar¬ your work) singlehandedly turning around his that you can’t die. And that’s a fraud. Really, keting men won’t let us get hold of it, though. group’s fortunes, the pendulum was swinging when you think about it, every time you get They knew we were going to abuse it and make a firmly in Radiohead’s direction: Britpop’s chirpy home, you should run down the street scream¬ T-shirt out of it.’ triumphalism was beginning to wear thin; ing “I’M BACK! I’M ALIVE”.’ Although he’d never be so gauche as to tell Michael Stipe heard ‘The Bends’ and declared, Not a response you’d readily associate, per¬ you, Thom Yorke is actually enjoying himself. ‘ “Radiohead” are so good it frightens me’, before haps, with the singer once tipped by Melody Now, when Radiohead perform ‘Anyone Can inviting them to play on their ‘Monster’ tour; and Maker to be the next Rock Suicide™ following Play Guitar’, Thom sings ‘I want to be in this (for what it’s worth) ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ was Kurt and Richey. Radiohead aren’t necessarily band when I get to heaven.’ Do you know what’s immortalised in ‘Clueless’ as ‘complaint rock’. happier; life isn’t that much easier. With the really scary? He’s just warming up. • On the day ‘The Bends’ was released, Radiohead exception of Ed, who recently parted with his girl¬ Radiohead play Wembley Arena on Nov 1 played an incendiary show in Wolverhampton. friend of three years, and Colin, who has Afterwards, Thom admitted, ‘It’s quite a head- just bought a mobile phone in order to fuck for the band to realise that you can get good stay in touch with his new girlfriend in reviews from making good music.’ New York - the band’s long-term relation¬ Ed O’Brien ships have remained intact. But there Role Getting so excited at the beginning of The Bends’ 'In an interstellar world/l am back to does seem to be an inner resolution borne that he has to walk over to the other end of the stage and save the universe’ of having weathered past crises; a sense back again in order to stop exploding. Oh, and guitar. If ‘The Bends’ pprtrayed a band picking them¬ that anything thrown at them is just What’s he like Congenial, eager to put you at ease. selves off the floor and regaining some sense of absorbed and used as armour. Interests Running. Apparently he needs to strengthen orientation, ‘OK Computer’ shows them using ‘After a few years of being away from his body in the next few years, in order to stop his back their anxieties as fuel rather than as an obstacle home,’ says Thom, ‘you just end up going funny. - and in the process, dragging guitar music being made of different stuff to most Typical conversation ‘Do you think we’ll end up like one firmly into the twenty-first century. Five people. Creatively, that’s also one of the of those old 70s bands, doing cabaret versions of our old months after the album’s release, Thom says benefits. But each band has to find their hits? I hope not. It’s a frightening thought.’ he’s surprised it hangs together so well. own way of staying sane. We’ve man¬ That it does hang together, though, is mainly aged to fashion our own little cocoon, because of the sentiments expressed recurringly which is something that REM also did, in his lyrics. Unsurprisingly, the word ‘millennial’ which means that we’re not relying on has been bandied about in connection with song;s fads or the Zeitgeist in order to survive.’ like ‘Paranoid Android’ and ‘Let Down’. But if Many bands rely on cocaine to hurry there is one thing that unites these songs, it’s a lot up the hours, but, says Thom, ‘I can’t more intimate than millennial psychosis, bring myself to take a drug that people x Common to almost all of Thom Yorke’s lyrics is get killed for. Besides, the only people the sense of one’s environment spiralling out of I’ve seen on it are just the dullest fucking control. It was there in ‘Planet Telex’ and ‘My Iron people on Earth. That’s what we wrote Lung’. And it radiates at the heart of ‘The Tourist’ “Paranoid Android” about. Sanity for us and the idyllic UFO fantasy of ‘Subterranean is sleeping on the tour bus and not stay¬ Homesick Alien’. ‘Electioneering’ was the result ing in hotels. You feel a bit more of your 16 TimeOut November 5-121997