Thom Yorke says he was already tired of OK Computer by the time it came out
A quote from Thom Yorke is making the rounds that I found oddly comforting: even the people behind a classic can be sick of it. NME reports that, in a long conversation with Harry Styles for Rolling Stone, Yorke said he was already tired of Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer before it was released.
His reasoning is simple. The band had played the songs so much before the record came out that he felt the need to move on. When the manager told them they would have to tour for two years to promote it, Yorke says he begged not to. The tour ran from May 1997 to April 1998, with more than a hundred shows. "Two years later, we were still going," he said, calling the situation really messed up.
He also recalled a November 1997 gig in Birmingham where he walked out of soundcheck, lost his security and hid on a train, which he describes as the closest he came to trying to escape. NME notes that bassist Colin Greenwood called that tour the band's worst point in 2003, partly because of the toll it took on Yorke.
There is a more recent thread too. Radiohead announced their live return in September 2025, their first shows in over seven years, and played 20 arena dates across Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin that November and December. Yorke told Styles the reunion tour caused a massive crash in his self-confidence that took months to recover from. Earlier this year Styles presented him with an Ivor Novello Fellowship, where Yorke debuted a new song called Space Walk.
For context, OK Computer is certified five-times platinum in the UK and has sold over 4.5 million copies, with Paranoid Android and No Surprises among its best-known singles. What I take from it is that a record can be a masterpiece to the listener and a grind to the people who made it, and both can be true at once.
Source: NME
His reasoning is simple. The band had played the songs so much before the record came out that he felt the need to move on. When the manager told them they would have to tour for two years to promote it, Yorke says he begged not to. The tour ran from May 1997 to April 1998, with more than a hundred shows. "Two years later, we were still going," he said, calling the situation really messed up.
He also recalled a November 1997 gig in Birmingham where he walked out of soundcheck, lost his security and hid on a train, which he describes as the closest he came to trying to escape. NME notes that bassist Colin Greenwood called that tour the band's worst point in 2003, partly because of the toll it took on Yorke.
There is a more recent thread too. Radiohead announced their live return in September 2025, their first shows in over seven years, and played 20 arena dates across Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin that November and December. Yorke told Styles the reunion tour caused a massive crash in his self-confidence that took months to recover from. Earlier this year Styles presented him with an Ivor Novello Fellowship, where Yorke debuted a new song called Space Walk.
For context, OK Computer is certified five-times platinum in the UK and has sold over 4.5 million copies, with Paranoid Android and No Surprises among its best-known singles. What I take from it is that a record can be a masterpiece to the listener and a grind to the people who made it, and both can be true at once.
Source: NME
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