Radiohead members have explained that grief and depression were among the reasons they hadn’t toured in seven years.
The band recently announced a series of European shows, marking the first time they’ll have appeared on stage since 2018’s road trip in support of A Moon Shaped Pool.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, singer Thom Yorke said he’d been struggling to deal with the 2016 death of his ex-wife, while guitarist Ed O’Brien revealed he’d told his colleagues he wanted out of the band.
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“I guess the wheels came off a bit, so we had to stop,” Yorke reported. “There were a lot of elements. The shows felt great but it was, like, ‘Let’s halt now before we walk off this cliff.’”
He added: “I needed to stop anyway… I hadn’t really given myself time to grieve. It was coming out in ways that made me think, ‘I need to take this away.’”
Yorke said he’d even struggled to find respite in music. “[T]he idea of having to stop it, even when it makes sense to… I can’t. I need something that I can hold on to.
“But there have been points in my life where I have looked for solace in music and played the piano, but it literally hurts. Physically. The music hurts, because you’re going through trauma.”
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O’Brien said he’d felt nervous when the band reconvened for experimental jams last year. “I was effectively over Radiohead… It wasn’t great on the last round,” he explained. “I enjoyed the gigs but hated the rest.
“We felt disconnected, fucking spent. It happens. … Look, success has a funny effect on people – I just didn’t want to do it anymore. And I told them that.”
What followed was a “long dark night of the soul,” the guitarist recalled. “I had a deep depression. I hit the bottom in 2021. And one of the things that was lovely coming out of it was realising how much I love these guys.
“I met them when I was 17… I have gone from thinking, ‘I can’t see myself doing it again’ to realising that, you know, we do have some stellar songs.”
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Gallery Credit: Tim Karan
