From the Archives: Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke, Radiohead and Atoms for Peace frontman, admits that, even after over 25 years in the business, performing is “either wicked fun or really awful.” He talks with Alec about his pre-show ritual—"I stand on my head for a bit"—and how he and his bandmates have been able to stick together since they were teenagers. Originally aired April 1st, 2013 See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 1:37Alec Baldwin?

  Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here. Before we launch our next season of Here's the Thing at iHeart Radio in January, I thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives.

• 1:50Alec Baldwin?

  In 1992, Radiohead released their stunning debut single, "Creep."

• 1:59Alec Baldwin?

  It was quiet, yet explosive, even haunting. And its refrain had a powerful hook.

• 2:14Alec Baldwin?

  Radiohead's frontman and principal songwriter Tom York is my guest. And if it was his wish to be special, the world granted it. York's band has become a commercial and critical success, selling over thirty million albums.

• 2:40Alec Baldwin?

  Radiohead's music actively resists definition. Each new album explores a different sound, delighting their followers and scooping up more fans along the way.

• 3:01Alec Baldwin?

  The New York Times called Radiohead "Rock's Most Experimental Top Ten Band." And this spirit of experimentation isn't limited to their music. In 2007, York and his bandmates released "In Rainbows." On their website first, fans were invited to pay what they wanted for the album. Radiohead may not have been the first to thumb its nose at the music industrial complex, but they might be the first to do so and sell out a major arena. That said, Tom York hasn't necessarily been comfortable under the spotlight. He complains about celebrity worship, and I wasn't sure what to expect.

• 3:39Speaker 05

  Actually, I got you a health food snack.

• 3:42Alec Baldwin?

  Did you?

• 3:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, because someone told me you were all vegetarian and that.

• 3:48Alec Baldwin?

  Tom York has a new record out, a muck the band calls themselves, "Adams for Peace."

• 4:01Alec Baldwin?

  You don't do a lot of press.

• 4:03Speaker 05

  Um...

• 4:04Alec Baldwin?

  Were you doing it on an as-needed basis?

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, on a need-to-know basis, yeah, yeah. Kind of. I kind of need to explain what I'm doing a bit with the Adams for Peace thing, just a little bit, because... It's something different and some vague effort to explain myself occasionally, I think, is morally acceptable.

• 4:24Alec Baldwin?

  Tell us about The Atoms for Peace.

• 4:26Speaker 05

  Well, it's just, it was, I did a record on my own called The Razor a few years ago.

• 4:31Alec Baldwin?

  Was that your first solo record?

• 4:33Speaker 05

  Yes, first time I'd sort of worked on my own with Nigel, who normally produces Radiohead. And it came out, it was okay, people liked it a bit. Couple of years after, I suddenly thought, I really want to actually, because it was all done, it was all programmed, it was all computers and stuff. And I thought, actually, I really, I'm curious to know what it would be like to actually get a band together to play this. And it was an excuse to go on a jolly to LA and hang out. And I emailed friends of mine who I knew liked the record. One was Flea from the Chili Peppers, one was my friend Joey, who's drummed with everybody, he's this genius drummer from LA. Anyway, we got it together and it turned into this thing, became really exciting, and

• 5:16Speaker 05

  we ended up calling the band Atoms for Peace and making a record out of the excitement of that. And it was all brand new to me, because I'd been in the same band since I was seventeen, sixteen.

• 5:29Alec Baldwin?

  And when you do that, when you go into another room with people, it's not so much, I'm assuming, and you can help me, that you want to not play with those guys anymore, you just want to play with different people for a change?

• 5:43Speaker 05

  It was a, yeah, it was a totally different process. I mean, it's, it's always fun if you know what you're aiming at, if you know what the tunes are, you're not trying to write them, you're just emulating what's already been written. That makes it fun straight away, because it's a different sort of creative process.

• 5:57Alec Baldwin?

  How so?

• 5:58Speaker 05

  You're not struggling around in the dark for a way into a piece of music, you're figuring out how to strip it down to its raw essentials, especially if something's been written on a computer and then you have to humanly learn how to play it. It brings in this quite interesting thing with the feel of what you're playing. Anyway, it's loads of different things, but it's a lot more fun, a lot more relaxed, if you're not trying to write, you know, which is what also, all the time what we're trying to do with Radiohead.

• 6:27Alec Baldwin?

  What's the first time or first experience you had with using computers to create music?

• 6:33Speaker 05

  That was...

• 6:36Speaker 05

  I think after we did OK Computer, I finally, in the late, late nineties, you could like go on tour with a laptop and it was powerful enough that you could record, edit, use synthesizers built into it and it wouldn't crash and it was fairly stable. So I first started getting into it then. And what I thought was really interesting is when we were working on OK Computer, I started using, learning the software that we were using the studio to edit. We were still mostly working on tape, old school. But I suddenly thought, well, hang on a minute. If I can learn how all this equipment works, I'll have a completely different way of thinking about how to write. So I forced

• 7:16Speaker 05

  myself to learn all this, all this equipment and learn to use the laptop. Cause a lot of music I was into was being made electronically anyway. And I kind of thought it would be interesting to do it within the band. Cause you know, a band normally, musicians don't fall into doing the production side of it or building the tracks. They're like, stay this side of the studio fence with the mics and let someone tell you. Front of the house, back of the house, kind of. So I definitely was much more into blurring that up. Did Nigel produce both your solo albums? Yeah, he does. He does the lot. And he did, and he did all of the Radiohead albums? Yeah, he does. What do you attribute that to, having that kind of faith in someone?

• 8:00Speaker 05

  For me, it's sort of, you find someone you trust, I mean, not all the time. And we do argue a lot. But to have someone who's like a sounding board all the time, it makes everything so much more fun. Cause if you're, if you're knocking out ideas, you can't edit them and knock them out at the same time. Like if you're on a stage and you're trying to get through your part or whatever, you have to have someone out front saying, okay, that's not working. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I do on my own a lot, I do work, you know, you generate ideas. But all I'd then have is a mountain of ideas that gradually I then have to sift through. And it just takes so long. It's so much more fun sharing it with someone.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  What did he think about your forays into computerized music? Oh, he was into it. I did wonder when I first started doing it, but he was into it because. He watched me doing it in such a different way to him. I mean, I was like a kid being given a hammer. I was just hammering away on stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing. But he was kind of fascinated by that, you know? And he'd come in, literally tidy up the mess I'd done on the computer.

• 9:08Alec Baldwin?

  What were other people? Who were other people that were working in that, in that area that you listened to? Who else was making?

• 9:15Speaker 05

  Well, I mean.

• 9:15Alec Baldwin?

  Then and now.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  Well, then it was, I was obsessed with Aphex Twin then. And Oteka, there was a lot of really interesting things happening in Britain then on this label called Warp. And it was, it was funny.

• 9:29Alec Baldwin?

  How do you spell that?

• 9:30Speaker 05

  Warp, as in the warp.

• 9:31Alec Baldwin?

  Warp, W A R P. Like the floor is warped.

• 9:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:35Alec Baldwin?

  After the fun?

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:37Alec Baldwin?

  And I say with your accent, that could have been any one of four words when I said. On this label called Warp.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  Warp.

• 9:43Alec Baldwin?

  And then walk, warm, warp, wall, warp.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  Warp.

• 9:48Alec Baldwin?

  Warp. Yeah. Say it like we're saying here in the United States.

• 9:52Speaker 05

  Warp, you know, warp.

• 9:53Alec Baldwin?

  It's Warp Records.

• 9:55Speaker 05

  It's a country and western record label.

• 9:56Alec Baldwin?

  You bet your bottom dollar there, boy. So you, you, you were, you were obsessed with the music that was on Warp?

• 10:02Speaker 05

  Warp Records. Um, cause it didn't have any guitars. And I was having a troubled relationship with my guitar at the time.

• 10:10Alec Baldwin?

  Is that true?

• 10:11Speaker 05

  Well, not really. It's just like, I ended up being in a band, signing this to this big record label. And it's a band with big letters, so certain things go with that. But yet, when I was at college, I was listening to a lot of other things. And, and after a while, it was like, oh, this is, it's really annoying that. I felt like we couldn't break out of that. So I just started forcing us to break out of that because it didn't make sense to me.

• 10:37Alec Baldwin?

  You been with those guys for how long now?

• 10:38Speaker 05

  We started when we were 16.

• 10:40Alec Baldwin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:40Speaker 05

  Radiohead, which is, um, now I'm 44.

• 10:45Speaker 05

  So that's quite a while.

• 10:46Alec Baldwin?

  And some bands that have had tremendous longevity, obviously the Rolling Stones are the premier example, they've changed partners over the years, like they were the New York Yankees, you know, there's somebody else playing on third base every four or five years.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:58Alec Baldwin?

  And but you guys, it's the same cast of of people all the same. What do you attribute that to?

• 11:03Speaker 05

  Persistence. My great diplomatic skills, not.

• 11:07Alec Baldwin?

  There must be times when they've, I mean, I'll never forget McCartney said to me, even the Beatles got tired of being the Beatles. Were there times you guys sat there and looked at each other and said, I think we're done?

• 11:17Speaker 05

  Uh, I do, I do that frequently, frequently. I mean, at least.

• 11:21Alec Baldwin?

  The others too?

• 11:22Speaker 05

  Not as much. They just wait for me to do it. But it changes.

• 11:27Alec Baldwin?

  They wait for you. So it's like, yeah, it's like, just stick around. Tom will quit for us.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  I'm feeling it's coming up. I mean, you know, something to do with the fact we haven't done anything useful for three weeks. It goes through these phases, you know. We've grown up together. It's weird. I mean, so we just did a tour last year, right? And it was probably, in theory, the scariest one we've ever done, because it was lots of big gigs, which I normally am spending my time trying to shy away from.

• 11:53Alec Baldwin?

  Why? Because you can't achieve technically in a large space what you'd normally want to?

• 11:57Speaker 05

  Exactly that. You can't get across to people the right way, I felt. So we did spend a lot of time and effort coming up with like a stage design which used screens in a certain way, which made it intimate, even though, you know, some nights was like thirty or forty thousand people, trying to create some sort of intimacy with that. And when it worked, it was insane. It was because the upside of playing to that many people is you have this really crazy collective energy that you can tap into, like a crowd, you know, thing. There's one show we did in Phoenix that sticks in my mind where there was something about maybe that it was in Phoenix and and people don't get the opportunity,

• 12:39Speaker 05

  those sort of people don't get the opportunity to get together that often or something. There was some sort of excitement within the crowd that was so great to play with. When when we hit it musically, it felt like the whole room, the whole of the building was moving. Honestly, we both came off that.

• 12:55Alec Baldwin?

  I understand.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  You know, and it's bonkers.

• 12:57Alec Baldwin?

  I understand that not from my own experience, but from seeing artists perform.

• 13:03Speaker 05

  You know, I often ask myself, why the hell? Would you put yourself through this? Because it's very stressful, it's a lot of pressure. And for me mentally, I have to, I build myself up to it in my head gradually. And it sounds really precious, but it messes with my head.

• 13:21Alec Baldwin?

  I want to get to that, but I want to come around it and say, your music has such a spiritual quality to it. There's a spiritual element to it, and not a stated one. It just emanates a vibe to me.

• 13:33Speaker 05

  It comes, but to me, that, yeah, but to me, that comes off the audience. That's what I find, it's something that's developed. It's not like we're not going into this intending to do any of that. It just sort of happens. When, when the waves go right, you know, when the waves fall into place, then you'll get to the end of a song and you can feel, okay, we've done, whatever it is, that was it.

• 14:20Alec Baldwin?

  What's your preparation before you do a live show? Before you go, because in the studio, it's obviously a whole different animal, correct?

• 14:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's no preparation for the studio. You do, you know, it's bull in a china shop most of the time, which is how it should be, I think.

• 14:34Alec Baldwin?

  And performing live?

• 14:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's.

• 14:36Alec Baldwin?

  What's, give it to me, a couple of hours before you go out there and you've got to blow this thing out for all these people.

• 14:42Speaker 05

  I just, um, stone cold silence, basically.

• 14:46Alec Baldwin?

  Almost meditative?

• 14:47Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I do, I do that and.

• 14:49Alec Baldwin?

  Focused.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  I stand on my head for a bit and I'm basically, I'm completely on my own until five minutes before we go on. And then we're all in a room together pacing up and down like wild animals and then we're on. But when we first started doing big shows, it was with my friend, Michael Stipe. And he does the total opposite. He literally, he'll be talking to you and then someone taps him on the shoulder and then they're on. And I was like, how the hell do you do that, man? And I, and I tried to do it like that, couldn't do it. And so I ended up going.

• 15:19Alec Baldwin?

  Did he say, did you, did you get any indication why Stipe could do that? There's a lot of nice spiritual tones inside of R E M's music too.

• 15:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I don't know. I think what he used to do was.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  He'd stand there for the first two tunes, barely move. He was a sort of lightning conductor and he was just waiting for it to hit. And then when it hit, he was off. But he would wait. And if it wasn't going to hit, he was still there three, four tunes later, um, waiting. He kind of warmed up in front of everybody, gauging it all. Whereas I can't do that because I have to sort of be clear of everything before I, you know, whatever, I need to, um, be completely empty.

• 16:10Alec Baldwin?

  We're taking a break. Stay with us.

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• 18:31Speaker 09

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• 18:56Speaker 05

  I started playing guitar when I was seven. I sat down and said I was going to be Brian May.

• 19:01Alec Baldwin?

  Not a bad thing to be.

• 19:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then I tried to do, I read, like, when I was 10 or something, I read that he'd built his first guitar himself, which is the one he still plays. So I tried to do that, but my efforts were...

• 19:15Alec Baldwin?

  In that sense, you were not Brian May.

• 19:19Speaker 05

  No, in that sense, no.

• 19:20Alec Baldwin?

  In the handcrafting of the guitar.

• 19:21Speaker 05

  And I had to cheat with the neck on the guitar. I found an old, someone, a neighbor, gave me a neck of an electric guitar. I thought, great, okay, that's good. But, you know, I was 10 or 11, so I was trying to bolt it together to this other piece of wood that I'd cut out, and it was just a disaster. But it kind of worked, but it was ugly.

• 19:37Alec Baldwin?

  Was your family musical?

• 19:39Speaker 05

  Not really, no. The only one that sticks out is apparently my great-grandmother. She'd get really hammered and then stay up playing her pump organ thing downstairs all night and keep the family up.

• 19:51Alec Baldwin?

  Were you around? Did you witness that?

• 19:54Speaker 05

  I met her once and she was kinda, she wore black and was quite scary when I was really tiny.

• 19:58Alec Baldwin?

  But neither of your parents were artists, musicians?

• 20:01Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no.

• 20:02Alec Baldwin?

  When the guitar came into your life when you were seven, Brian May or no, was it music itself and were you moved by music itself? Or was it like many people when they're very young, was it rock stardom?

• 20:16Speaker 05

  No.

• 20:17Alec Baldwin?

  Never that?

• 20:18Speaker 05

  No, it was, it was.

• 20:19Alec Baldwin?

  You weren't running around your bedroom imitating Jagger and you thought like you wanted to be a rock icon?

• 20:24Speaker 05

  No, I just thought, my, my whole thing was, we didn't have any sound system in the house. We had nothing, no hi-fi, nothing, except for in my dad's car, it had a tape player in it. So I went and would sit for hours, I would sit for hours and, you know, it was the sound of Brian May's guitar, actually. It was one of those funny things where, you know, when you, you turn something up and you're in a very controlled, loud environment, just that sound was just, you know, nothing else, it was that. When you're that small and you've never, I've never really heard music particularly at all up until that point, you know?

• 21:06Speaker 05

  It's funny, it's got a weird thing, but I mean, lots of kids at that age, you know, their parents didn't really have hi-fis or anything as such. The only guy I did know who had a hi-fi down the road only played ABBA, which I thought was worse than not having one, but that was me. Some ABBA's good.

• 21:22Alec Baldwin?

  And then, and then the guitar and you're trying to fashion your own guitar by the time you were 11, and then when do you take another step toward deepening your commitment? How old were you when you formed the band? 16?

• 21:34Speaker 05

  I did have a band when I was 11, but um.

• 21:37Alec Baldwin?

  What's an 11-year-old band sound like? Don't say ABBA.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, not very good at all. But it was, it was very exciting, like going around to a friend's house and setting up and jamming and all our mates would come and hang out, and girls, which I thought, hmm, this is interesting.

• 21:55Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 21:56Speaker 05

  As puberty hit, but uh. That sort of fell to bits because I kept fighting with the drummer. And then, when I was sixteen, I was thinking, well, okay, I need to get this together, really. And just went around the school, sort of choosing people.

• 22:12Alec Baldwin?

  So you went around picking people and what happened?

• 22:14Speaker 05

  I got Ed because he was dressed like Morrissey and he had some cool socks. And I saw he'd had a guitar. I had no idea whether he could play it or not. I didn't really care. I got Colin because I knew Colin could play very well and I needed a bass player who could play very well. But he'd never played bass before. And his brother Johnny was this mythical musical prodigy, so roped him in. And then Phil was the only drummer we knew, anyway. And Andy had a house down the road that we could rehearse in.

• 22:42Alec Baldwin?

  And you're all in, and you lived where? You grew up where?

• 22:44Speaker 05

  Well, this was at Abingdon School, near Oxford.

• 22:47Alec Baldwin?

  And then, when you form Radiohead, when you're sixteen?

• 22:53Speaker 05

  Basically, yeah. We started, sort of, writing, doing demos and messing about. And it was, you know, it was quite interesting straight away that it was quite, I think, because Phil had quite a lot of experience. He was a bit older and he'd had his own band. So he knew how to put things together a bit. And, in fact, we used to go and do demos in his sister's bedroom, like, right from the beginning, which was great. I mean, there's nothing better than, like, just starting off by just trying to write demos from scratch. Even though you can't really play, even though you don't know each other, that's where you start, you know? It's kind of a nice way to figure out where you're about.

• 23:34Alec Baldwin?

  What do you think you do best? You lead a band, you, well, you play guitar, you write music, you produce music, and you sing. What do you think your greatest strength is, if you had to pick one?

• 23:47Speaker 05

  I don't know what I'm doing.

• 23:49Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 23:49Speaker 05

  I like the fact that I still don't know what I'm doing. I think, well, no, honestly, I can't, I go through whole phases of months where I haven't got a clue. I regularly lose complete confidence in what I'm doing.

• 24:04Alec Baldwin?

  Why do you think that is? Because I have the same condition?

• 24:09Speaker 05

  Why?

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Partly because I think I don't quite understand how it happens. Um, after the fact.

• 24:19Alec Baldwin?

  When, when what happens, when the appreciation comes to you?

• 24:21Speaker 05

  No, when you're, when you're piecing something together.

• 24:23Alec Baldwin?

  Got it.

• 24:24Speaker 05

  Right, um, things will fall into place.

• 24:27Alec Baldwin?

  How you make it.

• 24:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, in some ways, the nicest bit about the creative thing, the nicest bit about recording and writing is this sort of weird limbo where you, in between scratching away, scratching away, nothing really happening, nothing really happening, and then something wants to be built and starts to get built, you just have to let it happen. And then it gets to the end and you, and you look at it a few months later and go, huh, how did that happen? This sort of weird amnesia that goes with it. Something will happen, one little sound goes off or, and you go, oh, that's really nice. For me, uh, when I was at school, I didn't get on with the school system at all.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Um, I see it in my son, the same, that sort of, the mechanics of how a school operates and how you're supposed to blend in or whatever. So I hid in the music stroke art department and had a great time there and discovered that actually that's what I wanted to do, straight away. The heads of both schools just saw what I was up to.

• 25:31Alec Baldwin?

  Is this the teacher that you often credit with your?

• 25:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:34Alec Baldwin?

  What was the teacher's name?

• 25:35Speaker 05

  Terry James, but, but it was him and, uh, my art teacher as well, actually. It was like someone sort of takes you under their wing and say, well, you know what? You're actually quite good at this.

• 25:45Alec Baldwin?

  Mentoring is a very critical thing in this business.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, because it's enough, it's enough. At that age, it's enough to just get a little push and then, oh, okay.

• 25:54Alec Baldwin?

  Or does someone push you in a different direction?

• 25:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, yeah, that would be bad.

• 25:58Alec Baldwin?

  So, yeah, how about you go to the other?

• 26:00Speaker 05

  I think you need to be a lawyer.

• 26:02Alec Baldwin?

  Engineering is your, yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 05

  I, I, my father used to think I used to go into advertising, which is like.

• 26:07Alec Baldwin?

  Really?

• 26:08Speaker 05

  Brilliant, yeah, I'd really be good at that. Selling other people the shit.

• 26:11Alec Baldwin?

  Well, one thing you're good at is avoiding my original question.

• 26:15Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 26:16Alec Baldwin?

  Which was, what do you think you're best at?

• 26:18Speaker 05

  Oh, damn.

• 26:18Alec Baldwin?

  And let's try to choose if you can, if you don't mind, confine yourself to the list I provided. What do you think you're best at?

• 26:26Speaker 05

  Okay, this is multiple choice.

• 26:28Alec Baldwin?

  Guitar, band, kind of, you know, paternal figure, songwriting, producing, singing.

• 26:36Speaker 05

  I guess singing.

• 26:37Alec Baldwin?

  Okay, I'm glad you chose that one. I was driving, I was trying, I think when I popped the word singing the way I did, I was trying to say, or singing.

• 26:47Alec Baldwin?

  What was singing to you? How did your singing evolve where you arrived at where you are now? Where most people say you have one of the most evocative singing voices in all of music today.

• 26:59Speaker 05

  Melancholy to the point of...

• 27:01Alec Baldwin?

  Well, people who love, who love Radiohead, they crave their music and they crave particularly your singing.

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Hmm, well, basically, I went to music, I went to a few singing lessons, but that was basically just so I could literally breathe right, you know.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  One of my favorite singers like Bjork. When I watch Bjork sing, um, I've been lucky enough to sort of sing with her and watch her do it and...

• 27:32Alec Baldwin?

  I was gonna say, you're one of the few people who can use that phrase, "When I watch Bjork sing."

• 27:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:36Alec Baldwin?

  Most of us say, "Well, when I listen to Bjork sing."

• 27:38Speaker 05

  And, um, it's, uh, in here, it's right here, they say, you know, with, with, um, in yoga and stuff, that whatever it is, can't remember that, that spot at the top of the forehead, that you really, most singers, like Neil Young's the same, he sings into this spot in his head and, and what he's singing, he's already heard, you know what I mean? He's hearing it come out. The same with, with Bjork, when she's singing, she's singing what she's hearing. So, there's no force, it's a force in itself.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  It took me a while to get that.

• 28:23Speaker 05

  You know, even when we were on tour with R E M back when we were doing the bends in ninety six or whatever, I was still trying to figure it out then.

• 28:35Speaker 05

  Watching Michael and wanting to sound like Michael, but I couldn't, you know, because my voice is in a different tone completely and so on. But what I did learn, you know, watching him was again, that thing of like, watching someone who, their voice is in sort of command of them rather than the other way around. There's a state that they enter almost. Yeah, but it's very natural, but it takes a long time for that to become natural, I think. Like any singer, it takes a long time to find that thing and it keeps changing. To me, how I sing now, or to me, it feels different to a few years ago. Why? It just does. It just... Does age have anything to do with it?

• 29:18Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, there's probably some physical element to it, but also just where you're at, you know, because singing is nothing but like, probably like acting, singing is nothing but being in the moment, that's it. And where you're at. Yeah, when you do like, when I used to be like, you know, when you're trying to do singing or whatever, it shouldn't record, I remember sort of, okay, computer, I still had this thing like, well, I need to be a little bit half cut when I'm, you know, I need to do something or other beforehand, so I thought I'm in the right space, man. Where it's all bollocks, because basically, you've just got to learn to be there with it when you do it. You're not trying to prove anything, you're not trying to get anywhere, you're not trying

• 30:00Speaker 05

  to achieve anything, you're not trying to get this emotion across, you're not in this space trying to get this space across, you're not trying to get this mindset across or anything, you're just letting it happen.

• 30:37Alec Baldwin?

  When you do this now, when you live inside your life now, whether you're performing live or you're producing and recording music, do you feel different now that you're older? I mean, the chasm between when you're 16 and when you're 43 is extraordinary.

• 30:54Speaker 05

  Isn't that just?

• 30:55Alec Baldwin?

  It's just mind bending.

• 30:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:57Alec Baldwin?

  Do you feel like you're sick of it and you want to be done with it?

• 30:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:00Alec Baldwin?

  You do?

• 31:00Speaker 05

  Sometimes, but not, it's never really the music. It's always everything else, you know?

• 31:06Alec Baldwin?

  Primarily what?

• 31:07Speaker 05

  Well, just stresses of life, whatever, you know, some things.

• 31:12Alec Baldwin?

  So your life is not like, I mean, a lot of people think, they think that successful artists, you know, just walk across this bed of rose petals all day. The greatest torment of our life is do we go to Paris on spring break or Anguilla?

• 31:27Alec Baldwin?

  My God, I can't, I can't answer.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  I know, well, it is a problem.

• 31:31Alec Baldwin?

  It is a problem.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:34Alec Baldwin?

  You weren't supposed to say that. No, but what I'm saying is, is that they think that, like, do you ever sit there? You're very active socially, yes?

• 31:43Speaker 05

  I guess, yeah.

• 31:43Alec Baldwin?

  You care, you've made some comments about world affairs.

• 31:46Speaker 05

  Oh, I see, yes.

• 31:47Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, you care about what's going. If I said to you that I snap my fingers and you go back to having a very normal life and you're not you at all with everything that goes with it, and the rest of the world is elevated, and the rest of the world gets better, things you care about, think of an issue you care about.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Oh, I see.

• 32:02Alec Baldwin?

  And I say to you, "Tom York, Tom York, Tom York", you go back and the world gets better, would you make that change?

• 32:12Speaker 05

  Define better.

• 32:15Alec Baldwin?

  It's a tricky question, but you do, it's not an either or, but you do care about other things. Is there an issue that you're embracing now? Is there something you're involved with now? Or is there an ongoing one?

• 32:24Speaker 05

  I, well... In my slack-assed fashion, I was helping Greenpeace do this thing which was trying to stop drilling in the Arctic. But it sounds like it's kind of working because the company seemed to be pulling out because they can't. Shell just pulled that. Yeah, that's right. I don't think that's entirely down to us, but I think it definitely helped that we were making their life extremely difficult everywhere they turned. But the challenge now is to turn the Arctic into reserve so it can't happen. Because what that was going to do is create this gold rush, you know, oil rush up there, which was just going to be insane. And this at the same time where the ice is melting. Basically, they only started considering it was a possibility because the ice was melting. They thought, okay, great, maybe got a better chance of drilling, which is like.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  That's a global warming. Takes irony to. The global warming means less oil to them, it means more oil. Yeah. So I was kind of stuck in that for a while because, yeah, to me, the irony of it was too much. I don't know where I'll go next. I don't, I find it very stressful. I did get involved a few years ago, we did this thing in Britain, the first Climate Change Act, which meant the government was, is committed to reducing CO2 emissions from 2050 by 90%. And now lots of countries have got it, but it was the first one. And the government didn't want to do it, Blair didn't want to do it. But we found this interesting loophole and got thousands of people to send letters in and said at the bottom of the letter to the MP, please can you pass this on to Blair? Right?

• 33:54Speaker 05

  And apparently, they were obliged to pass on these letters. So Blair was literally getting thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of letters, which doesn't normally happen. And he did pass the law after much arguing and me refusing to meet him because it was during the Iraq War and all sorts. Which you were very critical of. Yeah, well, any normal human being would be. I agree. Anyway. I was very glad I did it and the people I was working for at the time, I was with Friends of the Earth and it was really inspiring and I became really good friends with the guy who was running Friends of the Earth at the time, Tony Juniper, who now works with Prince Charles. And it was a great period, but I just, it burnt me out.

• 34:37Speaker 05

  Getting that close to politics, the most fascinating figure that we worked with was the lobbyist that we had, our one lobbyist. So like we went into this Portcullis House in Britain, you probably have the equivalent here, I don't know what it's called, but Portcullis House was built for the lobbyists. It was built for special interests to go and sit with a cup of coffee, round table about this size, and wait for MPs to go past, collar them, sit them down, and lobby them in big capital letters.

• 35:08Alec Baldwin?

  We call that the Congress here, we call that the Capitol Building.

• 35:11Speaker 05

  Anyway, I found it completely fascinating, you know, because there's hundreds of these people walking around and I'm like, none of them are lobbying for us. Except, well, you maybe possibly could argue that our one mate for Friends of the Earth was like, technically, you know, maybe speaking for the people a little bit, but basically, they were all special interests and they had the ear of government. And I just thought, hang on, hang on a minute, how did this happen? Anyway, where were we a minute ago?

• 35:39Alec Baldwin?

  I know where I want to go.

• 35:40Speaker 05

  Okay, go on then, go there then.

• 35:42Alec Baldwin?

  Your children.

• 35:42Speaker 05

  Oh, no, no, that's too much of a jump. Hang on, let's finish with this first. No, all right then.

• 35:50Alec Baldwin?

  Your children.

• 35:51Speaker 05

  I'm lost now.

• 35:52Alec Baldwin?

  Do your children know who you are and what you do?

• 35:55Speaker 05

  Yep, they're used to it, they're used to people coming up and saying hello. But most of the time it's very friendly and that's normal, that's their normal, that's what they've grown up in.

• 36:05Alec Baldwin?

  And how old are they?

• 36:07Speaker 05

  Twelve and seven.

• 36:08Alec Baldwin?

  So one's seven, the age that you decided you wanted to be Brian May. And the other one's twelve and by then, he would already have made his guitar with that neck. That was eleven, I think you said, so the other kids, where are they at musically?

• 36:24Speaker 05

  My son is a great drummer, but I don't know if he'll want to do that forever or not. He's like not bothered really, which is cool, you know, he just, and he comes and hangs out with me when I'm working in my studio. We just hang out, you know, we're friends. But I don't think, you know, there's no burning ambition to be musicians or anything really, even though he's really good. He's for pleasure. I mean, at that age, that's good, right? Has fatherhood affected your work?

• 36:53Speaker 05

  Yes, but not really.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  You have the obvious things where you... Would you go out on the road more if you didn't have children?

• 37:03Speaker 05

  Yep. Some people talk about that. Absolutely. But that's not necessarily a bad thing at all.

• 37:10Speaker 05

  You know, being on the road is... It's a...

• 37:14Speaker 05

  It's not a great way to live. It's necessarily evil. You don't want to do it all your life. It gets a little unhealthy quite quickly.

• 37:22Speaker 05

  Mentally, if not physically. Has it been difficult for you mentally? It can be. It's wicked fun. A bit too much. It's either wicked fun or really awful. Like, when you're sick, then it gets really... It's a real bummer, man. Have to get out there. Yeah. Try to sing your way through the notes that you can't find because you're so sick or whatever. That's really super stressful. But, you know, it is a massive buzz. There's no denying it. It's great.

• 38:00Alec Baldwin?

  But Tom York is the first to admit that it takes work to keep it fun in the studio and on tour.

• 38:06Speaker 05

  It's very difficult to play with people. You don't... If there's problems between you, for example. If the issues come up. I mean, I'm very much... I'm a Libra and I need to sort shit out. I can't have stuff hanging around, you know, because it gets in the way.

• 38:21Alec Baldwin?

  More in a minute with Tom York. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing.

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• 39:57Speaker 09

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• 40:10Speaker 10

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• 40:44Speaker 09

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• 41:06Alec Baldwin?

  Given the level of success that Radiohead has reached, I did have certain expectations of Tom's lifestyle. I mean, I'm assuming you're in a world where that your phone must have rang. Maybe it stopped because you kept saying no. But maybe everybody was like, you know, "Bono wants to pick you up tomorrow and fly you to St. Bart's."

• 41:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, that never appealed. I don't hang out with people because they are who they are necessarily, unless I'm a big admirer of them. Like, I mean, I stalked Ed Norton for ages until eventually he gave in.

• 41:39Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 41:39Speaker 05

  Because I'm a big admirer of him. I think he's brilliant. So I hang out with him a bit occasionally. And Flea, I've always, I really admired Flea anyway. So even before it became an issue of sort of playing with him.

• 41:51Alec Baldwin?

  Now, tangentially related to that, as you've gotten older and you look around the musical landscape, what you see, does it appeal to you? Meaning of the music that's popular music. I mean, what's selling now the most successfully. Have you moved into a different place with that? Or do you admire a lot of what's being done? Is your music...

• 42:10Speaker 05

  What, in the mainstream?

• 42:11Alec Baldwin?

  In the mainstream.

• 42:12Speaker 05

  There's nothing in the mainstream. The mainstream is just a void, you know, to me. I mean, what's weird about putting a record out now, really, and this is not like sour grapes at all. It's just the fact the volume, literally the sheer volume of stuff that gets put out. It's like this huge fricking waterfall. And you just throw in your pebble in and it carries on down the waterfall. And that's that. Right, okay, next. Basically, you know, like in this country, the radio's tied up. And people don't really listen to the radio in the same way. It's, it's, music's going through a weird time because, on the one hand, as ever, there's always really exciting music being made. It's never not being made.

• 42:55Speaker 05

  It's a question of whether you're going to get to hear it or not. And... I mean, I kind of, I kind of knew the game was up a few years ago when one of our sort of team of people came in saying Nokia wants to offer you da-da-da-da-da millions of pounds because they want content for their phones. And this is like in 2000, I don't know, early 2000s. And you're like, content, what? You know, content. What, you mean music? Yes.

• 43:23Alec Baldwin?

  Okay.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  Content.

• 43:25Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, maybe, that, yes.

• 43:26Speaker 05

  Hmm, yeah. Just stuff.

• 43:28Alec Baldwin?

  It could be music, yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 05

  Stuff, yeah, stuff.

• 43:30Alec Baldwin?

  Could be you snoring.

• 43:31Speaker 05

  Have you got some stuff? You know, and you're like, oh, okay. And I think really that my problem with it is, is like, it's now like something to fill up the hardware with, you know? The music itself has become secondary to that, which is a weird thing to me, it's like, and I think that will change because there's only so many different permutations of the same hardware you can make before people go, well, actually, I have an iPod now, so thanks. So I think things will change, and I think the radio will change, um, and sooner the better, because no matter what way you look at it, the most pleasurable experiences you ever have is like when something's played to you, you don't know. Well, like going around to a friend's house and they'll stick a tune on you, like, what the hell's this? You know? Which is what it's about, you know?

• 44:14Speaker 05

  That's why, or like going into a store when I was a kid, like, and the New Smiths records come out and like, and I'm going up to the guy, I think, I was like, he's really cool, like the indie store in town, and just talking to him about music for 20 minutes, you know? And, you know, you shout.

• 44:28Alec Baldwin?

  And now everywhere you go, music is everywhere.

• 44:30Speaker 05

  It's everywhere, but it's not like.

• 44:31Alec Baldwin?

  And not good music.

• 44:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 44:33Alec Baldwin?

  It's content.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's content is king. That bullshit will change, and when it does, then I think we'll have a resurgence, the underbelly will come back, um, overbelly again.

• 44:45Alec Baldwin?

  Well, if it's middle aged, it'll be overbelly. Well, you have ways to go there.

• 44:50Speaker 05

  I'm gonna be taking some Slimmin' pills.

• 44:52Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. But no, we know, in the way that you talked about this pebble in the waterfall and content and music marketing now, so if that changes, certainly, which it has, does your willingness to release your music into that world change? I mean, like, for example, an obvious example, maybe too obvious, is you don't want to play Creep anymore. Now, do you sit there and say, like, if the Sultan of Brunei called you up and said, I want you to come to Brunei and we give you a million pounds, just play Creep. You play Creep and you can go home.

• 45:21Speaker 05

  I would say to the Sultan of Brunei, why'd you have that house near me that you never use?

• 45:29Alec Baldwin?

  I could just meet you down the block.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  I mean, come on, it's an empty house, man. It must be worth whatever. That's what I'd say.

• 45:34Alec Baldwin?

  A trillion dollars.

• 45:35Speaker 05

  And I'd say no.

• 45:36Alec Baldwin?

  Then you'd say no.

• 45:55Alec Baldwin?

  When you retire a song that way, why do you do that?

• 45:58Speaker 05

  Well, I don't necessarily retire it. I mean, I don't recognize it as me, which is kind of quite interesting when I hear it singing. Just that voice, I don't even recognize that, it's kind of odd.

• 46:19Speaker 05

  But then I remember hearing, I remember hearing Lou Reed on some radio station in Dublin, years and years ago. And they were asking inevitably about Beverly Underground. And he said, yeah, sometimes it comes on. I'm like, oh, this is cool, what's this? And then I realized it's the Beverly Underground. And I'm like, wow, yeah. I kind of know what he means, sort of, you get to the point where you're like, what's that?

• 46:41Alec Baldwin?

  That guy sounds pretty good.

• 46:53Alec Baldwin?

  So you're forty-three years old.

• 46:54Speaker 05

  Forty-four.

• 46:55Alec Baldwin?

  Forty-four years old. It's just our professional courtesy that we shave a year off of all of our guests.

• 47:00Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 47:00Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, all of them. You're in the now and you're in the here, what have you, and I'm not saying that glibly. No, but I'm saying, but you're not somebody who, like Mick Jagger, for example, like I wonder if Mick Jagger is gonna hit a day. Like, does it happen in a day? Like, is Mick Jagger in bed one day and he picks up the phone, he's like, you know, "I just can't do it anymore, I can't get out of this bed. I can't do another fucking show again." And it's over. Like, do you think of other things? I think all the time of the next thing I'm gonna do.

• 47:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:34Alec Baldwin?

  Is there a next thing? You don't have to tell us what it is, but do you think this will end?

• 47:37Speaker 05

  Uh, no. I mean, I can't...

• 47:43Speaker 05

  It would end if something happened to my voice. I don't know, certain things could make it physically stop and it will stop at some point. Something will happen. But for me, I'm, yeah, I'm always hearing different things. There's always half-finished things, which you ask poor old Nigel, he knows about that. There's always a mountain of half-stuff I wanna get into, stuff I've started, stuff I wanna, you know. But I also think it's good to sort of take breaks. Cause I've gone straight from this Radiohead tour last year, which was a really heavy mother, but really good fun, straight into doing sort of Adam Smith stuff and not really had a break and...

• 48:24Alec Baldwin?

  So a break is due.

• 48:25Speaker 05

  A break is due because what I've found with a break is, can be an incredibly exciting thing with that thing of like, you just, all the stuff you wanna do, but you just force yourself not, you force yourself to wait. And get back into just time and space and, um, yeah, not being in music all the time, I think. Cause it's like anything, you start to go in small circles, so you've gotta stop when that happens.

• 48:50Alec Baldwin?

  I've had to practise that now. I mean, I got married again and my wife is pregnant and I'm gonna have a kid. And I really sat and thought about that way that I want to have a more ordinary and more normal handling of my emotions. I think the best way to put it is what people in my business say, which is, would you rather live it in real life or would you rather play it on screen?

• 49:14Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 49:15Alec Baldwin?

  And I'm thinking, I wanna walk away from it because I'd rather live it in real life now than play it on screen.

• 49:20Speaker 05

  I think with what I do, it's slightly different. Because what I, what I do actually, unless you, you're literally spending, unless you are just literally working too hard, it's a regenerative thing. I find that I'm, well, I mean, my family, my friends know that I'm a nicer person if I'm working and I'm into what I'm doing than if I stop. There is a period where I'm fairly unbearable if I do stop.

• 49:48Alec Baldwin?

  For too long.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, for too long.

• 49:50Alec Baldwin?

  There's a specific time.

• 49:51Speaker 05

  Probably, yeah, there's a threshold. But like, if you wanna shift, right, with your work, if you wanna shift, if you're writing, if you're being creative at all, you kinda have to stop.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  To make that shift, because if you just, I'm constantly creating. I've got this mountain of brilliant ideas. You're making the basic mistake that you're assuming all your ideas are brilliant. Where in fact, the more you do, they're probably the more. It kind of your thing in reverse, because actually, I need to go and do normal shit. I need to, I can't write unless I have a period where.

• 50:31Alec Baldwin?

  You're restored.

• 50:33Speaker 05

  Well, no, it's not restored, just, just reset. I'm like, just normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal.

• 50:39Alec Baldwin?

  Speaking of normal, do you have siblings?

• 50:42Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah.

• 50:43Alec Baldwin?

  What do you have a brother?

• 50:44Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 50:44Alec Baldwin?

  What does he do?

• 50:45Speaker 05

  Russian politics and stuff.

• 50:48Alec Baldwin?

  He teaches?

• 50:49Speaker 05

  No, he, he's.

• 50:50Alec Baldwin?

  He's the mayor of a small town near Moscow. What do you mean?

• 50:54Speaker 05

  All sorts of shit, investigations on people. He did, he studied Russian Oxford and then went into various.

• 51:03Alec Baldwin?

  Are your parents still alive?

• 51:04Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 51:04Alec Baldwin?

  What do your parents, I always love people in your business above all. What do your parents and your brother make of you going from being Tom York Tom to becoming Tom York?

• 51:17Speaker 05

  Well, my brother was in a band of his own for a while as well, so he has a slightly like, he can see what it is from another point of view. Uh, what do my parents think? I don't know, they, they, they, they like, when I was a kid, they didn't approve. Now that I'm happy.

• 51:31Alec Baldwin?

  They wanted you to go into advertising.

• 51:33Speaker 05

  Yes. Well, you know, it was like, fair enough. I, I was pissed off with them at the time, but I, you know, it's kind of what, that's what you do, isn't it? I mean.

• 51:41Alec Baldwin?

  Well, it's everybody's parents. When I left a pre-law program and I was destined to go to law school and I went into the acting program. My mother was, she literally screamed at me over the phone.

• 51:52Speaker 05

  My mom was very upset when I, when I chose to go to art college. Cause she'd been to art college and she said it's a complete waste of time, don't bother.

• 51:59Alec Baldwin?

  And when I became successful in my business, my mother was like, I'm so proud of him. Oh my God, this is wonderful.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, it's kind of bonkers, like seeing them backstage at a really big show. They'll come to a big show and there's all sorts of shit going off with my mates. They're doing whatever, you know? And there's my mom and they're going, that was fun. Got any beer or whatever?

• 52:19Alec Baldwin?

  When you do step away from it. What other art? Are you, are you interested in art, photography?

• 52:26Speaker 05

  Well, my mate.

• 52:27Alec Baldwin?

  Theater, film?

• 52:28Speaker 05

  My mate Stanley Don Wood, who I went to art college with, who does all our art work with, I mean, I do it with him, kind of thing. We, we always have these lovely plans about we wanna go and live in Berlin for a month and just paint and get in trouble and things like that. We call ourselves the Sunday Painters and we go on bad painting trips. We did one where.

• 52:50Alec Baldwin?

  Did you say bad painting trips?

• 52:51Speaker 05

  Well, they're bad painting trips, because I'm involved. There was one, one of my favorite ones was, we went on the moors down in Cornwall. Do you know what I mean by the moors? In Dartmoor, basically, which is very, very, very bleak, but really beautiful. We were in this stone circle, drove part of the way, walked the rest of the way with these big canvases and paints, but we only, we discovered we only had purple and blue and yellow. So we thought, well, okay, we'll use that. And we painted landscapes all afternoon, but they were purple and blue and yellow. Some poor woman, I remember coming like, late afternoon, coming and asking us, asking us for directions. We're both sitting there, you know, canvases up like this, all huddled up with their hoods

• 53:35Speaker 05

  on, you know, just doing this.

• 53:40Speaker 05

  And this poor woman comes up, asks for, asks for directions or somewhere, rather, and then looks at the paintings and just wanders off like.

• 53:49Alec Baldwin?

  Good luck, boys. I hope you have another career. I hope you're not counting on it. It was like me doing.

• 53:55Speaker 05

  I don't think the purple's working for you.

• 53:57Alec Baldwin?

  It was like me being in Italy and this beautiful couple, they were like, they were older, and the man walked up to me in a camera and he said, scusa, scusa, is a photo. And he's pointing to me and his wife, he's triangulating. And I go, oh, and I put my arm around his wife to take a photo. He goes, no, no, you photo of my wife and me. You take the photo of the mountain in the background. And I was like, oh my God.

• 54:19Speaker 05

  Bless.

• 54:19Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, they don't know who I am. I should move here, I should move here.

• 54:24Alec Baldwin?

  You mentioned someone gave you that push.

• 54:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:28Alec Baldwin?

  Is mentorship in your career, do people come to you and do you give them a push?

• 54:34Speaker 05

  A little bit. I mean, um.

• 54:36Alec Baldwin?

  You must have a lot of people in the music world, young people who look up to you.

• 54:40Speaker 05

  Um, one of the best buzzes really is that thing where someone comes up who's new and they're really into, you know, I'm really into what they're doing. It's really fascinating and it's really totally new to me. But yet, the occasions when.

• 54:57Alec Baldwin?

  They fed off of you.

• 54:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. And you're like, how could you, how could you feed off me? I don't see any of my stuff in what you're doing.

• 55:04Alec Baldwin?

  My DNA in what you're doing.

• 55:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, but they see it and I'm like, wow, that's so cool. Especially when it's like, like it's in hip hop and like, really? You know, people within hip hop who are into Radiohead, I'm like, I find that so fascinating because, I mean, obviously I'm massively into hip hop and we've, we use hip hop as a reference point in the way we build tracks and stuff, but, but really? Wow, that's bonkers. Honestly, that's one of the really good bits, but it's not really mentorship. It's just people who you admire are good at their shit, you know?

• 55:35Alec Baldwin?

  And when it happens, it happens.

• 55:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:36Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. How does success make you feel?

• 55:43Speaker 05

  How does it make me feel?

• 55:43Alec Baldwin?

  Radiohead means something. Your name means something.

• 55:46Speaker 05

  Which, which, um, I think is, well, how does it make me feel? It's always been a little bit far away from me. And the only time it sort of makes sense is when we play in front of people, you know? And the rest of the time is like, well, it's, it's just, it's who I've been for so long, I can't tell you because it's just, that's what it is. And I think I've probably been doing it more than I haven't in my life, in terms of years, in terms of time. So most of the time I don't really notice and people come up and I go, well, that's nice, you know, thanks very much.

• 56:29Speaker 05

  You know, it's not like I'm not grateful. I'm just, I just don't notice. And then sometimes something will whack you over the head and you go, blimey. Things like doing, first time we did Saturday Night Live, for example, and you go, really? People give a shit? Because sometimes you can't, you don't know, you don't know.

• 56:46Alec Baldwin?

  You don't take it for granted.

• 56:47Speaker 05

  You're on the inside, you can't see it. And, and, and also you spend so long running away from it. And I don't feel like I run away from it now because there's nowhere to run.

• 56:59Speaker 05

  Run, nowhere to run. And also it is like, yeah, I'm really grateful for, I'm incredibly lucky.

• 57:06Alec Baldwin?

  That's a very good point. There's nowhere to run and still do it.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I just think I'm well jammy as we say. It's just really jammy, especially in the U.S., you know, like people really give a shit. And it's like, wow, that's amazing.

• 57:20Alec Baldwin?

  I guess I have one more question was, what does well jammy mean?

• 57:23Speaker 05

  I don't know really.

• 57:24Alec Baldwin?

  You don't know?

• 57:25Speaker 05

  Jammy is like, um, you're, you're so jammy, like you just, I'm dating myself.

• 57:32Alec Baldwin?

  No, no, no, go on.

• 57:34Speaker 05

  It's a total fluke, man. It's not really, you're just lucky. I mean, I'm British, right? So I assume I'm just lucky. There's no skill involved. I'm jammy.

• 57:54Alec Baldwin?

  This is from Thom Yorke's most recent album, Amok. He'll be touring in support of the album later this year. Find out more on our website, here's the thing.org.

• 58:12Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing comes from WNYC Radio.

• 58:22Speaker 03

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• 58:53Speaker 11

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• 59:21Speaker 12

  What's that?

• 59:22Speaker 11

  My fresh detector.

• 59:23Speaker 12

  Uh, your what?

• 59:24Speaker 11

  There it is.

• 59:25Speaker 12

  What is it detecting?

• 59:27Speaker 11

  Fresh produce? Fresh meat?

• 59:30Speaker 12

  Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 59:35Speaker 11

  Apparently, we celebrate.

• 59:37Speaker 13

  At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.