Member-only story
Thom Yorke Is Not Crazy About People
Thom Yorke does not like celebrity culture. When Jack Black and Miley Cyrus expressed a desire to meet him, he spurned their requests. “I’m surrounded by a world of grinning idiots and I don’t want to be another one.”
Radiohead came to prominence in 1992 with their hit single “Creep.” Yorke wrote the song as a college student after being rejected by a girl. The song is about not feeling good enough and being rejected as an outsider. As Yorke explains, “There’s the beautiful people and then there’s the rest of us.”
Yorke was born in 1968 in Wellingborough, England. At birth, his left eye was paralyzed and completely shut. Doctors performed surgery taking a muscle graft from Yorke’s buttocks to make his eyelid more functional. He endured five eye operations by age six and wore an eye patch through much of his childhood. This left him with a permanent droopy eyelid. “I think we’re all born with something wrong with us,” he said adding that his eye is a badge of honor.
Yorke’s father was a nuclear physicist and chemical equipment salesman. The family moved often and Yorke attended multiple schools. He spent his days in solitude riding his bicycle through gravel pits and smashing electronics to see their guts. At age seven, Yorke received his first guitar. He mimicked the guitar sounds of his childhood hero, Brian May of Queen. He wrote his first song, “Mushroom Cloud,” at age 11…
