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If there's one thing Radiohead has proven indisputably in its decade-long career, it's that the British quintet loves a challenge.
Radiohead is at the leading edge of what once used to be known as progressive rock - a band that meshes psychedelic sound experiments and avant-garde electronic textures with rock guitars and the occasional sing along chorus.
Paranoia and anxiety course through their sixth album, the recently released Hail to the Thief, but there's also a sense of universal longing with which anyone, especially any parent, can identify. In songs such as "Sail to the Moon," "I Will" and "Wolf at the Door," Tom Yorke sounds very much like a new father troubled by the sort of world he's bringing his child into.
The singer and his partner, Rachel, have a 2-year-old son, Noah.
In a phone interview upon his arrival in North America to begin an extensive tour, Yorke gave some insights into the state of Radiohead's world.
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Q. There was talk you'd reprise your Grant Park show of 2001 this summer in Chicago. Instead you're playing an amphitheater in southern Wisconsin, which doesn't sound nearly as cool.
A. We had this thing that we didn't want any corporate advertising, no corporate boxes and we wanted to stay as far clear of Clear Channel venues as we could.
We sat down before this tour and found we had a fairly unpleasant decision to make. We were basically told that if we had a problem with corporate advertising we couldn't play anywhere, simple as that. That's normally called blackmail. If we turned around and said, that's it, we quit; the people who suffer would be us and the people who really wanted to see us. The people we don't want to win would've won. We were damned either way.
Q. It's like Pearl Jam trying to buck Ticketmaster, which forced them off the road.
A. Exactly. You have to have a sense of humor about it or you go crazy. People look at us like we're idiots anyway because we won't license our music for (commercial advertising). You work really hard on a piece of art, something you're really proud of, only to have it associated with something you're not proud of. People who love music have their own associations with that music, which are precious to them and if they suddenly saw it representing something else, it's robbing them of the music in a way. The payback is never enough to justify that.
Q. But a lot of bands now say it's the only way to get their music heard, because radio is so constricted.
A. Those are usually the same people who don't tell you how much money they made off it. It's a load of cash. The outlets are choked off on radio, but those things never stay that way. Satellite radio, online streaming off the Internet - people will be able to steal the music back.
Q. Speaking of stealing, that's what the music industry calls file sharing. How has access to your music on the Internet through these unauthorized channels helped or hindered Radiohead?
A. I hate to say it, but it sort of has helped, because people got to hear bits of our albums beforehand. And as we discussed, access to radio can be quite limited. So it was a nice way of spreading the word around. It may affect how many people buy CDs, but I don't know for sure.
Personally I want to vomit when I hear the record company heads using file sharing as an excuse for their slipping revenues, when to me the reason that revenue is slipping in the music business is because most of the stuff they're trying to sell you is (expletive)! And people don't want to buy it.
Q. Much of Hail to the Thief comes from the perspective of a new parent concerned about the kind of world he's bringing his child into. Are you more or less optimistic about the planet since your son's birth?
A. In England, we've been going through this heat wave, and I've been waking up every morning at 4 o'clock having panic attacks about it. People are dying of heat exhaustion. The problem is that the elite, whoever the hell they are, are deciding global policies on the environment, and they have no concept about the future at all, what the consequences will be.
They're supposed to be answerable to the people who put them in power, but they're not, because the evidence is all around us. When we were making the record, I used to sit around thinking that it can't carry on like this. It just can't.
Q. The music is therapeutic?
A. It's the same sort of energy you get from being in a march or protest rally, when people get together and all feel the same way about something. And you can tell that they've been waiting months if not years to get out in the street and start shouting and screaming. That's the energy I get from music.
